One of the hardest decisions businesses face is what to do about advertising and marketing. There are never ending questions about how much money should be spent and what medium (i.e. radio, TV, print ads, emails, etc.) should be used. Then, once the advertising begins, the question changes to “How do I know if it’s working well?” Direct Response Marketing can help evaluate how efficient your advertising dollars are being spent. Most businesses don’t fully understand what it means, so here’s our list of our Top 5 Myths of Direct Response Marketing.

1. Direct Response is old-school advertising which uses coupons, postcards, letters, or other print advertising ONLY. FALSE. Direct Response can be utilized for radio, TV, social media platforms, and many other forms of media. The sky is the limit.

2. Direct Response only works for certain types of products or services. FALSE. The effectiveness of Direct Response is not diminished by what you are selling to consumers. The chief benefit of Direct Response is that you are finding ways to advertise directly to the consumers that are interested in what you are selling.

3. Direct Response is effective only for small companies. FALSE. Any size company can benefit from using direct marketing advertising. Multi-million dollar companies utilize classic direct marketing every day for effective sales.

4. Direct Response is complicated. FALSE. It can be quite straight-forward. The goals a company sets and how they choose to track sales determine how complicated it can get. The more data a company has or wants on its customers who are purchasing their products, the more complicated and time-consuming it gets. Of course, the more data a company has, the quicker they can adjust the advertising dollars to the platforms that are growing more sales. For some companies, they may evaluate as often as once per week which allows them to react almost instantaneously to market conditions. Other companies may look at their data less frequently.

5. It’s too hard to track Direct Response results with social media and internet ads. FALSE. An experienced marketing company, like Bautista Direct Marketing, can show you effective ways in analyzing sales on any medium. Once a business has established how they want to track sales and their sales goals, then Direct Response can be effective in radio, TV, social media, podcasts, and any other advertising mediums.

To put it simply, Direct Response creates an advertising message first and then finds the best way to get that message to the customer. It’s a proven method of spending advertising more effectively and should be considered when planning an advertising budget.