What’s the difference between…

..Brand advertising and Direct Marketing

Part of our role as expert leaflet marketeers is to help our clients get a better response in their direct marketing activities.  What this sometimes means is that we do a critique on the customers leaflets and quite often we find that the client has not understood the difference between brand awareness type advertising and direct marketing.

I stand by the statement that unless you have millions to burn on brand building advertising, then for the majority of small businesses, your marketing budget should be spent on direct marketing.  So what’s the difference between the two?

• Brand advertising is where the aim is to remember you. Direct marketing is where the aim is for someone to pick up the phone, visit your premise and buy from you
• Brand advertising is used to build your image or brand. Direct marketing is to there to provide enough information for the person to want to take action
• Brand advertising has an uncontrolled wide reach. Direct marketing can be highly targetted
• Brand advertising has no direct intent. Direct marketing has defined intent
• Brand advertising is not trackable. Direct marketing is fully trackable.

Put simply, brand advertising is more about just broadcasting your business name and logo whereas direct marketing is more about selling your product or service and getting the reader to take action now.

Check out this example of a brand advertising – this was on a billboard, seen by 1000’s of people. It is no more than a logo and a slogan.  Whilst Adidas may have thousands if not millions to spend on promoting a brand, it would be foolish to do if you run a small business

Brand advertising simply says “We exist” whereas direct marketing says “We exist, we know you have a problem, we can solve that problem and heres the reason why we’re the best people to solve that problem for you and here’s what you should do right now.”

As small business owners, we don’t have money to waste.  EVERY single piece of marketing activity should be accountable to produce a response. You should know what each and every piece of marketing is producing in return. If it’s not producing a return then either tweak it or bin it.  If it is producing a return then do more of it.