Before Steven Spielberg produced “Jurassic Park,” before Barney's giant purple onslaught, there were:
Prehistoric Playthings Your Child Will Love: A Dozen DINOSAURS for $1.50
This extremely successful direct response ad generated more than 240,000 orders. That's almost 3 million dinosaurs!
It's this type of response that hooks people into trying DR space advertising. This is also the reason many people are disappointed with the channel: If they don't sell thousands of products their first time out, they walk away and don't try again.
Direct response ads have many of the same elements as direct mail packages. The difference is that in DR advertising, you have much less space and time to make your sale. You have only a few square inches and the few seconds it takes to turn the page of a newspaper or magazine to hook your customers and grab their attention.
But consider the benefits. The real reward from print advertising is being able to build a customer base that will buy repeat products. If you have more than one item to offer or you're offering a product that consumers will want to purchase again and again, you may want to use DR space to expand your database and create long-term relationships. Since you can't possibly rent every list on the market, you can also use space to reach a large number of people.
Suppose you decide that Newsweek readers are an ideal target for your product. You could rent the Newsweek list. If you place a direct response ad in the magazine, however, you also have the possibility of reaching people who aren't subscribers but buy the magazine at the newsstand, or read it at their doctor's office (these people may buy other products by direct response, but they might not have subscribed to Newsweek). The people who order from you then become part of your own database for future direct mailings.
Then there's the relative expense. If you were to advertise in Newsweek's Business Plus segment, which is sent to approximately 1 million high-income professionals, it will cost you about $76,000 for a full-page, two color ad. And the copywrighting, design and mechanics of ad production will cost about $4,000. Rounding it off, we might say the ad will cost you $80,000.
It might cost you as much as $1 million to reach the same number of Newsweek subscribers through direct mail. Of course, you'd never just mail to 1 million subscribers. You'd start out by mailing to 10,000, then if that was successful you'd mail to 25,000 and so on. A DR space ad will allow you to reach a million potential buyers all at the same time, with the object of converting them into loyal customers.
But you've got to follow up. As any list broker will confirm, people who buy from direct mail offers are more likely to become loyal customers than those who buy through DR space. So if a customer buys a case of oranges from you through an ad, your next step should be to include an offer for ruby red grapefruits inside the case of oranges. Then follow up that purchase with a catalog of your full line of fresh fruits by mail. That way you've converted a one-time responder to a customer who is likely to continue buying from you.
If you're offering an expensive product or one that is complicated to explain, you can use direct response ads as part of a two-step process. The first step is to get the name and address of an interested prospect, and the second step is to make a sale. Many two-step ads offer something for free to draw prospects in. This could be a booklet, a brochure, a catalog or a free sample. For instance, an ad to promote tourism in a particular state might offer a free guide to the state's most exciting attractions. The second step is to convert the lead into a sale. The vacation guide might include discount coupons for some of the state's attractions and vacation package deals.
Another objective of DR space advertising is to learn something. For example, a large company launching a new product might place ads in both Woman's Day and Mademoiselle. If most of the responses they get come from Mademoiselle, they know that their target audience is more upscale than that of Woman's Day. Now they can change their vision of what their target market is and start renting lists that are more upscale.
Other lessons can be learned from testing in newspapers and magazines. Many publications offer A-B splits, which means that half the print run will contain one ad, and the other half a different one. You can then run an A-B split in one geographical area. Every other issue of the newspaper or magazine in that area will run a different ad. That means your results won't be skewed by ZIP code or neighborhood.
Once you discover which ad produces the best results, you can roll it out to the publication's total circulation, or use it as the basis for a more targeted direct mail campaign.
Lois K. Geller is president of Mason & Geller Direct in New York. This article is excerpted from the revised edition of her book, “Response: The Complete Guide to Profitable Direct Marketing,” due out this month from Oxford University Press.
