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March 29, 2007

Marketing Architecture For Direct Response Radio Success

You want it, but are you ready for it? Do you have the adequate marketing architecture?

Many potential clients come to us wanting to take advantage of direct response radio advertising. They "get it" - that direct response radio is incredibly effective at delivering new customers in a fashion that is accountable. That is, they'll "know" when their advertising works because they'll be able to measure it.

But "getting it" and being ready for it are two different things. There are many elements of "being ready" we could discuss here, but we'd like to focus on one element of the marketing architecture that is absolutely essential. Measurement - specifically an architecture that captures results data and transmits them in an interpretable format.

Why is measurement such a critical piece of the marketing architecture? Because without proper measurement, you can't build a real direct response radio advertising campaign.

Put simply, direct response radio will act as a stimulus, but if the response to that stimulus - whether it's calls into a call center or visits to a web site - isn't captured and transmitted in an accurate and timely manner, the direct response effort falls short. Most call centers have this down to a science so it's less of an issue. However, with increasing frequency, we hear from clients who have built a great web site and they want to use direct response radio to drive leads and create new customers via that web site. In many cases it makes a lot of business sense to do this. But they don't have the infrastructure - the direct response marketing architecture - required to fully capture the required data.

Don't make this mistake. There are a number of web tools available to capture the required data. Google analytics is one of them, and it's free. But it still takes time to properly set up the data capture and export functions. Don't skimp here - because the power of the web combined with direct response radio can create amazing business success, but failing to put the marketing architecture building blocks in place will limit your success.

Guru Seth Godin likes to say that great marketers are architects. That's one way to put it. In direct response marketing, you have to design it right before you build it.

Posted by Jeff Small & Brett Astor at 10:58 AM | Permalink