What is Direct Response Advertising?

In my last article, I described how most people advertise and some of the problems with it. In this article, I’ll talk more about the components of direct response advertising.

The entire point of direct response advertising is to get the prospects that are most likely to buy your services to take a desired action. Here’s what you need for a direct response campaign:

1. Target Audience - You must know the people who are most likely to buy your services. You must understand their hopes, dreams, motivations, fears, and concerns. You can’t be everything to everyone - you just don’t have the resources to do so - so you must choose the people who are most likely to be the best, most profitable prospects who you can provide superior service to.
   
   
2. Message - Once you know your target audience inside and out, you must craft a message that addresses your target audience’s dreams, motivations, fears and concerns. It should include your unique selling proposition as well as the benefits and the reasons why you provide superior service. It must be written as if you were writing a letter to your prospect, from your prospect’s perspective, and must address the top issues and concerns your prospect has. What do clients want? Sellers, for instance, want their house sold for the most money in the shortest time period with the least amount of hassle. They want to feel acknowledged. They want you to empathize with them and understand that this is a big decision for them. Your message must address those concerns and clearly explain the benefits and reasons why your service is superior and the best value for their money.
   
   
3. Media - Based on your target audience, you must select the appropriate media such as mailing lists, newspapers, publications, radio or tv shows where you are most likely to reach the highest percentage of your target audience. It doesn’t matter if a publication reaches 2 million people if less than 1% of readers make up your target audience.
   
   
4. Offer - You must make a compelling offer so that the best prospects respond. That can be anything from offering a free report or home analysis or consultation or relocation kit or neighborhood guide or seat at your next seminar or free dvd on how to prepare your home. Your offer depends on your target audience and message. It can’t just be a sales pitch. It must be something of benefit where you’ve painstakingly described its value and how it can help your prospect right now. Your offer must address your prospect’s concerns and assure them that, for instance, by requesting this, they won’t receive a high pressure sales call and there’s no obligation to buy.
   
   
5. Call to Action - This is how your prospects can take advantage of the free offer and how you measure response. You might ask them to call a toll-free number that is specific to this ad or ask for a specific person (ask for Sally) or visit a specific page of your website to download the free report or call your office and ask for this specific report by name (you can change its title in different ads to see what works best) or send back the attached business reply card. Don’t ask them where they heard about you - people are notoriously bad at recalling where they did. Rather, build your advertising campaigns around how they respond so you’ll always know that if someone responds, it had to come from this particular campaign. Then, keep track of all responses you receive to see which one gets the most responses of the highest quality prospects who convert to clients.
   
   

The key to direct response advertising is to make your best prospects an offer they can’t refuse so that they are compelled to take action and seek you out. You can’t do this by telling them how great you are - that you’re #1 in your office/neighborhood or that you’re a $30 million top producer. You won’t convince them with cute or humorous ads - they’re not hiring a comedian. They’re hiring a professional real estate agent who will help them make a huge financial investment.

When you focus your advertising around the specific prospects you want to attract, make them a compelling offer, and tell them exactly how to respond, advertising becomes less of a guessing game - it becomes scientific. You can run the exact same ads with different headlines and test which gets a better response. You can try two different offers. You can try two different USPs. Everything is testable and measurable and it’s easy to tell which one works better by the number of responses you get.