B-to-B Insights: Attain Success in an Integrated World

Create a Peaceful Co-existence

Am I suggesting that you stroll into the CMO’s office and tell him to stuff his brand? Of course not.

What you should tell him is how you intend to leverage the brand to generate peak performance for your direct campaigns. Explain how you’ll employ brand advertising graphics and brand messaging to make your direct communications, and the offers they promote, more credible, valuable, exclusive and desirable.

While you’re there, you might also explain that since direct marketing is a medium of action, it also can support the brand by encouraging customers to interact with the brand. A direct marketing communication can drive customers to a hot, creative, educational Web site; it can put information in their hands; it can encourage them to speak with a sales person or to view the product firsthand, at point-of-sale or in their homes and offices.

How can you, as a direct marketer, achieve success in an integrated world?

• Defend the promotion of your offer to the end. Your offer is NOT the product or the company you are selling. Your offer is not who you are, how great you are or how many awards you’ve won; it’s what THEY, the customers, get by responding to your offer. If you can’t promote a great offer, don’t do direct marketing.

• Don’t hide your offer. Don’t make it difficult for the reader to see it, understand its value or figure out how to get it. Don’t wrap your offer in layers of brand messages that distract, confuse or overwhelm the reader.

• Tell readers again and again that you have an offer for them. Tell them three times … five times … as many as 10 times within a piece. The single most important message we deliver in a direct marketing communication is: “Hey, reader, here is a valuable, exclusive offer just for you. Come and get it right away.” Everything else is secondary.

• Remember that emotion drives behavior. Far more people buy aspirin than buy vitamins. Why? Because they want to get relief from pain. The more effectively you can position your offer as a solution to a problem the better. The more you can use fear, guilt, greed, exclusivity or even anger to give your reader a passionate reason to respond, the better your results will be.



A Final Word

Doing direct marketing in an integrated environment involves serving two masters. It’s a fact of your occupational life. You must do everything you reasonably can to support the brand, not because the CMO says so, but because it’s good for your company. However, you must never lose sight of the fundamental reason you were hired: to deliver offers and get results. That’s good for your company and for you, too.