While there are a number of areas integral to your success in direct marketing, the big three are:

1. Creating marketing copy that carries a unique message enticing potential customers to purchase your product. Working with a skilled direct-marketing copywriter will be an investment critical to your success.

2. Honing in on the right prospects. If you put your new marketing copy in front of the right people, your sales will explode.  A seasoned direct marketer will be able to look at your product, its price point and offer, and your new marketing copy and recommend where to find the prospects that you’ll turn into buyers.

3. Setting up your operations to take care of your new customers.  Direct marketing to consumers requires that you are able to charge individual credit cards, bank check payments, fulfill product in a timely manner, handle customer queries and complaints, and report accurately on marketing statistics.  Some of these systems you may already have in place, but ensuring they’ll all work in tandem as required is integral to your success.

DM360 has a Marketing & Operations Review process that we utilize with all of our clients getting started in direct marketing.  It provides a blueprint that essentially becomes the direct-response business plan.

While there are absolutely trends related to products via direct mail, much of the success can also be attributed to a strong creative piece and a strong Unique Selling Proposition (USP).  Marketing copy with a compelling headline and lead paragraphs can pique a reader’s interest in many types of products.

At www.supplementmarketingmasters.com you’ll find a link to a product of mine that is a terrific education in all things direct marketing, but that specifically addresses how to choose a product for testing in this marketing channel.

Competitive analysis of the active nutritional supplement direct marketers shows the following as strong product categories:

• Digestive / Colon
• Cardio / Heart
• Memory
• Anti-Aging
• Vision
• Hearing

These are also popular but not as prevalent:

• Hormone Balance / Thyroid
• Allergy/Sinus
• Kidney/Liver Cleanse
• Breathing/Oral Chelation
• Immune System
• Diabetes
  

Electronic marketing is a strong solution for business-to-business sales – for example, for a manufacturer selling specific ingredients to be used in a formulation, or for business-to-consumer sales, or for a manufacturer with a formulation being sold through other direct-to-consumer channels, such as retail, that wants to expand its marketing reach.

I suspect that this question is more specifically asking about business-to-business use of websites and newsletters.  Creating a “free” electronic newsletter is a terrific tactic, assuming you can garner a significant number of qualified readers.  This creates a relationship between you and your potential customers that is ongoing and tangible.  Leads can be culled through a free-giveaway (i.e., “Top Ten Practices to Require of Your Manufacturing Source”) in exchange for an e-mail address, through a variety of sources such as Pay-Per-Click ads and advertisements on complementary websites.  You can then communicate with these potential customers when you have special deals or special news.

Websites are integral to your marketing efforts both because when well-built and maintained, they provide your business with a significant amount of credibility and because they tell your story more thoroughly than you could ever do in a small advertisement.  Your website must create a reason for the visitor to provide you with their information – it could be the same free-report giveaway and/or a brief survey of their needs completed online and responded to personally via e-mail or phone.  Websites are a complement to your current marketing program, not a substitution.

Please feel free to contact me directly at stacy@dm360inc.com to discuss specific opportunities in greater detail.