The Two-Way Conversation

Without a direct response marketing strategy in these 3 key areas your customers, clients, leads or friends won’t be involved in the conversation.

Whatever we do online either for profit, charity or just general information sharing, needs to include an invitation to respond. If direct response isn’t built into our system we won’t need tracking strategies because we won’t have anything to track.

1.    Our Website or Blog:

Starting with the title on the homepage you want to invoke some type of response. Unless your site represents a name that everyone knows, ask yourself, ‘What will people say to themselves when they read this?’ If that title asks a question people will naturally want to answer you.

Example A: ‘John Doe’ or ‘John Doe’s Blog’ (blah, blah, blah… how do you respond?)

Example B: ‘Have You Met John Doe?’ or ‘What Does John Doe Know?’
(Special copywriting tip: ‘every little rhyme resounds inside the mind’; rhyming twice is even better)

2.    Opt In or Sign Up:

The objective is to build a list either from people who are already customers or people who find your content interesting. We love showing local business owners how this form of free advertising builds a deeper relationship with their customers. Whether people are signing up for specials from your business, or updates to your informational Blog, they need to have that option.

3.    Email:

Simply put you want to encourage feedback, provide a link or run a poll somewhere so that you can measure the effectiveness of your email campaign. If you have a measurable response from a direct response marketing email, then use that as a template. Obviously if no one has anything to say in response to what you’ve delivered, treat it like they did; trash it.

Always encourage direct response because if you’re building a business or a charity the design is to reach more people. The people you’re already reaching are the key to the people you will reach. Give them a voice.