The Difference Between General Advertising and Direct Marketing

Written By Ted Grigg

One way to differentiate these two approaches is to look at how they are evaluated. General advertising is designed to increase awareness and direct is evaluated on the basis of sales results. In reality, direct marketing efforts support the brand and general advertising ultimately increases response rates.

Over time, direct marketing became synonymous with direct mail marketing. Unfortunately, that narrow application to direct marketing is flawed.

The primary difference between general and direct appears to be in the area of the results they are expected to produce.

As shown in the following flow charts, both general advertising and direct marketing use all media. They are both directed to the same target markets. And they must both produce sales.

DMCG Results

For general advertisers, the operational objective is not to increase sales, but rather to position the product and create an environment conducive to sales. And for many general advertising pros, increasing sales becomes an afterthought or a hoped for consequence of properly positioning the product in a sea of competitors.

In effect, general advertising is truly an indirect selling strategy as opposed to direct marketing.

But here's the rub – some direct marketers believe (and rightfully so, I think) that behavior change may actually position the product and build its awareness while simultaneously promoting an immediate sale.

Direct marketers pay attention to the brand and the long term impact of their messaging. But they live or die by the sales coming out of every campaign. They design everything to produce a sale now rather than in some distant future.

By the same token, direct marketers want to collect sales information on each customer knowing that the big profits come from repeat customer sales and relationship building rather than first time sales. General advertisers typically do not deal with customer databases, CRM or sales tracking by channel or campaign.

Direct marketers think long term. But they also think short term ROI.

If I communicate nothing else about the difference between direct marketing and general advertising, it is this. Direct marketing is not a channel or a medium like direct mail, but it is a different way of approaching an advertiser's sales objectives over both the short and long term.

Ted Grigg
What Ted does best is increase response by beating controls, applying multiple channels to target markets, profiling customer databases and generally improving sales results using deep direct marketing principles. Regard Ted as your personal “think-tank” for your direct marketing planning and strategy development. After analyzing several hundred million dollars of direct response testing in all channels, he brings with him the knowledge accumulated from seeing what tends to work and what does not. Having worked on both the agency and client side of direct marketing, Ted understands the unique challenges faced by agencies and their clients. Agencies need to sell themselves and deliver sales results. And clients not only require results, but need ideas they can implement while focusing on tracking response using a relational database. If Ted brings nothing else to the table, by profiling customer databases and creating response propensity models, he quickly becomes the clients’ expert on their own customers. His formal training includes a BA from Abilene Christian University and two years of graduate work at Texas Tech University. For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, Ted developed a revolutionary direct mail format that beat most standing direct mail controls for this company. He also generated more profitable business for this firm by expanding compiled list circulation of less than 10% to more than 30% of total direct mail circulation within a year. (Insurance business generated by direct mail demonstrated higher persistency than customers coming from other media such as print and DRTV.) Ted’s plan and implementation of Medicare lead generation campaigns for over 60 regional and national HMO/PPO organizations combined multiple channels that surpassed some sales projections by as much as 60%. Additional industry experience over the last 30 years includes B2B or B2C for finance, securities, home security, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, government, technology, nonprofit, retail, transportation, communications, and multiple categories in the services industry. As the founder of Wyse Direct (a division for Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, OH), he successfully launched and branded a new technology product for Seiko-Mead by supporting a nationwide sales team with a predictable flow of qualified sales leads. While a VP of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, Ted acted as the direct marketing strategist who refocused the agency’s culture to attract new commercial and fundraising accounts. At the time, Grizzard was essentially a direct mail fund raising production operation. His leadership and team building effectiveness prepared Grizzard for the eventual Omnicom acquisition and Grizzard’s successful integration into Omnicom’s large group of advertising agencies. An independent DM consultant, Ted continues to write numerous articles and conduct webinars on direct marketing techniques. He also wrote The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan — A Step-by-Step Guide publishing it through Executive Enterprises in New York City. During his youth, Ted was raised in Lille, France with his missionary family attending French schools becoming fluent in reading and writing French. Away from the job, Ted is a computer geek, blogger and science fiction buff!
http://www.dmcgresults.com
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