[cs_content][cs_section parallax=”false” style=”margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;”][cs_row inner_container=”true” marginless_columns=”false” style=”margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;”][cs_column fade=”false” fade_animation=”in” fade_animation_offset=”45px” fade_duration=”750″ type=”1/1″ style=”padding: 0px;”][cs_text]Recent figures from advertising agency AAR suggest that Direct Market is where it’s at, according to the number of new roles advertised.

The figures were reported in Brand Republic. They show that while Agencies were reporting a reduced number of New Business roles (down by 14%), the number of roles relating to Direct Marketing / Customer Relation Management (CRM) has increased by a sizeable 44%. The survey also reported good levels of activity during the first half of 2014.Marketing should never be about conveying a plain and functional message yet this is the direction the industry seems to have inadvertently taken in recent years. Moving forward there should be a new drive to allow consumers to build an emotional connection with the vehicle and the brand itself.

Direct marketing can help to achieve that by reaching out to both new and existing customers, and enabling you to target your campaigns more specifically by identifying particular groups of people.

You can promote services and products in this way, via a number of different channels including telephone, mobile and email as well as the ever-popular mail shots and leafleting options. Personal, powerful and effective, direct marketing allows tight control over finances and expenditure while ensuring maximum returns, the ideal set-up for small businesses in particular.

As the Agency survey suggests such marketing activity dovetails very closely with Customer Relation Management (CRM). The term is not new and has many different aspects. In brief, CRM may be defined as “a strategy for managing all a company’s interactions with current and prospective customers. CRM enables a company to increase productivity, close more business, and improve customer satisfaction and retention.” Much CRM is driven via software programmes but in fact the principle holds whatever the mechanism: CRM is an attempt to more closely understand the customer and the buying cycle. It is easy to see how Direct Marketing informs and is informed by CRM activity. The quality of CRM activity will allow for a much more personalised Direct Marketing activities – and this level of personalisation has been shown to increase response rates. Response rates can include many areas – from encouraging respondents to visit a website, sign-up for future marketing and, of course, closing sales of goods and services.

It certainly appears from the AAR survey that Direct Marketing is leading the growth in advertising activities.

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