This sounds a simple question but if you think about it very carefully, it is a very relevant one. So seriously, why should you go direct with your marketing?

What makes your marketing message more likely to be successful if you send out a few thousand leaflets as opposed to placing an advert in a well-known magazine?

A frequent comment about some forms of direct marketing, usually leaflet drops, is that they lack the creativity that you get when you put an advert online. Adverts online can have audio, be animated and be interactive and direct marketing can’t be creative like that, right? Wrong. The brilliant thing about creativity is that there is no template for it, otherwise it wouldn’t be very creative!

This may sound crazy, but an example of a ‘creative’ leaflet drop is the tactic used by many takeaways. Do you think that they believe that by sending out thousands of leaflets with a few decents offers they will get floods of people all flocking through the door instantaneously trying to get a free bottle of drink with their food? Of course they don’t; they know most people will probably ignore the leaflet straight away and may not pay any attention to it for weeks on end. So what does the takeaway do; give up and try targeting a different area? Wrong again. They send another leaflet, once again fully aware that the lucky receipient of a voucher with 20% off their kebab will once again probably ignore it initially. What they do know however is that these leaflets won’t always be thrown away. They may be put on a shelf somewhere or stashed in a drawer but takeaways also realise that people are generally very busy and there will come a time when cooking a gourmet meal is very low on their list of priorities. So what do they do? Opt for a takeaway; if only there was something around to persuade them they fancy a kebab and they fancy saving 20% of their hard earned money…oh wait a minute, what’s this leaflet!?

In this case, the creativity is not in the fancy images or clever animations, it’s in the persistence and convenience of the takeaway’s attempts to provide a service. As we mentioned earlier, there is no template for creativity, but creativity generally has an aim to make a business, product or service readily available or memorable to any individual that may need it at the given time when they may need it.

Daily Sween writes on behalf of Essex Distributions Ltd