WEEK 5

Direct Marketing vs. Indirect Marketing

How do these marketing strategies compare?

With direct marketing, businesses can reap the returns way faster. Moreover, the gains can be measured
easily, particularly so if the marketing campaign was thought-out and received well by the audience. This
is because direct marketing involves engaging with leads or customers directly.
For example, sending a customer an email that contains a promotional offer.

On the other hand , Indirect marketing is a strategy in which you put yourself in a position to be found
by leads. Consequently, allowing them to engage with you instead of just directly engaging them.
For example, writing a post on your website’s blog. Which leads can find through external links
or through a search engine, is a form of indirect marketing.

Indirect marketing techniques require much time before a business notices gains. For instance, it
takes a lot of time to grow a brand on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And it takes a while too to get
used to things such as Search Engine Optimization and hashtags. Thus, a business should be ready to wait
for a long time to see any returns with indirect marketing.

Which is better?
Both direct marketing and indirect marketing can be effective strategies. However, to make sure
that you implement them effectively, it’s important that you not only understand what the advantages of
using each are, but also what the potential disadvantages are of direct vs indirect marketing.

You may not realize it, but all marketing efforts can be categorized in one of two ways — direct
marketing or indirect marketing.

Direct Marketing
Direct marketing includes a number of traditional marketing strategies that everyone is familiar
with. For example TV commercials are a form of direct marketing. So are billboards, magazine ads, radio
ads, and telemarketing. That’s not to say that digital marketing can’t be direct. For example, email
marketing and PPC advertising are also forms of direct marketing. You’re essentially trying to find and
address a specific audience — and you’re trying to get them to take action right away.
The following are some of the advantages to such a strategy:

Advantages
 You can identify specific audience segments, thereby allowing you to connect with people who
are likely interested in your product or service already. For example, if you run a TV commercial, you
can choose a time slot on a channel that you know your audience is watching.
 If you know the audience you’re addressing, then you can personalize your messages, thereby
allowing you to nurture leads and build stronger relationships. For example, using the data you have
to segment your email list allows you to send more relevant content to your recipients.
  The data you collect from your direct marketing efforts is more measurable. For example, you
can track your email response rate to determine how effective your direct marketing strategy is and to
make adjustments accordingly.

Disadvantages
 If you’re too overzealous, your direct marketing efforts may cross privacy boundaries and may
even come off as spam, which will hurt your brand reputation.
 You have to have an understanding of who your audience is and where you can find them.
Otherwise, you may be advertising to people who aren’t interested in your brand, which is a waste of
time and money.
 Your overall reach won’t be as widespread since direct marketing requires you to focus in on a
specific audience to be effective.

INDIRECT MARKETING – MEANING, TYPES,

EXAMPLES, CONS & CONS
shaharYar Ahmad Ranjhaa February 27, 2021

What is Indirect Marketing?

Indirect marketing is simply a more value-driven marketing type that focuses on promoting your brand,
products, or services without being “promotional.” That means the basic marketing reason is to attract
your potential customers with a gentle approach.

Traditionally, the marketing objective of every business is to reach its target customers directly.
For instance, brands run their ads, send newsletters, email campaigns (email marketing), direct mail, etc.

Indirect marketing is essentially marketing in which you’re not trying to sell a specific product or
service.
For example, content creation in the form of a blog of email newsletter are forms of indirect
marketing. A lot of social media marketing is indirect as well.
For example, if you’re simply engaging in discussions or posting links to informative articles.
The idea behind indirect marketing is that you’re nurturing relationships, building brand authority, and
generating brand awareness.
Advantages of Indirect Marketing
Indirect marketing brings a lot to the table, and here are some of the benefits of indirect
marketing

- Provision of Value-Added Content

- Cost-Effective
- Long-Term Strategy

Provision of Value-Added Content

Indirect marketing basically educates your potential customers and generates leads
through empathy and problem-solving content. When you talk about people’s problem
and their solutions, they are easily attracted to you.
 Cost-Effective
It is arguably the most cost-effective form of marketing. In fact, several indirect
marketing types are completely free.

Long-Term Strategy
It is a long-term marketing strategy, and your content never gets outdated. For instance,
your value-added blog posts will be useful for a long time.

Disadvantages of Indirect Marketing

- No Performance Track
- No Instant Results
- It requires Consistency
No Performance Track
Tracking performance is more difficult. This is because you’re not honing in on specific
customers — you’re casting a wider net.
No Instant Results
It is a marketing tool that generally takes a long time to yield results. It educates
customers and then makes up their minds to buy your product or services.
It Requires Consistency
As it is a long-term strategy, brands have to be very consistent to effectively utilize this
marketing channel. They need to share informative and value-added content regularly.

Types of Indirect Marketing with Examples

There are several types of indirect marketing that serve different marketing purposes but here some of the
most common of them:

 Content Marketing
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
 Public Relations (PR)
 Social Media
 Referrals
 Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives

Content Marketing
Content marketing is simply value-added content creation to entertain, inform, or educate
your potential customers rather than selling your product or service directly. If a brand
can produce value-added content, it not only educates people but also helps in lead
generation.

Content marketing is also a great way to educate your existing customers as well. The
basic theme is to give valuable solutions to your existing as well as potential customers.
It makes a brand look more empathetic towards its customers. Some common examples
of content marketing include:

Blogging/blog posts QuizzesLive events

Video content Podcasts
 Games Free tools
“Facebook For Media” is an informative blog from Facebook Inc. which educates users
with the latest researches and other informative content.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It is a form of marketing that goes in hand-to-hand with the content marketing of any
business. Search engine optimization is basically making your content or website
available in Google’s top searches. But, you have to create unique, value-added, and
problem-solving content to get yourself up there.

Yes, there are several other technical aspects to address, such as on-page optimization
and off-page optimization. But, if you are providing valuable and to-the-point content,
you can easily rank your blog or website. Search engine optimization allows you to reach
maximum users locally and globally as well. In fact, currently, no digital marketing
strategy is complete without search engine optimization.

For instance, someone searches for “top fast-food brands in California.” Now, if
you run a fast-food chain in California and your blog or website comes in top
searches, you are defiantly in a line to convert a potential customer into an actual
customer.

Public Relations (PR)

It is simply impossible for a brand to succeed without gaining customers’ trust. In fact, if
you succeed to feature in something trustworthy with good reasons; your credibility
increases automatically. You need to interact with the public; you need to build credible
relations with people in order to sell your product or service.

That is why PR is a very effective indirect marketing tool that can be a booster for your
marketing campaigns. If you regularly feature in local, national, or internal
publications/news due to good reasons, you are generating new customers without much
marketing efforts. Apart from that, a brand can partner with other businesses to increase
its PR.
For instance, Netflix and Lyft joined hands to boost their PR. The objective was
to create something exciting and boost the customer-experience without sounding
obvious in marketing terms.

Social Media
Social media is probably the most cost-effective indirect marketing channel. It not only
allows you to stay in touch with your customers, but you can convert leads into your
customers as well. The best thing about social media is it is totally free.

However, the key to success on social media is to share value-added content regularly. If
someone likes your content and share on their profile, it is absolutely free marketing. In
fact, many businesses share their customers’ experiences on their social media profiles.

For instance, a famous Innocent Smoothies reposts content created by their

customers, which mostly includes video content. This not only increases
customer loyalty but is a great way to create brand awareness totally free of cost.
 Some of the most commonly used social media platforms include Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Whatsapp, Quora, etc.

Referrals
Referrals are simply “free marketing.” That said, word-of-mouth marketing is way more
authoritative than many other marketing tools. However, you can only make your client
refer your products or services to someone else if you exceed their expectations. In fact,
if you can get a referral from an influencer, it will be the icing on the cake.

Brands nowadays launch referral programs to attract new customers. For

instance, PayPal offers different rewards to its current customers if they refer
PayPal to their friends, colleagues, etc. You may be surprised to hear that PayPal
witnessed 7-10 percent daily growth due to their referral programs and helped
them hit over 100 million customers.

Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives

It is pretty difficult to impress generation Z and millennial, as they don’t like “feeding”
money to businesses whose primary motive is to make money. Therefore, businesses are
now bound to initiate social welfare causes to make a positive difference.

If a brand can convince its customers or potential customers regarding its social
responsibility initiatives, it can get a lot of support from people and attract investors.

Toms Shoe Company is one of the best examples of corporate social initiatives.
The company donates a pair of shoes to a deserving impoverished child every
time they make a sale. This differentiated indirect marketing strategy helped
them stand out in an already saturated market.
Bottom Line
So, we can summarize indirect marketing as:

 Cost-effective marketing strategy

 It helps in targeting a larger audience.
 Builds and strengthens the customer relationship
 Not a sales-driven strategy
 Works better when integrated with direct marketing strategies

Difference Between Indirect Marketing and Direct Marketing

Here are some differences between direct and indirect marketing:

DIRECT MARKETING INDIRECT MARKETING

This marketing strategy mainly focuses on This type of marketing mainly focuses on
selling products or services through ads educating potential customers, creating
(video marketing), email campaigns, etc. brand awareness, and developing
 relationships with them.
Direct marketing involves interacting Indirect marketing is more of a lead
with your leads or potential customers generation process in which the brands
directly. focus on being found by the leads.

It mostly uses expensive marketing This form of marketing is relatively more

channels. cost-effective.

Direct marketing strategies are mostly Indirect marketing is a long-term

short-term. marketing channel because it focuses on
educating potential customers.

Tracking your marketing performance is a It is very difficult to track the

lot easier. performance of indirect marketing
strategies.

Direct marketing allows you more This marketing doesn’t give you the
personalization. For instance, you can luxury of personalization. Rather, it is
send personalized emails to your more generic.
potential customers.

It is easier to measure the ROI (return Indirect marketing is a marketing

on investment). strategy where it is difficult for brands
to accurately measure the ROI.