Selling ad space against direct mail

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 1987 by Josh Gordon

Selling ad space against direct mail

"Sorry, but we are not renewing our ad schedule this year. "We've decided to put our money into direct mail.'

Your sales reps are probably hearing this kind of statement more often these days. While there has been slight annual growth in spending on ad space over the past 10 years, spending on direct mail to market products has exploded. A Business Marketing magazine study conducted during 1984 and 1985 shows that business-to-business marketers spent $3.1 billion annually on direct mail. In that same time frame, they spent slightly less--$3.02 billion-- on trade magazine ad space.

Collectively, trade publications are now losing the battle for marketing dollars to a medium once thought of as a marketing wasteland. If a media schedule for your magazine is about to be canceled in favor of a direct mail campaign, your rep is in a difficult selling situation because, for some applications, direct mail works very well. However, there are some selling strategies that can be used to save the schedule. The first step is to ask the client some questions to find out the thinking behind his actions. Then go ahead and try some of these tactics:

Strategy 1: Sell the differences between trade advertising and direct mail. This may seem like "Advertising 101,' but some clients will need a refresher class--particularly those who are dropping their ad budgets for direct mail because they "think it will do a better job selling the products.' Your rep should explain how direct mail and trade advertising differ as marketing tools. Each is good for accomplishing some marketing goals, but one is not a substitute for the other.

Some clients favor direct mail because its results are measurable. For example, a mailing of 10,000 pieces may produce a 2.2 percent response rate. If the offer is made more appealing, the response rate might go up to 3.1 percent. To marketers who are skeptical about the less tangible merits of trade advertising, measurable direct mail can be a powerful siren song.

Your reps can make the merits of trade advertising more tangible by contrasting how the two media meet different marketing objectives. Direct mail is best suited for making a specific offer to a targeted group of customers and asking for a response. If this is all your client is interested in, skip this selling strategy because you won't save your media schedule here.

Nonetheless, although this is one area where direct mail has an edge, it has many other drawbacks. Direct mail campaigns operate on a very low response rate, typically between 2 percent to 6 percent. Of course, the results can be taken to the bank. However, the question that no one can answer is, "What effect does the mailing have on the 94 percent to 98 percent who did not reply?'

There are many reasons for nonresponse: The customer is not interested in the offer; the customer is not interested at this time, but has filed the mailer for the future; the customer has instructed his secretary to throw out all unsolicited mail; the customer is irritated because the mailer, and others, cluttered up his mailbox that day; the customer is irritated because he is one of your client's biggest customers and is accustomed to getting offers from a live salesperson. All of which means that the reasons for nonresponse range from casual indifference to irritation. The problem is that the marketer will never know--nor will he be able to exercise any control over the impact the mailing will have on the nonrespondents.

But, with most basic marketing communication goals, the attention of that 94 percent to 98 percent is critical. If your client's message runs in a well-read trade magazine, he'll have their attention in an editorial environment that attracts the reader to it. For this reason, most marketing goals are best met with trade advertising: building a company's image; finding new clients; making products well known; positioning a company and its products in the minds of customers; promoting specific product facts to lower sales resistance, and so on. A good list is available in the book Speaking of Selling, published by the Association of Business Publishers (ABP) for $9.95.

Strategy 2: Convince the customer he needs them both. At the best run companies, under ideal circumstances (which any space rep will tell you exist only in marketing textbooks), trade advertising and direct mail are not competitors for the same marketing dollars. In fact, they complement each other. If you can explain this to the marketing manager who is about to ax your magazine from his marketing plan, you could save half your schedule.

Trade advertising handles "big picture' marketing communication challenges --such as introducing new products and keeping open an ongoing line of communication with customers. Direct mail handles smaller, more specifically defined communication problems--such as distributing data sheets and catalogs to dealers and salesmen, welcoming new customers who have just placed their first order, and so on.