I just finished several successful campaigns that generated powerful, above-average responses.
Why so successful?
One of the most important keys is the powerful use of direct response copy.
Good direct response copy is easy to recognize. Not because it wins an ADDY® or a Clio Award for the agency. But because your toll-free phone number is ringing more, your website is generating more business and your postal carrier is delivering more checks to your address.
Why? Because the hallmark of good marketing is that it motivates your prospect to pick up the phone and call your toll-free number or go to your website and enter a credit card number.
At best, image-oriented ads help that same audience feel good about your product or service.

Direct response copy succeeds because it’s based in science

Most advertising agencies create art: Clever copy, beautiful design. But if you want to get new customers, generate more revenue and make sales, pretty art is only a small part of the battle.
Sure, a direct response agency creates art, too. But the ads they create for you will be based in the science of what makes advertising effective and why.
Using tried-and-true rules, a direct response copywriter will:

  • Grab the attention of your prospect
  • Powerfully position your company and product in your prospect’s mind
  • Overcome your prospect’s skepticism and objections
  • Create a “branding” effect that will help you gain market share
  • Motivate your prospect to pick up the phone, go to your website or drop an order in the mail to you right now

It’s easy to see how mastering the science behind direct response marketing gives your marketing materials the power to rapidly expand your customer/client base and dramatically increase your sales and profits.
It’s even easier to see how not knowing the rules causes image-based ads to be huge wastes of time and money. But what are these time- tested and proven direct response marketing rules?

It starts with you

Yes, direct response copywriters don’t begin with a clever idea. They begin with you.
From start to finish, they:

  • Discover what’s unique about you and your product or service
  • Identify the most important benefits of your product or service…and explain them to your prospects
  • Reveal your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to your prospect
  • 
Create a specific, clear theme
  • Develop a personal, one-on-one communication

After reading your ad or watching your marketing material, your prospects will clearly understand how your product or service serves their needs and desires. 
Your prospects quickly become your buyers because they see why using your health products and services are advantageous to them. Your direct mail pieces, advertisements, pre-rolls and other materials have convinced them. 
And your sales will prove it…

Direct response copy is a better return on your investment

Advertising agencies make a lot of money on fancy campaigns, but a hardworking direct response copy campaign is one of the best marketing investments you can make. Period.
Here’s how we know. For decades, direct response marketers using direct response copy have:

  • Compiled the response rates to tens of thousands of advertisements, marketing materials, Facebook ads, direct mail packages, radio spots and television commercials.
  • Compared marketing copy and strategies with the quantity and quality of responses.
  • Discovered which strategies and tactics were hugely successful, which were moderately successful and which were devastating failures.
  • Analyzed exactly why successful marketing strategies and techniques earned their clients hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars and why some didn’t.
  • 
Validated their discoveries through solid accountability, testing again and again.

Over time, direct marketers have developed a knowledge base of copy strategies and techniques that work, when they work and why. Many have documented what they’ve learned into a code of direct marketing rules. No question, there are exceptions to the rules. Great direct response copywriters know when and how to break them. But all in all, decades of testing prove that almost any kind of direct response copy gets more results than almost any image advertising copy.

Writing great copy requires mastery of direct marketing strategies and techniques

Image-based advertising agencies want you to believe that no one can write sales copy like their clever copywriters. Don’t believe them.
And beware of nonprofessionals like my Aunt Mary Bell. Sweet woman, means well. But she is absolutely convinced she can write great copy—after all, she is a great writer.
If you’ve even glanced at the profit and loss statements from your marketing campaigns, you know another truth.
In these times, constructing copy that
sells your product or service requires more technique, psychology and science than even a great salesman/huckster like Phineas Taylor Barnum could muster. Here’s the good news:

  • Writing sure fire “get ‘em to pick up the phone and buy right now” direct response copy isn’t a mystery. It’s part art, part science, and direct marketers have mastered both.
  • Your response rate can easily be doubled, tripled, quadrupled or more when you hire a professional direct response copywriter to write your sales copy. And that means a healthy, growing business for you.
  • Your investment in direct response marketing really pays off, while what you spend on advertising is marginal.

What your advertising agency won’t tell you

By definition, advertising agencies specialize in creating cute, short copy, the goal of which is to get your product or service noticed. But most advertisements won’t give you a fair return on your investment— and they aren’t accountable.
Image-oriented copywriters will attempt
to sell your product or service’s features (characteristics). Truth is, features do not sell.
In fact, feature-oriented advertising results in disastrous failures. At best, these marketing materials fall short of their potential and cost you time and money.
At Creative Direct Marketing Group, you’ll find that we understand what it means to be accountable for the advertising materials that we create. After all, we’ve been perfecting the art of direct response copywriting for more than 40 years.
To find out what CDMG can do for your marketing to help boost your response, give us a call at 310-212-5727, or email us at [email protected].