Image or Brand Advertising, or Direct Response Advertising.

And these 2 types of marketing classification are polar opposites of one another.

Let's discuss each one in detail.

Image (Brand) Marketing

For example, suppose you walk into a sporting goods store and there on the wall you see a closeup picture of Tiger Woods holding his hand by his baseball cap, and on the cap there is a symbol that you have never before seen in your life. And there's no words or phrases anywhere on the ad!

Pretty bad when you can't even tell what's for sale in an ad! I don't know about you, but I thought that the purpose of an ad was to sell something, and not be a puzzle game!

Oh, wait a second... I know what's going on now! It's the ad representatives from Madison Avenue working on overtime here to build Brand Recognition! Now unless you've got a inexhaustible ad budget to dish out on this kind of advertising, which most small companies do not, this is a awful way to lay out your advertising dollars. Do you know how many millions or billions of dollars that Fortune 500 companies spend on brand recognition each year?

And there's this deep dark secret that all the ad representatives share, and it is this: None of them really know if these ads truly work or not! And there's no way that you can improve on these ads either, without knowing what type of response they are receiving.

There is no way that you can improve upon anything unless you have a method to assess specific results against some past baseline measurement. How can you jump higher this time if you didn't quantify how high you jumped previously?? It's the same for advertising. It's very difficult to calculate the success of image ads. I guarantee you that customers are not running into these corporations main offices, yelling, I'm ready to buy your product or service, because I saw Tiger Woods wearing your logo on his baseball cap on TV last week! It's really shocking the amount of money that is spent, and in my opinion, wasted, by Madison Avenue each year!

Direct Response Marketing

This advertising works in mysterious ways by grabbing the attention of the reader by emotionally appealing to one of their hidden wants or desires. Then it compels the prospect to take some sort of action, also known as the call to action. What the call to action does is try to direct the prospect into doing something, such as picking up the telephone and dialing an 800 number to order, or visiting some website and opting in a special report, or calling a live operator with credit card in hand.

A good case in point of a call to action is in those late night infomercials you see all the time.

Here's an interesting fact: Most people don't ordinarily buy after the 1st time they watch one of these programs! Scientific tests show that it takes 6-7 times or exposures before they order. Sometimes they see the beginning of the show. Next time they watch the end of it. Then they'll see the middle of the program. That's why these infomercials frequently go to the blue order screen so often. It is because of the customary call to action in direct response marketing.

Direct response marketing can be used in a wide variation of advertising, such as postcards, letters, flyers, TV and even radio.

If you want to go see some really excellent direct response advertising, just go to the Internet and search for some sales letters. You'll know when you are looking at a sales letter because of the prominent headline that will typically be bolded, in block letters, starting you right in the face. Customarily , these sales letters also have some other telltale signs, such as:

sub-headings testimonials bulleted points offers and guarantees PS

Become accomplished at direct response marketing, and you should experience a enormous return on your advertising dollars!