Question

Topic: Other

Direct Marketing In Price Sensitive Industry

Posted by Anonymous on 11/11/2010 at 3:23 AM ET 125 Points
Is it possible to have a successful direct marketing campaign in a price sensitive industry? We would like to introduce other campaign activities instead of product bundling promotions all year round, but Asian contractors/builders are only concerned about profits. Getting them to come for free trainings are also seen as waste of time.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 11/11/2010 at 1:15 PM Accepted
    Is it possible to have a successful direct marketing campaign in a price sensitive industry? The answer to this is Yes.

    But the rest of your question confuses me, so I am not able to provide more details. What are you selling, how do you currently do it, who to, etc? Answering this would let us better provide useful responses.
  • Posted on 11/11/2010 at 5:42 PM Accepted
    Answer Peter's questions.

    We'd love to help, and YES it's possible to have a successful direct marketing campaign in a price-sensitive industry. But without more information about your target audience, positioning, value proposition, competition, and what's worked before, we're only going to give you broad answers that are as likely to be useless as helpful.
  • Posted on 11/15/2010 at 3:07 AM Author
    My company is building material manufacturer and we're launched a club for "contractor's conversion" program (direct marketing program targeted towards contractors/installers/builders).

    Firstly, the previous GM and I understand direct marketing is a long term strategy and it might take up to 2-3 years to see the result. However, the current GM is focused in short term results, and we resorted into rolling out product bundling promotions (buy main product and get related accessories free) i.e. Buy boards and get nails free. After promotions were over, we'd do follow up calls with the contractors to get their feedback. Our findings were contractors weren't so keen with such promotions, as they claim the accessories doesn't worth much and has no impact at all. They prefer promotions like BOGOF, but it's impossible for us to do such way as it will send out signals to the market that we are driving price war. The top management isn't too keen with such promotion either as they find such promotions are reducing our profitability and diminishing the brand value.

    We also provide free trainings (with meal provided) for contractors who haven't not used our products before and/or would like to be in our list of recommended contractors to gain more business leads from us. However, the training was not as well received as thought, as the contractors revealed that the training takes too long and that they will lose out in business since the training takes up about 2-3 days: theory & practical. And some preferred more challenging modules.

    And with the cost cutting exercise, the management wants to stop product sales promotional activities and asked to focus on training instead. However, our follow ups with the contractors revealed that they want good promotional activities such as buy 1 board get 1 board free.
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