Direct marketing is a type of advertising that does not use traditional means of advertising such as newspapers, magazines, TV, or radio to reach its audience. Instead, when businesses uses direct marketing they communicate directly with their intended consumer.In order to do that direct market advertisers employ a number of different advertising vehicles to get in touch with their target market. These include, but aren’t limited to distributing catalogues, fliers, and promotional letters.There are two primary things that differentiate direct market advertising from other types of marketing. First, its messages are sent directly to the consumer without the use of traditional types of commercial media. Second, the basic principle of a successful direct marketing campaign is that everything is driven towards a specific call to action.When a call to action is elicited the responses can, and should be tracked and measured.For example, a specific call to action could ask the prospects to call a specific telephone number. Whenever anyone calls that number, no matter what the results of the call (whether or not a sale is made), the action of calling is considered to be a direct response to the advertising effort.Who Uses Direct Response Marketing?Small to medium sized businesses are more prone to use direct marketing than are large corporations. That’s because larger enterprises tend to try to brand themselves and establish a connection between their company name and a general message about their company.Larger companies also tend to direct their advertising and marketing efforts towards the general public rather than to a specific target market. Therefore, the larger corporations usually do not attempt to have the general public take one specific course of action.Often, when people purchase products from a company that tries to brand itself by sending out a brand message the company will not know what motivated their clients to make their purchases. So they won’t know which specific ads worked and which ones were just draining capital.On the other hand, well executed direct marketing campaigns can generate positive returns on any money that is invested into specific campaigns. One of the reasons is that they are not involved with overcomplicated efforts geared towards branding the company. Their sole purpose, remember, is to get the prospect to do a specific action.Direct advertising goes straight to the point. It usually offers a service or product, or it might focus on an event. Then it explains how the prospect can get the service or the product – or attend the event.In order for a direct marketing campaign to be successful it is necessary to first obtain mailing lists that have the necessary information about the market that the company is targeting. These mailing lists are available from mailing list brokers.