What is direct response marketing?

Direct response marketing is sales material issued with a measurable goal of getting the reader, listener or viewer to take a specific action.

Copywriting on a landing page might be calibrated to persuade the reader to make a purchase, pick up the phone or fill in a contact form.

The landing page is the marketing.

Making a purchase or filling in a contact form would be the direct response.

As soon as you add a call to action to your marketing collateral, you’ve entered the world of direct response.

Direct response marketing and copywriting

Direct response is the difference between copywriting and content writing.

Content writing is the creation of written content. Copywriting is the creation of written content that has an intent to persuade. This is why copywriting is the type of writing associated with direct response marketing. Content writing is associated with information and education.

The difference between a landing page on a website and any other page of a website is that the landing page is likely intended to be the only page the visitor needs to read before making a decision to take an action.

Writing a landing page takes skills in direct response, so getting a copywriter to review your landing page can help with conversion rate optimisation.

Concise copywriting tips

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We have more Copywriting FAQs answering questions we often get as copywriters.

Recommended reading about direct response marketing

There’s not much about copywriting published here in Australia, but here are some of the best books you can read on the topic of direct response are:

• Overdeliver by Brian Kurtz
• Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
• Anything by legendary direct response copywriters Joe Sugarman and Gary Halbert (generally published by his son Bond Halbert)