Marketing, being the complex and expansive industry that it is, can confuse and drive many entrepreneurs and other organizers to settle with mediocrity or basic methods for driving sales or fund raising. Many who are confused with marketing in general prefer to work solely on referrals or rely on older more simple methods such as placing an ad in the local newspaper. While these methods are fine and sustain many businesses and organizations, there is more required to drive real growth in a business or an organization pursuing another purpose.

Direct response marketing also known as direct marketing is a sub discipline of marketing with the goal of driving either a new customer inquiry or customer phone call, to ultimately make a sale or receive a donation. Many forms of direct response marketing are available at all price points which make direct response a great option for businesses both small and large. Some examples of direct marketing are television ads (infomercials), radio advertisements with a specific call to action, direct mail, voice broadcasting, telemarketing, and certain types of internet marketing.

Any small business, nonprofit organization, political campaign, or corporation knows that getting quality traffic to view your advertisements is critical to the success of your sales or fund raising goals, but unless the goal of your advertising is to promote brand recognition, getting these people to interact with your company is crucial or else your campaign is a failure. Using direct response marketing you can drive more traffic and develop brand recognition within your industry vertical at the same time. We will explore those methods here today. My 13 ways to make your phones ring will give you little idea snippets to explore further and get the phones ringing at your office.

Here we go:

1. List your business on several of the internet business listing services such as Google Local Search. You would be shocked at how many companies and organizations are not listed in online local directories. People are searching for you, make it easy for them.

2. How about making your website presentable. What a thought, but most people under 40 use the internet to check things out before making a purchase. Put on your best.

3. If you are targeting businesses you can have a voice broadcasting system or telemarketing company call and leave hundreds or even thousands of scripted voice mails after business hours. This can make for a great day after.

4. If you are targeting consumers try a direct mail piece that looks scary. Like an official notice of some kind. Stay within legal limits but these mailers always get opened and that means more phone calls.

5. Door to Door Flyer distribution of door hangers can be cheaper than the cost of a stamp and it will stand out since it’s not lumped in the mailbox with everything else. Just make sure to order an exclusive carrier run and obey all city laws regarding flyers.

6. Build a targeted landing page which piques interest in your product or service and market it using Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. A certain landing page will get 10% to 25% of your website visitors to call or fill out a form.

7. Hire door to door sales people or flyer distributors. They get paid a commission when someone calls into an 800 number and the call is longer than 30 seconds.

8. Include a customer incentive like a free cruise or a free iPod in your next advertisement. You can talk to a customer incentive company to get good discounts.

9. Build a micro site for SEO purposes around your main product or service keywords.

10. Setup an affiliate program or Cost per Action campaign with your website and then be generous.

11. Get to the top of Google for your main keyword.

12. Offer a SMS signup for customers responding to an advertisement.

13. Offer a free prerecorded information hotline in which callers can press 1 at the end to speak to a live person.