Your Questions About Direct Marketing Companies

Jere answers:

Traditional – Print Ads, TV, Radio, Internet banners

direct marketing a.k.a – referral marketing. Word of mouth. Someone saw a great movie told his family and friends.

Or a great restaurant you recommended to friends….that’s direct marketing

i work for a company that sells traditional advertising or “underwriting for non-profit org)

and I have a business that uses direct-marketing

Best,

leezel
www.AllSmartTravel.com

Jere answers:

In a sense, yes it’s true: Direct Marketing companies have almost no fixed cost for keeping someone on their recruited lists. Thus, it’s up to you whether you sell or no. In that sense, you’re your own boss: you set up your schedule, client visiting strategies, and the like. However, being your own boss means that you don’t have ehlp from your boss either. There are indeed successfulll people among the direct marketing ranks. However, they are very few since it takes a lot of will, courage and stubborness to keep trying to sell on spite of many many failures, to stick to a working schedule, etc.

Jere answers:

Foreign Direct Investment or FDI is the investment by foreign companies/ promoters/ individuals directly in Indian companies so that their investment money can be used by the company for setting up plants/ projects/ factories etc. Let us say when for example Bill Gates or Microsoft brings in dollars to set up a software development company in India, it is foreign direct investment. Or, if General Motors set us a car manufacturing factory in India on their own or in collaboration with an Indian party, it is foreign investment. The dollars generally create new assets and the investment is mostly in equity stake (although they may in addition also invest in the companies bonds/ debetures) and the objective is to make the Indian company grow and give benefits to the investor in the for of dividend. Unlike FDI, Foreign portfolio inverstment (FPI)are mde bu foreign investors/ companies. Fund managers to acquired already isuued shares or fresh shares with the primary objective of making capital gains by selling the shares in the stock market. FPI may also invest in debentures.
Often the distinction gets blurred as FDI may come to buy shares of Indian companies from the existing shareholders/ promoters owning these shares to bring them under the foreign investors’ management control or partial control. And, FPI may come to acquire freshly issued shares or debentures convertible into shares, whther listed or not on the stock exchanges at the time of issue. The key thing here is to distinguish between the objective or motivation: in the case of FDI the interest is in setting up/ running/ managing companies as owner while FPI is a pure financial investment looking for future opportunities to sell the shares/ debentures at a profit because of the good performance or expected good performance of the companies in which FPI takes stake. Thus, FPI of a foreign investor is as part of portfolio investment management and therefore the FPI investor goes in and out of shares by buying and selling and simulateneously holding some small shareholding if a number of companies. On the other hand, the FDI investor is focussed on one or two companies and takes very large or controlling stake and manages the company and ithe interest is not in buying the shares at a low price and selling the shares at higher price later.
Both FDI and FPI are good. But many countries are scared that when there is panic in the stock markets, the FPI investors just sell their shares and take the foreign currency/ dollars to invest elsewhere – they come in and go out. However, unless the entire comapny has become difficult to run anymore FDI investors do not sell their shares and go away. The FPI is terefore susciptible to shocks in the stock market and also impacts the stock market considerably. FDI however is not so resposive to what happens to the stock market nor does FDI get influenced by stock market movements.
Just an analogy, FDI is like Mr, Ratan Tata or his industrial companies investing in a new car company while FPI is like Tata Mutual Fund investing in different companies from automobiles to IT, from cement to stell, from airlines to entertainment – a whole range of stocks.
Since among FPI investors there are many who are short-term investors always looking for opportunities to gain from trading in shares and other fianncial instruments, their investment are short-term in nature and highly volatile in terms of moving into and out of the country. For weak economies such volatility may create pressures on the foreign exchange and the cause volatility in stock market prices. Many policy makers just do not like such speculative investing and uncomfortable to deal with them. So they think that FPI are safer and long term. But when they stock market becomes big and matured enough, the volatile part of FPI becomes very negligible comared with the size of the stock market. So, these fears go away. Moreover, individual FPI investors may be going out and coming in but the overall FPI may remain the same and grow. China had no other alternative but to depend on FDI because even now China does not have local private entreprenurs worth the name, nor did she have many commercially viable public sector companies that can be listed and which are capable of disclosure and corporate governance of even standards India has already reached. It may also be noted FPI’s bring in both foreign exchange and create employment. It is because of the activities of FPI that more and more FDI investors get interested in coming to emerging countries. Equally important, FPI’s also invest in IPOs of companies where by the local companies get resources required to set up their factories, acquire new equipment and employ new people on that basis. FPI also includes foreign private equity funds and foreign venture capital funds which not only foreign exchange to the country and create new industrial / services capacity and employment but also help bringin management and technical inputs to new firms. Unfortunately, the bookish economists, policy makers and all knowing politicians largely no very little about the various dimensions and nuances of FDI and FPI and in the process mislead common people and equally dangerous adopt wrong economic policies due to simple ignorance and fear of the strange.

Jere answers:

Outsourcing is when a something is done on behalf of a company/person by a contractor. The people that are doing the job are not employees of the company that they are representing.

Direct marketing is marketing/advertising that is done directly to individuals. This could be in the form of direct mailings (junk mail), direct e-mail (spam), telemarketing or distribution of fliers/coupons such as placing them on doors, under windshield wipers or passing them out to passerbys.

Just a side note – if you are looking at this as a “work from home” opportunity, it is in all likelihood a scam/con and is usually referred to as “envelope stuffing”. The FTC has issued numerous warnings against these types of frauds.

Jere answers:

You’ve already received some great answers!

Here are a couple of articles that may help:
http://americatakingaction.com/Bookwise/benefits.htm
http://americatakingaction.com/Bookwise/deal.htm

Direct marketing is the ultimate word of mouth marketing and is becoming more and more the mainstream. As Andy Sernovitze points out in his book of the same name (http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=blended&keywords=word%20of%20mouth%20marketing&_encoding=UTF8 ), Companies can no longer ignore what consumers are saying. With the internet bringing the world so close together, if a customer isn’t happy with the product, they can easily tell hundreds, even thousands of people!

Direct Marketing, if you choose the right company, also provides the benefit of giving the sales force residual income. In other words– direct marketing sales reps can build an income that will continue to provide a paycheck even in the event of an accident or illness that prevents you from working the business for a time, or even death.

I believe that regardless of whether or not an individual is engaged in a traditional job, everyone should find a direct marketing company that they can be passionate about and start building residual income that will see them through whatever the future holds. There are many excellent companies, but my #1 suggestion is Bookwise.

Sharilee Guest
Sharilee@americatakingaction.com
mybookwise.com/nonprofits
hookedonabook.wordpress.com