General Marketing is often referred to as 'Brand Marketing'; it's a marketing effort intended to increase awareness of the company and the services or products that company offers. A Budweiser commercial with the stomping Clydesdales is Brand Marketing. Most primetime TV commercials are brand marketing.

Direct Marketing is marketing undertaken with the intent of provoking a response, that response usually being to call in and order, or go to the web site and order, or to sign up for something.

Late night infomercials are Direct Marketing. They fall into the genre of advertising referred to as DRTV - Direct Response Television. These commerical usually promote a product and present an phone number to call. That phone number is a special number used for that particular commercial for that particular television station for that particular time slot. By tracking responses through that phone number, the advertiser can determine if the ad was effective.

Most online marketing is direct response. Emails are sent with the message Click here and buy now! Banners are designed to entice the web surfer to click through and view the offer. Almost all Pay Per Click advertising is Direct Response. As the advertiser, you are respondig to a specifc query by the searcher, returning a marketing message with intent of initiating a click through to your web site.

Have you ever heard that Dell radio commercial where it says to go to dellradio.com? That's direct response too, because they are sending you to a specific URL. When you go there, they know you came from their radio advertising campaign. With that information, they can judge the effectiveness of the campaign in terms of dollars spent versus revenue generated.

What distinguishes Direct Response from Brand or General Marketing is that there exists a method to directly link the ad to the response, which then allows a financial assessment of the marketing communication. That assessment can then be used to determine the success (or failure) of the campaign in terms of meeting the cost per action goal.

About the Author
Dave Felts is a Search Engine Marketing Manager who recently launched SyteSurge, a resource for search engine marketing information and services.