Advertising

Here’s a common scenario for your average small business owner: the phone rings, or there’s a knock at the door, and it’s a rep from the local media selling advertising space. Our eager business owner could do with some more customers so readily agrees to the rep’s offer and is pleased to have saved some money, too (because reps always tell you they’re giving you a huge discount).

They leave everything in the hands of the rep, including the ad’s design.

The ad comes out and… nothing.

Fact: most small business advertising is worse than useless (worse than useless, because it doesn’t even pay for itself).

Why?

Because advertising reps and their buddies the graphic designers are not marketing people. They don’t know what makes an ad effective. You have to remember these people are media salespeople. Their job is to sell you space and creative services, NOT results. So even if they knew how advertising really worked, they’d be under huge pressure to sell you what they want to sell, and not what you need to buy. It’s a conflict of interest that would see a lawyer or similar professional disbarred or struck off.

Even the great and the famous get it wrong: John Wanamaker said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”. Experienced marketers and advertisers know exactly where the money is coming from with their advertising because they know how to test, track and measure.

We get a similar story with direct mail, too: most business owners tell me direct mail doesn’t work. But it does. All they’ve discovered is it doesn’t work for them when they do it the wrong way.

If you’re advertising or mailing stuff out but you can’t tell beyond all doubt it’s making you money, then stop doing it now!

You must be ruthless about this: if someone responds to an ad or mail piece, you must be able to track it. It’s not enough to say “I ran an ad and seemed to be busier the next week”. It has to be trackable down to the individual sale!

This means perhaps having a dedicated phone number you use only on ONE ad so you know all calls coming in on that number can only have come from that ad; it means having some kind of coupon or other trackable response mechanism in your direct mail; and it means using the latest technology on your website to track visitors.

There are literally dozens of ways to track responses, both with online and offline media and while they’re not free, the outlay required is relatively small and, in any case, pays for itself many many times over because of the vast improvement you get in response and ROI.