Entries from March 2008 ↓

Evaluate Your Advertising Results
Do you know the return on investment (ROI) for each of your advertisements? Most businesses don’t know or can’t calculate that information, but it can be done.

Maybe I’d better modify that statement. It can be done by those companies who are using direct response marketing techniques. That is one of the main advantages to direct response marketing.

Perhaps you can sympathize with John Wanamaker, a pioneering retailer in the 19th century who is alleged to have said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

You can get an answer to that dilemma. Sometimes all it takes is a simple tweak to your yellow pages ad, newspaper ads, or Val-Pak coupons to find out exactly how much business they really are generating. The results may surprise you. Sometimes it takes a major rethinking of your ads.

If you’re not happy with the ROI on your current advertising, don’t tell yourself advertising doesn’t work. Advertising does work for thousands of businesses. It will work for yours. You just have to do it right.

Consider this: Will your ad stand out from your competition when it is just like their ads? If it doesn’t stand out, can it effectively communicate your message?

Reluctance to be different or unique is a mistake made by many companies.

You might just need to…

Send Your Message to the Right Market
Who is your ideal customer? Don’t say, “Everybody.” You might be willing or even anxious to sell your product to anyone who’ll listen, but stop and think about it. Does it do you any good walking down skid row telling the homeless folks about your product? Most of them are too broke to buy it even if they did want it.

Every successful salesperson qualifies his prospects. Who wants to spend a lot of time persuading someone who can’t buy your product?

When I was selling insurance, for example, we had products that were designed for specific target audiences. The policy that best met the needs of a young, blue-collar father didn’t really work for the retired doctors and lawyers in town. It is the same for you no matter what product or service you are providing. It fits a certain target market.

An easy way to find out more about your target market is to look at your customer list. They liked your product or service and you well enough to buy from you at least once. What do they have in common? Other folks that share these traits are good prospects, too.

For instance, how old are most of your customers? Are they Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers, or someone else? Are more of them men or women? Other things to consider are income, lifestyle, buying habits, and maybe even politics.

You want to take the time to think this through. You may want to survey your customers for even more information.

If you can define the characteristics of your best customers, list brokers can provide you with lists of thousands of names of people exactly like your best customers for a very reasonable price. Yes, you should invest in a good list of prospects.

If your advertising message is sent to people who are interested in your product or service, more of them will buy, right? Why spend good money to share your message with folks that couldn’t care less and would never buy?

When you figure out who your best prospects are, you need to…

Send the Right Message
Does your advertising message show your prospective customer how much better her life will be as soon as she starts using your product? Probably not.

If your ads look like almost every other ad out there, it brags about how great you and your business are. Do you really think Jane Prospect really cares about your mission statement or the awards you’ve won? Her main concern, especially in a tight economy, is “What’s In It For Me?”

Take a minute to think about this.

When you’re in the market for a product and service, don’t you read ads and wonder which advertiser will give you the best deal? Do you care if she has the snazziest ad and the cleverest slogan… or the best price, terms, service, and guarantee? Does the offer of a “Special Good Deal” on whatever you are in the market for catch your eye?

Maybe you customer looks at your ads the same way you look at other business’ ads.

There have been a ton of good books written about how to write a great ad. I’m not going to re-hash them here.

However…

If you would like to send a copy of your ad to john@jgilger.com or fax it to me at (702) 459-3856, I’ll review it and suggest a few ways you may to improve it. FREE.

When your message is fine tuned…

Are You Using the Right Messenger?
Most businesses stick with similar advertising venues without considering much more than the cost per thousand “eyeballs”. This goes back to the idea some folks have that they are “selling to everybody”. Now that you have identified more clearly who it is that buys your products or service, doesn’t it make more sense to concentrate your advertising dollars on folks just like them?

That is why the lists provided by your list broker are so valuable. These are the folks that share the same characteristics as your current best customers.

What if you wrote them a letter and offered them a “Special Good Deal” just for answering your letter? You might wind up with more customers than you can handle.

Letters are a great way to communicate your message. If they are written well, they are a personal message from you to the reader. When you read a letter from a friend, you are interested and pay attention to what you are reading.

Speaking of letters, when was the last time you sent a letter or a postcard to the folks on your customer list offering them a customer appreciation “Special Good Deal”?

This is still one of the great “secrets” of successful marketers. They stay in contact with customers and periodically make them a special offer and invite them to share it with their friends and families. It’s a great way to run a referral program.

As good as letters are, other messengers are effective for communicating your message. The Yellow Pages are popular and can work. Ads in newspapers and magazines can also be effective in communicating your message. The main problem with these is the message — or lack of a message.

There is a lot of talk in the news these days about recession. Some economists are gloomily predicting another depression. Maybe that will happen. Maybe it won’t. Either way, if you are willing to learn from the past your business can thrive… even in challenging economic circumstances.

Don’t Cut Your Advertising Budget

When the economy gets tight and your sales are getting harder to make, you might start thinking about reducing your ad budget “just ‘til things get better”. That’s not a good idea. In fact, that might be your first step toward bankruptcy.

To begin, the Great Depression was not all was gloom and doom. It was a time when those who knew what they were doing made great economic strides and the very nature of the depression itself was an economic boon for them. It was a time when companies benefited from aggressive marketing while their rivals cut back. A good example of that would be Kellogg overtaking C.W. Post during that time. Consumers didn’t totally stop spending during the depression any more than consumers today are going to totally stop spending. Most just looked for better deals and the companies providing those better deals came out stronger after the depression ended. When spending picked up, consumer loyalty to those companies remained. There is no reason to expect anything different as we move through the current economic difficulties.

In general, those companies who not only survived but did well and grew during the Great Depression are those who continued to act as though there were nothing wrong and that the public had money to spend. In other words, they advertised. They created demand even during the most difficult of times.

Many companies cut spending during that era, almost eliminating their advertising budgets. These companies actually dropped out of public sight because of short sighted decisions made about spending money to keep a high profile. Their advertising cutbacks caused many customers to feel abandoned and associated the effected brands with a lack of staying power. This not only drove customers to more aggressive competitors but caused a certain amount of mistrust when it came to financial investors considering making additional investments in these no longer visible companies.

Historical evidence supports the case that advertising was the main factor in the growth or downfall of companies during those years. Clearly, the companies which demonstrated the most growth and which rang up the most sales were those which advertised heavily. The Great Depression offers classic examples of the power of advertising even during times of economic crisis.

As an example, there were 108 companies manufacturing automobiles in the United States during 1924. By 1936, the “big three” (Ford, Chrysler and GM) held 90% of the US car market. They survived by expanding their advertising. Chevrolet was particularly aggressive. During the 1920s, Fords were outselling Chevrolets by 10 to 1. In spite of the Depression, Chevrolet continued to expand its advertising budget and by 1931, the “Chevy 6″ took the lead in its field and remained there for the next five years.
So, if we look back to the past and learn from those who succeeded and even prospered in some of the toughest economic times of recent history, here are a few things you can do: …To be continued…