What is Your Money Doing for You?
Clients ask me all the time how their money can best be spent among print, radio, television, internet, direct mail, etc. Since I find myself primarily staying busy doing web design and internet marketing, my answer is usually the same: stay away from print advertising in local newspapers and put the money to work for you on the web.
Why is this good advice? Because on average, for a decent print ad in a major newspaper, you are going to pay at least $400, and you may get to run the ad between 1 – 3 days. You don’t get to select who looks at the ad, how old they are, how much money they make, and the worse part of all, you have absolutely no fail-safe way of knowing if people even SAW your ad! If you take that same money, you can spread it out over several weeks or sometimes months of online advertising with multiple online advertisers, getting more bang for your buck. But, that’s not the best part of it. There are ways to track internet advertising so that you know exactly who sees your ad, who responded, how they found the ad, how long they were on your site, where they live, etc. Demographics are so important, and so is the ability to capture demographics with your hard earned advertising dollars.
I am flabbergasted by the many companies that will spend upwards to $10,000 – $15,000 on phone book ads and when I ask them how their ad is performing for them, they don’t know how to answer because they have setup no way of knowing if they are actually generating leads or not. NEVER assume that your advertising dollars are working for you. Research supports that nearly 100% of the time advertising dollars are wasted dollars unless there is a way to prove that the money spent actually made money through lead generation. Like in any area of life and business, when you assume, well, you know the rest.
Why are people hesitant to invest money online, even when it involves promoting their own website? It’s not a new trend that is simply cool or fun to do; it’s actually hard work that requires some homework. People do it because it produces measurable results! There are multiple ways to track your advertising dollars spent, and you can actually determine what your ROI is on marketing campaigns. People that are smart with their advertising dollars don’t invest online to promote their businesses because it’s trendy and a sign of the dot com era that we are so deep into.
If you haven’t read the book Ogilvy on Advertising, you as a business owner need to do it. (get it on half.com or amazon.com – it shouldn’t be more than $10, and is well worth the investment) It is considered the Advertising Bible by many marketing professionals and advertising gurus. One of the first questions I ask every print designer (a graphic artist that designs print ads and magazine ads) is whether or not they have read this book because one of the premises of the book is how over the many years the author saw marketing campaigns for major companies that many people considered to be stunning visually nearly 100% of the time flopped or performed poorly when the ads were run. To the contrary, the ads that did not get chosen over the visually stunning ones nearly always outperformed the ones that everyone in the organization thought would have the best results. The million dollar question: What drove their choice to select the ads or campaigns that performed the worse? I’ll tell you, and it is the secret to avoiding wasting your money on advertising: personal preference. A business owner’s personal preference and what they like or don’t like to look at can destroy advertising dollars.
It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while, I will work on a web project with a client that provides all of the creative direction, knows exactly what they want, what colors to use, which pictures, etc. So far the best response I have received when I ask them why they have made these decisions were the sounds of crickets in the background. They don’t know why they want things this way! What’s worse is that they aren’t open to suggestions to methods that are proven to work. For these people, I cannot promise any type of results. They know as much about good web design and marketing that I do about installing a furnace or servicing my air conditioner. I call the experts at Bill Russell Plumbing Heat and Air here in Tulsa for that (yes they are a client! hehe) because they are trained experts at what they do, and I trust their judgment.
Always go with the numbers! Do your best to have data that supports why you are making the decision that you are making with your ad budget. If you don’t have any data, then be prepared to create your own data by running different versions of your ad and tracking the results by creating irresistible offers that force your target audience to respond in a way that you can measure the results.
Technology is at your fingertips! Don’t assume that what you are doing is working. If your success can’t be proven on paper with a chart or graph, you are probably deceiving yourself into thinking that your money is being well spent to promote your business. Don’t fall into that trap; contact us or someone else that does this stuff for a living.
