19-Jul-2011 09:43

You Wasting Money on Marketing & Advertising too?

Famously, the US retailing tycoon John Wanamaker allegedly said, "I know that 50% of my advertising doesn't work. The problem is; I don't know which 50%."

In truth, Mr. Wanamaker was almost certainly exaggerating…
If accurately analysed, it is probably closer to 1% of our advertising that ever works. However, the response “The problem is; I don't know which ?%", is almost certainly true…

Your company may be spending a fortune on advertising, but how do you know what is truly effective?

A thorough evaluation of your company's promotions, marketing and advertising would likely show that much of your current marketing budget is not effective at all, a little may be moderately profitable, and a tiny fraction is very helpful.

Importantly there may be a logical way to find out which bit of your marketing worked: why not ask your customers?

When was the last time you or your staff asked a prospective client how they found you and then recorded it somewhere?

As a small business time, money and effort are rather valuable commodities.

Your money could be returned, efforts may be rewarded but your time is lost forever.

If you could increase productivity of all by knowing which marketing activities are working for you, how much better do you think your income would be and how much healthier your bottom line could be too?

Simply by asking your clients simple questions; like how they found you, you could gain:

• You could see which areas are generating the most enquiries, responses and sales.

• You could match your marketing and advertising costs to income and generate increased return on investment (ROI) statistics

• You will gain insights into the quality sales techniques

• All the fresh information generated allows one to better make decisions concerning promotional activities & budgets.

If nothing else, simply by reducing the ‘wasted’ money on unproductive advertising will add to your profitability…

If we would all constantly question our assumptions & test those theories to determine their true validity, most of us could approach our advertising, promotion and marketing with increased confidence.

As we all know, not all advertising is effective, but at least the new found knowledge will permit variation and possibly allow us to say, “I know that most of my advertising doesn't work, but at least I now know which little bit DOES!"

Norman