Does your advertising hit your target?

We had a very interesting class workshop on advertising.  Mimi is the moderator.    She tells the class that a $100 advertising campaign is expensive if it is not effective, and a $10,000 campaign is cheap if it brings results and additional profits.  It is the effectiveness that matters, not the cost.

In general, passive marketing or broadcast advertising are too expensive, especially for small or microbusinesses.  Mimi cautions the class “DO NOT waste any money on any form of advertising that is unmeasured media, with no past history or guarantee.”

Today’s digital marketing tools including websites, emails, search engine optimization, promotions, newsletters are all measured media.  There is no guesswork as to the effectiveness of your marketing promotions if you formalize a system to track the responses to your different offers and promotions on all marketing channels.

Test the effectiveness and the selling power of your keywords, and monitor the effects.  If you can do this, then you are ahead of the game.

In the class discussion, a student talked about how his former boss (in a computer business) signed a one year full page advertising contract with a phone directory for $25,000.  While this strategy worked in the year 2008, it did not work for 2009, and the sales resulting from the advertising could not even pay for the ad.  This is an example of the decreasing effectiveness of broadcast advertising.  His spendings of $40 a month on Google ads brought more results than the $25,000 campaign.

“Out with the Old, and In with the New.”   Print newspaper and directory advertising are quickly losing their effectiveness.  Entrepreneurs must keep themselves abreast of new technologies, and to compete well, businesses must take advantage of the use of interactive technologies in their marketing and advertising campaigns.

I mapped out a business concept for myself in my head, and wondered how I would structure my marketing strategy using the new technologies.