I need to rant.
I picked up a local magazine while hanging out in a store yesterday… It had a ton of different advertisers within the local magazine. You know… the new restaurant, local business, or car garage that has a sale… a ton of coupons from local businesses…spreading their message and products across the city.
It is a good idea for the most part… you know… it’s marketing… right?
I am all about coupons and advertising in local magazines/newspapers. I use coupons to buy food, clothing, and services. I buy products off of advertisements. There is only one problem with the hundred (or so) ads/coupons in the magazine and newspaper… and even billboards.
There are no links associated with social media on any of the coupons.
There are no unique URL or phone number to measure how many clicks or calls an ad made.
The only thing of value was the website URL and that was not unique.
I am positive the people in the magazine are not measuring any marketing they are doing. The same goes with large billboards that do nothing but display a huge logo and a tagline that some marketing firm created.
What are you doing to measure the influence of your marketing.
The same goes to the salesman that sold the billboard or magazine ad in the first place. What are you doing to add value for your customer other than a guess on how many eyeballs are driving how many cars at any given period of the day?
This does not make any sense to me… not one bit of sense.
And do not give me the excuse of brand awareness… or building some sort of brand value.
I’m going to be writing about this topic the entire week and would love your responses. Why do we keep buying, selling, and contributing to mass marketing that has no measurement on the amount of influence to the bottom line? Any ideas?
Tristan
"Why do we keep buying, selling, and contributing to mass marketing that has no measurement on the amount of influence to the bottom line?" Because that's what people are trained to do. So many direct mail companies have yet to realize the importance of tracking – and if they're trying it, it's often a half-hearted attempt/afterthought. "Hey, let's send out 10,000 post cards to promote this new business! Based on that last one we did for that other company, we'll get a 5% response. Yay!"
Ditto the young breed of social-media marketers who have no experience in direct mail.
Marketing isn't just social media, and it isn't just direct mail, and it isn't just paid adverts. Good marketing is a strategic combination of all those things and more.
kylelacy
Amen Tristan. I hope you weren't pointing the "young breed of social media marketers who have no experience in direct mail" at me. We actually do quite a bit of integrated marketing consulting with direct mail… and even call centers!
kylelacy
That's awesome Paula! Keep it up!
Henry Kurkowski
Perhaps they are using "generational marketing"? My in-laws still read the paper, read magazines and watch television. They do not spend countless hours on a computer reading emails, visiting websites or just surfing. And neither do their friends.
A marketing campaign needs to know who it's targets are going to be. Marketing should be targeted and utilize the right tools and vehicles for each target. A smart marketing campaign uses social media as only one part of a much larger marketing campaign. A multi-faceted approach is what makes a marketing strategy effective. An online only campaign eliminates and ostracizes a very large demographic of consumers. Perhaps the message in the ads that you saw in that magazine are being augmented by online marketing as well to have a broader overall reach.
kylelacy
I'm all with you on the generational marketing thing… that's not what I'm saying. An integrated approach is a must that is MEASURED. That's the key.
Measuring and marketing based on four ideas… transactional, generational, psychological, and aspirational… and making sure you are spending the right money… in the right places.
robbyslaughter
Imagine for a moment, that you are a small business owner with no expertise in marketing.
You have an opportunity to purchase an advertisement in a magazine for $500. That seems like a lot of money, since you have no way of knowing if it will bring you $500 worth of revenue.
Now, you need to get someone to design that ad for you. But you are already swallowing the cost of the insertion, so paying a graphic designer to create something creates additional expense. Plus, you can make it yourself, right? Sure, it won't be as attractive as if done by a professional, but you can probably rationalize that you can do a reasonable job in Microsoft Word or something. And you can also rationalize away the lost time that you are spending working on your ad and not working on your business.
After all this, it's no surprise that most marketing is terrible.
Brett Atkin
It has become so easy and cheap to track ads, it should be a marketing sin to not track things like this. I think the worst thing imaginable is using services (like ESP's) that don't have tracking built in. Maybe there are too many old-school marketing executives running things that haven't caught up with the available technology. Maybe they're making so much money they don't have to justify their spend.
I think it comes down to education. Show them what they can do and how it can impact the bottom line.
kylelacy
Education is key.
PJ Christie
Rant on Kyle. I ask the question, "Do you want someone to market your way?" When advising my clients they just shut down when you talk about measuring and that they are just not ready for it. That's not a good reason to miss an opportunity to know what your potential customers want and where they found you.
But when their eyes glaze over at simple questions that's when I realize that what they want is a marketing waitress, and not a real professional.
kylelacy
BAM. I just got excited. Well said, PJ.
robbyslaughter
Large businesses are terrible at marketing for a different reason: inertia.
kylelacy
touche my friend. touche.
NourishedFit
I agree with most of what you said, but I also think it depends on the product and segment being targeted. For example, posting a website/twitter handle about a product might be beneficial to me, but for my dad (who doesn't even know how to turn on a computer, or care to know), it's meaningless.
kylelacy
It isn't a matter of just generational though. If your dad wanted a text message or a piece of information via social media it is up to us as a brand to determine his communication medium. Just because he is a baby boomer doesn't mean he wants a #10 window envelope.
PJ Christie
Well it might not be popular to admit, but let's imagine that NourishedFit's dad finally decides to get online. People do decide to do that, hard core tech-deniers come around and start slowly. Your Twitter might be one of only 10 people he follows, which gives you even more visibility. I love to target users with smaller lists of friends and followers. It means less noise. It means meaningful.
kylelacy
Exactly. It is all about how the father wants to be communicated TO not AT.
Jake Anderson
I love this post. I love this topic. Working at a small business this is something I run into all of the time. We just began to measure some of our efforts this year. What little info we have gathered has been crucial to our 2011 plan, and in 2011 we will be measuring as much of our efforts as possible. How else do you know what to keep doing, and what to scrap? Here is a quick tip for people new to this (like me)>> use unique emails on your different advertising products. Offer a special incentive for contacting you via email (like a contest). This has been really successful for us. It's also a great way to gather email addresses for drip marketing (just make sure you have permission). Great post, Kyle!
kylelacy
You know I love you Jake. 🙂
Sara Graham
Yes! Totally agree. In each of our ad sources, for each one of our 45+ properties, we use unique phone numbers and/or email addresses, so we can track both leads and conversions. My previous company did not have such a system in place, and it was next to impossible to know what was working. Though our sales force is trained to ask, "How did you hear about us?," I cannot tell you how many prospective customers say, "The internet." The problem with that response, of course, is that the "average" property advertises on a minimum of eight sites (and usually more).
Awesome post, Kyle – I wish more people/companies realized the enormity of this. They might as well light some money on fire and watch it burn.
kylelacy
You definitely have it right Sara. It is more than lead generation though. It also has to do with lapse buyers and people who abandoned your marketing without buying. If you can capture and use THAT data… you are in the right place.
Manon Leroux
Interesting point you are making and this brings me to all of the people/companies that are going on about how social media is a wast of time and money…well at least you can put measurable to that form of marketing! it makes you wonder…
Gina
As a new marketer, I love this topic. It is something I continuously struggle with, so need advice! If you use a unique URL or phone number, how do you then continue tracking ROI? Just because I receive a certain amount of calls or clicks to the link, that does not show the amount profit. If our sales team asks, "how did you hear about," the internet is not an adequate enough response.
PJ Christie
I think that somewhere you need to draw a line between web traffic and the sales channel or CRM product. If some leads come from web and some from phone try to standardize your CRM to evaluate effectiveness. Make sure to consider soft factors like quality conversations along with hard factors like number of followers.
Brady Lewis
There's no doubt that tracking results is an oft overlooked part of marketing, especially by inexperienced business owners. It's not the "fun" or "sexy" part of the job. People like to do the creative part like coming up with the tagline, or printing up a sheet of coupons. But they are missing the key ingredient of improving their marketing efforts. Maybe someday people will learn.
Renee Bledsoe
Ditto on what many have said regarding measurement and industry specific planning. In my experience much depends on what you are marketing as to the effectiveness of billboard advertising. In event marketing, for example, driving people to the website through bus bench and bus shelter ads was surprisingly effective in building community buzz. We got to know this because of the unique URL on the ad, as well as the comparison's from the years we did not do it. It didn't hurt that this was a GREAT product…lest we not forget that as marketers. The internet helped bring people in from around the world. Energetically and from a masterminding standpoint, getting that local buzz was key to setting the energy on the whole event. I am a big proponent of creating and executing a well rounded, highly specific to the product/service/industry, marketing PLAN – I don't believe in marketing panacea's even with the wildfire expanses that social media can create. Totally agree that measurement is key to actually finding out what works and what works less….and if resources and time are a factor then this is absolutely must have intel.