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?