In
Part 3 of our discussion about “Money” we began to dig into marketing. We
listed the three items below and will add another today which is social media.
- Print Ads
- Direct Mail
- Referrals or Word-of-Mouth
- Social Media
We
looked at Print Ads and as we posted before we are going to keep going so you
can get a real education as to what is going on and how to make all of these
work for you.
Taking
a cynical look at print ads will help us use our money, our time and our
creative juices properly and most efficiently. There is a saying about most
print ads that gives them another name and that name is “tombstone ads.” Why?
Because most of them are dead!
How
can we say they are dead with all of the advertising that takes place around
the world? All you need to do to verify this is to look at most of the
newspapers in the world and you will see that most of them are struggling. They
are under tremendous financial pressure because people have moved away from
them to do their advertising. If these ads worked really well most people would
stay with them but they don’t because generally they do not give the return
those running the ads need.
Think
about this, it costs an advertiser tens of thousands of dollars to run a large ad
in a large national paper. If that ad pulls more than the cost of the ad in
profit dollars, they would keep running the ad. But if it doesn’t pull in more
than the cost of the ad, the cost of production, the product costs they are
selling, etc., why would you keep running the ad? They stop the ad and that
stops the money rolling into the newspaper’s bank account.
Many
businesses small and large go to ad agencies for help to create a really cool
ad that will get people’s attention (we are all for this provided you can
verify certain things that are discussed below). This costs a large amount of
money with no guarantees. Now you run the ad and everyone sees it and the ad
agency you contracted wins an Addy award. What is an Addy award? Great
question!
An
Addy is an award given to the agency that produces a really cool ad, maybe one
that is different or edgy or something else. Now the ad agency let’s everyone
know they won it because it is great advertising. Businesses flock to that kind
of thing because they must be an awesome agency because they won the award.
Maybe, maybe not.
The
real question should be; how much money did the ad generate for the business
that asked for help and ran the ad? If the ad made more money than the cost of
the ad, the cost of the agencies fees, the cost of the product, the cost of the
media that ran the ad, etc., then it was a great ad. However, generally this
doesn’t happen, what did happen was that you financed an agency to win an award
that they are going to go out and make more money with while you are left with
a big hole in your bank account.
What
is the moral of this story? If you are going to run print ads (and I am not
saying not to), you need to have a specific set of goals, a plan to get you
where you want to go. You also want to ask the right questions of any agency
that you are going to contract with to make sure you are getting what you want
out of the ad campaign.
Questions
like:
- How much revenue did your
last 5 campaigns generate?
- Was it above or below what
your client was looking for?
- Did it make money for your
client?
- Was it profitable for the
client?
- Did they hire you to run
another campaign?
- May I speak with them?
These
are extremely important questions that you need to have answered before you
sign on the dotted line. Get the answers, dig deep and stay motivated – you can
do this.
Until
then, subscribe to our different sites and start to get a world-class education
that is far and away better than anything you will get in any school. Why?
Because this really works, no theory, no psycho-babble, just real, hard-learned
knowledge that will launch your business!
Important:
If you know one
person that would really benefit and could change their circumstances with this
information; be their hero and share this post with them right now!
If you would
like help with this or any other business, sales, marketing, social media
issues and more, contact us at:
Or leave us a
comment below!
Until our next
post – we wish you all success!
Dean Marchese
The
Dean of Success! ©
