Top Marketing Speaker Says New Media Not Nirvana For Marketers…
So here I am, blogging… using the new media.
But it’s no secret to anyone that I am not ga-ga over the new, digital media.
Look, I was one of the first people to get involved with the internet as enterprise, back in the 90’s, when my partners and I started one of the first-ever internet malls. We were pioneers, and we had some notable successes. But I was amazed at how fast it fizzled, in favor of the next digital marketing craze, and then the next, and the next and the next.
Two industry reports have recently crossed my desk that are actually quite revealing.
The first came from Chief Marketer, an online publication of Penton Media and MeritDirect. It’s called Lead Generation in Business-to-Business Marketing 2010 – Attitudes, Aims and Outlook.
All the questions related to media usage in the report of this survey of marketing managers, indicate a high degree of concentration on email and social media. Almost 92% said they’d be using email and over 97% said they’d be using social media, for prospecting purposes.
Digital marketing is clearly “all the rage,” and it looks on the surface like everybody in the know is turning to these digital solutions in droves. Nobody wants to be left out. In fact, the swell is so pervasive, that it appears managers, owners and exec committee decision makers almost feel guilty if they don’t buy in to the internet media craze.
But could it be that this Emperor has no clothes? Nowhere did the report talk about historical results from these efforts last year, or ever. I understand the concept of “early adopters,” but 97% early adopters? I think there are more “when in Rome-ers” than actual “Romans” in this case.
That’s not to suggest these web 2.0 media are all that new either. Some have been around for quite a relative while. But they remain unproven, at least as a direct route to sales.
What’s more is the irony that the more people who jump on the digital media bandwagon, the tougher it becomes for these new horses to pull anyone. The faster we head down the new media road, the faster it will become less effective. Just too crowded.
Witness the second report I alluded to earlier. This one from The Direct Marketing Association, entitled Paid Searches Used To Drive Web Traffic Over Sales: DMA Study
Here are some of this report’s findings, based on actual 2009 marketing campaign results…
- E-mail to a house list averaged a 19.47% open rate; a 6.64% click-through rate; a 1.73% conversion rate; with a bounce-back rate of 3.72% and an unsubscribe rate of 0.77%.
- Response rates for direct mail have held steady over the past four years. Letter-sized envelopes, for instance, had a response rate this year of 3.42% for a house list and 1.38% for a prospect list.
- Catalogs had the lowest cost per lead/order of $47.61, just ahead of inserts at $47.69, e-mail at $53.85, and postcards $75.32.
- Outbound telemarketing to prospects had the highest cost per order or lead of $309.25, but it also had the highest response rate from prospects of 6.16%. The highest response rate for a house list was also telephone, at 10.41%.
- Paid search had an average cost per click of $3.79, with a 3.81% conversion rate. The conversion rate (after click) of internet display advertisements was slightly higher at 4.43%.
As you can see, digital marketing techniques really amount to just another medium. Their over all performances are really on par with traditional media, but certainly not exceptional, in responsiveness or in cost per lead or sale. And the time, energy and resources they require to execute are typically well beyond the cost of the “analog” marketing techniques your daddy grew up with. Which begs the question, “Is it worth it?”
Among the report’s conclusions… “Marketers are managing their expectations when it comes to paid search. Nearly half say their primary goal in paying for a paid search campaign is driving traffic to their Web sites, but only three in 10 list generating a direct sale from the click as their principal desired outcome…
“…5% attempt to lure surfers to sign up for a free trial. Getting surfers to sign up for offers, or subscribe to free e-newsletters or consent to receive sales information was cited by 3% each. Another 2% wanted to drive retail traffic, and 5% listed other goals.
“Marketers still view traditional media channels as most likely to drive direct sales. Fifty-five percent expect to close a deal when using a telemarketing campaign, while half anticipate direct mail campaigns to yield sales.”
So the bar is set pretty low for digital media when it comes to generating profitable results, while what we expect from more traditional marketing remains quite high.
You could call it “The Obama Effect” where the new kid on the block is getting all kinds of slack, with few people willing to point out the Emperor’s underwear. (Oh, but if all media were held to the same low standards we’re asking of the new meida.)
Conclusion: Mob psychology is at work with the new media. These people feel some twisted obligation to be involved with the new media now, because “everybody’s doing it.” Sure, they’re cheap. But if they don’t work, what good are they at any price? Yet many companies are devoting whole departments to them. Personally, while I feel guilty about my own miniscule presence in these categories, I don’t believe they’ll ever be the marketing panacea many expect them to be. I’d stay away for the most part. And if you’re going to play, just understand, up-front, you’re going to have to pay.
I suggest you RUN, don’t walk, away from the new media for now. Let others prove their reliability with their money. Now is the time to stick to media that has a proven track record of helping you sell.
THE END
Marketing Speaker Asks What Makes Your Different (Video)
You’ve not only got to know what makes you different, you need to be able to articulate that difference in a clear, concise, consistent and compelling way. I call this your UNIQUE PURCHASE APPEAL and it’s the most powerful marketing principle on the planet…
Look for more information on how to effectively implement this strategy to send your sales curve stratospheric!
Marketing Speaker Shares 9 Rules of Direct Response Marketing
If you put these 9 rules to use in your marketing efforts on a consistent basis, I promise an overall increase in response. And response to any given project may skyrocket!
Marketing Speaker Asks… What Do You Do & How Are You Different?
I walked into a networking meeting this morning and encountered two individuals from an advertising agency and one independent marketing consultant.
Of course, they were at least potential competitors… and perhaps collaborators, so I was anxious to find out about them. But neither could tell me what they do and why I should choose them instead of their competitors.
These people were at a networking event. Their goal was to meet people with whom they might be able to do business.
But on the very most basic issues of what do you do and what makes you different, neither of these “entities” had their story straight.
Don’t you think they could anticipate the questions “What do you do and what makes you different from others who claim to do the same thing?”
What about you? Don’t you know the basic questions people are going to have on their minds about your business, whether they ever ask the questions or not?
Do you have the answers? Can you deliver those answers quickly, concisely, convincingly, every time?
We’re in a very competitive market. People have options when it comes to buying whatever you sell. You know both your products and your expertise are superior. But does your public? How are you going to let them know?
Contrast the encounter I had with the guys in my story above, with my meeting with a prospective client earlier in the week.
I walked into the appointment and the first words out of the prospect’s mouth were, “I’ve had a marketing consultant in the past and an agency. In fact, I’m terminating a relationship with my current agency. What makes you different from all the other agencies and consultants out there?”
I do believe I shocked the pants off of him, simply because I actually had an answer…
“We work with all three ways to grow your business, Rich. Bringing in more customers, increasing your average transaction, and getting existing customers to buy more often.
“What makes us really different is that we focus on measurable results. We believe everything you do in marketing should be measurable, trackable and be targeted to get a response.”
Halfway through, his head was nodding in agreement. He knew we were different.
We had a meaningful answer to his question, not just platitudinous hyperbole.
He was already sold!
The rest of the meeting was hashing out details. We walked out of that first-ever meeting with that decision-maker, less than an hour later, with a signed agreement in hand, which could bring us upwards of $80,000.00 this year.
That outcome wouldn’t have — couldn’t have — come about had we walked into that meeting unprepared for the most predictable and relevant questions that guy could possibly have had on his mind… whether he ever actually asked these questions or not…
What do you do? And… How are you different? You should know the answers to these questions and be prepared to deliver them at the drop of a hat. In fact, you should be delivering them before the hat drops.
Be prepared to answer these questions in every ad you run.
Predictability in every aspect of selling.
Selling is like the weather. Prospects are either “unseasonably warm”, “unseasonably cold”, or “normal”.
And if those are the only three possible circumstances, you certainly should be able to prepare for all three contingencies.
I’m tempted to assume that your process includes a scripted presentation. But as I’m thinking about it, I realize that it probably doesn’t, as a matter of fact.
It blows my mind that most sales processes are shockingly random.
But I would be willing to bet this. Generally, the more seasoned; the more professional; the more consistent; the more successful a salesperson is, the more predictable, routine, scripted and systemized is every aspect of her process.
In fact, I’m willing to bet that even among salespeople who claim they are not predictable and systematic; who claim they don’t use a set process or scripts, we would find, if we analyze their successful sales calls, that they are astonishingly consistent in the things they both say and do in every situation.
Develop a regimented discovery process consisting of a set of specific questions asked a specific way, designed to not only discover what of your products can best serve the prospective client, but also that reveal how that prospective client would best like to be turned into an actual client.
Develop scripted demo and sales presentations, designed to take the prospect through the educational phase, pre-empt most questions and objections by pre-answering, and lead the prospect to the only right decision — to invest in your company’s products or services.
Objections & The Close
In a world of perfect prospects and perfect salespeople, if you engineer your processes well, you won’t get questions or objections. But no salesperson is perfect and prospects are far from it.
And despite this truth, amazingly, for every product or service out there being sold, there are surprisingly few categories of objection or question.
So why not have your responses to any of them scripted?
You should also have a scripted, assumptive, alternate-advance closing question…
Okay Bob, it appears we agree. Here’s the agreement ready for your signature,
and should we take care of the commencement payment now, or would you like to
have it sent to us
Naturally, a closing question like this isn’t going to work every time. There will be questions… there will be objections.
But by the time you’ve given a dozen sales presentations, you will have heard just about every objection or question they’re ever going to throw at you.
If you know they’re coming, have the scripted answers ready to deliver.
Finally, carefully track your results. If closing rates drop, change your process. If they go up, you can still change your process carefully, systematically, and always paying attention to the results.
Do this and you’ll be “genetically engineering” your sales procedures for ever-increasing success.
THE END
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Ackerman is a Salt Lake City-based Marketing Coach, Writer and Speaker. His new book, How To Market Your Crap When the Economy is in the Toilet, contains 12 vital strategies for unclogging your revenue pipeline. Find it at www.marketyourcrap.com, or at www.amazon.com. Or email mail@ascendmarketing.com.
Marketing Speaker Claims All Media Is “Opt-in”
A big deal has been made in recent years about “opt-in” media. The argument is that the “old media” – newspaper, radio, TV, magazines, direct mail – are based on the idea of interrupting you. They call it intrusive. They talk about it as if you’re strapped to a chair and you’re forced to view it or read it or listen to it.
By contrast, the new wave is the Internet. You voluntarily “go” to a website to see what it has to offer. You click on a link because you’re already searching for specific information or the solution to a specific problem. You choose your social media. You only receive “tweets” from those you follow and you only get Facebook posts from those you have allowed as friends. All of this is what they call the opt-in media.
But it seems to me the similarities between the old and new media are far greater than their differences. And for the most part, it all boils down to “opt-in.”
Consider television. Since the invention of the remote, the commercials have pretty much been opt-in. You don’t like them, you change the channel. Not practical when you had to get up out of your easy chair and physically turn the dial (unless you had children of dial-changing age). With the advent of the remote, it’s as easy as your computer’s point and click. Maybe easier!
Same thing with radio. Nobody forces you to listen to a specific station or a specific type of programming. Nobody makes you stay station stable and listen to ads if you don’t want to. Push button presets on your radio give you options. Options, I might add, that you have preprogrammed in to match your specific tastes. Yes, the commercials “interrupt” the programming, but you do have options at your fingertips, just like the Internet.
Direct mail is often criticized as the ultimate interruptive medium. I don’t see it that way. In fact, I see it as one of the ultimate opt-in media. Yes, you get a pile of solicitations in your mailbox every day, but nobody is forcing you to open or read any of them. You thumb through the pile, open (or opt-in) the ones that interest you and trash the rest.
Email is exactly the same. Only you’re inundated with far more “junk email” than snail mail could ever deliver. They don’t make physical mailboxes that big. And don’t kid yourself. A lot of that junk email comes from sources you have opted-in, or asked for. You’re just like me. You get a lot of email from sources you’ve asked to receive information from, but you still trash it without even looking at it. There’s just too much!
The new social media is the same. Your network of friends and followers grows like a weed. But the way it works, you really don’t know probably half the people whose posts show up on your Facebook wall. And even among the ones you know, all the silly invitations to play a game or choose a personality or even discover that Sally Jones is headed for the hairdresser. I’m telling you, that stuff is far more interruptive and annoying than any TV commercial or snail mail envelope, if you ask me. (Or if you ask my wife. She is the most social animal I know and even she has said it’s a terrible waste of time and she’s given it up.) What obnoxious energy-suckers!
“Sure Jim, but what about search? That’s strictly opt-in.”
So what? Nothing new about it. So are the Yellow Pages. Only in the Yellow Pages, I may have a choice between a handful and a couple dozen vendor ads to evaluate and choose from. With search, I actually become overwhelmed by the choices. There are typically dozens to thousands of choices for even the most obscure categories.
And unlike the Yellow Pages, where I can quickly thumb throughout a collection of ads which typically, quickly tell me what the business does, on the Internet, I have to click on one link at a time, which takes me to a comprehensive website that often does NOT tell me quickly and concisely what I can expect from a company. I have to delve in to find the kind of info I want. Then, to check out another option, I have to back out to the search page again, click on the next link and go though the whole process again. I don’t call that efficient.
If you’ve read my recent piece on the death of the Yellow Pages, this may appear to be a contradiction. It’s not. The Yellow Pages are dead. The process has shifted to the net. This is an irrefutable and irreversible fact. And I’m not saying it’s bad.
All I’m saying is, the net is not the panacea it is made out to be. It is not easy. It is not convenient. It is not all it’s cracked up to be. And it’s “opt-in” nature does not necessarily make it better.
I’m not saying Facebook, Twitter, email and websites don’t have their place. I’m not even claiming they’re not the way of the future. They do and they are. But be realistic about what it is going to take to use the new media to make money. You’re still going to have to work at it. You’re still going to have to spend money on it. You’re still going to have to learn the ropes, and you’re going to have to keep learning them because the ropes have a nasty habit of changing on the Internet.
Yes, you must opt-in to marketing online. But it’s not an either/or game. Opting-in to online marketing does not mean opting-out of the traditional media. My bet is you’ll need to master both, to keep your customers opting-in to your business.
THE END
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Ackerman is a Salt Lake City-based Marketing Speaker, Advertising Speaker, Marketing Coach, Sales Trainer, and Writer. His new book, How To Market Your Crap When the Economy is in the Toilet, contains 12 vital strategies for unclogging your revenue pipeline. Find it at www.marketyourcrap.com. Or email mail@ascendmarketing.com for info on local search optimization.
Marketing Speaker Proclaims Historical First… The Death of a Medium
This is the first obituary I’ve ever written. I’m reporting on the death of an advertising medium.
Granted, I’m a bit premature. The patient is technically still alive, but in a coma. The ailment is terminal. Death will come too slowly for some, too soon for others, but it will come.
I refer to the eminent doom of the YELLOW PAGES.
I’m saying it’s game over. Stick a fork in ‘em. They’re done.
I haven’t used them for years. And neither have the people I talk to regularly. Recently, I’ve begun asking random people I run into out in public. They’re not using the Yellow Pages either.
All of this is just anecdotal, of course. Still, I’m not the first one to suggest the demise of the yellow pages. I may be the first to say it’s a done deal NOW.
Do a Google search on “decline of yellow page usage” or anything like it. I got 30,500 items.
You can quote Bill Gates himself in a 2007 article from the Seattle Sun Times (Which, ironically, has itself stopped hard copy publishing since the Gates article, and is now strictly an online publictation. Something else Gates predicted for the newspaper world.)
“The traditional Yellow Pages are doomed, as voice-activated Internet searches combined with on-screen interfaces on smart mobile devices get better and proliferate.
“When you say something like ‘plumber’the presentation you get will be far better than what you get in the Yellow Pages,” Gates said. “After all, we know your location and so we can cluster [results] around that. … Yellow Page usage amongst people in their, say below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.”
Another 2007 online article by Chris Silver Smith predicts that the Yellow Pages will be “toast” in four years. But that was going on three years ago now. Said he, “Local marketing industry savants have long been predicting the demise of print Yellow Pages books, going the way of the buggy whip due to overwhelming competition from Internet alternatives. Further, the aggressive invasion of search engines into the local space during the past few years has inspired some analysts to wonder if Internet Yellow Pages directories might also be headed for extinction along with the printed books.”
Yes, I occasionally use dexknows.com, for example, but not as often as I once did. Not necessary anymore, when a direct Google search gets me the same or better information, more directly.
And then there is the more militant position reflected in the headline of a post from Killian and Company…
“Why Are the Yellow Pages like Nursing Homes?
They’re shockingly expensive, few people under 70 use them,
and many who do are just a little out of it.”
The cynicism may be justifiable. For decades Yellow Page publishers and their armies of sales reps have been pillaging the business landscape. (Hence my earlier statement that for some the death of this medium is too slow in coming.) They have sucked as much money as possible out of every business possible, large or small, regardless of whether the ads were in the best interest of the company paying the bill or not.
In the plumbing and heating category as just one example, I have known companies to take out as many as six full pages. That’s three double trucks! The cost can be upwards of 50 or 60 THOUSAND dollars a month in some markets. And it’s not like they’re good ads. They’re the same ads the company used to put on a single full-page or a single double truck, but with the message spread over the six pages, maybe with bigger type.
Now the first such company to do something stupid like this may just be company greed. They do it to insure themselves first position in the book. But then the YP bloodsuckers start strong-arming everybody else in the category to pony up the same kind of money, so they can keep up with the Joneses.
Foolish of them to comply, yes. But you have to question the ethics of the Yellow Page companies and their salespeople.
Quoting again from the Killian piece…
“It’s an addiction, and fear of withdrawal is what keeps the Yellow Pages on life support. All the fear tactics of “combined rates” and “volume discounts” and implied threats to banish you to a “bad position” if advertisers reduce the size of ads miss the point: they are all bad positions – overpriced, underperforming, and outdated.”
As recently as six months ago, I wouldn’t have said what I am about to say…
Most companies should get out of the Yellow Pages and
redirect those marketing dollars to Search Engine Optimization.
You may elect to wean yourself from the YP habit slowly. And when I say that, I mean take two or three years to drop back to a minimal position, if you’ve occupied a major presence in the past. Get out of books that aren’t performing immediately and cut back in the others.
If you haven’t been a big YP player, by all means, don’t be afraid to quit cold turkey.
There’s a part of me that hates to see the Yellow Pages go. A part of me that hates to see the demise of any business, any ad medium. But there’s also the part that says it couldn’t happen to a better bunch.
Meanwhile, for those of us who must market on. Your prospects are still looking for you. But now they’re doing it online.
Please understand, I’m not reversing my earlier position that too many businesses spend too much time trying to make the Internet work. I’m merely acknowledging the reality that the search process that used to be the Yellow Pages has moved almost entirely online. So you have to be there if your business is search dependent. Get a website and get “a guy” – outsourced or in-house – to handle the SEO. And do it NOW!
THE END
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Ackerman is a Salt Lake City-based Marketing Coach, Marketing Speaker, Advertising Speaker, Sales Trainer, Business Columnist and Business Writer. His new book, How To Market Your Crap When the Economy is in the Toilet, contains 12 vital strategies for unclogging your revenue pipeline. Find it at www.marketyourcrap.com, where you can also register for a FREE 2-hour seminar by the same name. Or email mail@ascendmarketing.com for info on local search optimization.
Be True To Your Numbers For a Prosperous 2010
Welcome to 2010.
Yup… we’re still in a recession and I don’t think it’ll end this year. In fact, I’m of the school that thinks it may get worse.
Now one caveat to that prediction. It is an election year and I think the odds are pretty good that the politicians will do things to keep it from getting worse, at least until after the election… if they can. And whether they can or not is very much up for debate.
Fact is, they’ve screwed things up so much, they may not be able to stave off heightened economic problems until next Christmas.
But hey, regardless of the economy, you still have a business to run, right? I mean, if you’re looking for an excuse to fail, you’ve got plenty.
But if you’re committed to prosperity with no excuses, even this economy offers opportunity.
How? Because most of your competitors will be buying into the trouble and excuses, leaving you to scoop up the abandoned market share they’re leaving to you as they fold, or stop marketing and advertising.
So here is what I suggest…
1. Make a commitment to SALES and SELLING this year.
Remember, marketing (and sales) is the engine that drives your business. Got a business problem? Sell your way out. Strong sales is your best safety mechanism for whatever ails your enterprise. You can have perfect management and accounting systems in your business, but they give you NO margin for error if you don’t have the revenue. On the other hand, if you have strong sales, and a strong sales and marketing system that produces predictable results, you’ll have flexibility enough to either live with less than perfect management and accounting system, or to get them fixed.
I’m not saying management and accounting aren’t vitally important. I’m saying you need revenue first, and that comes from sales and marketing.
2. Pay attention to the vital numbers.
In my business, I have a sales scorecard on which I set sales and sales activity goals every week, and carefully track those results.
Here are the things I look at…
* Sales goal in dollars for the week
* Goal for number of attempts at contact. (I simply call it attempts)
* Goal for actual contacts made
* Goal for mail/email/faxes sent
* Goal for meetings
* Goal for closings
You may have somewhat different metrics to track, but believe me, you need to identify and track performance in several marketing-related areas and faithfully track them day by day.
And by the way, whatever you call them, your metrics probably need to come down to how many people are you trying to reach, how many are you successfully reaching and what level of successful outcome are you achieving.
A note about being true to your numbers…
Of the metrics I described, you only have complete control over two…
* Number of attempts
* Number of mail/email/faxes sent.
Here is the most vital point. If you pay attention to, and make sure you hit your numbers in the metrics you have control over, the odds of hitting your numbers in all the rest of your metrics go up dramatically.
WARNING:
You may start out paying attention to your numbers. But sometime during the year, you’re likely to get sidetracked. Don’t give in to the distractions. Don’t feel guilty if you have a couple of lapse weeks. Get back in there and respect those numbers.
You do that, and you may find 2010 to be your most prosperous year ever, as you clobber the competition.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Ackerman is a marketing speaker, advertising speaker, sales trainer, marketing coach, author and publisher. He is founder of The Marketing Wizards Alliance.
Shift to the Paradigm of “Attract & Accept”
Could it be time to stop worrying about prospecting and sales, and shift to the concepts of attracting and accepting new customers, clients or patients?
Today let’s talk about what my friend, nationally renowned speaker and former Miss Utah, Kathy Loveless, calls “the Woo Woo stuff.”
Kathy’s talking about the mysteries of the universe… the intangibles… the subtle shifts in thought, attitude and practice that seemingly tap unseen powers and can almost magically, inexplicably transform your life. She’s talking about applying these etherial principles to any aspect of life, including business.
The movie “The Secret”, and its companion book by the same name, have been all the rage in pop culture circles for the last year or more. Oprah has devoted at least two full programs to the subject, and the proponents who were featured in the movie have been making guest appearances all over national television and radio, talking about this phenomenal movie, the principles it espouses and the impact it is or isn’t having.
The premise of the movie is what is called “the law of attraction.” The idea is that whatever we think about, focus on, and believe in, will come to pass, and that this law of attraction is immutable and always at work in our lives, whether we believe it or not, whether we try to actively use it or not, whether we are attracting positive or negative things to ourselves.
The nay-sayers pass it off as mere “positive thinking” and they say it’s dangerous because it leads the uninformed to believe they can simply “think” their way to successful lives.
Look, I’m no expert on this subject, but I can tell you this. The principles talked about in The Secret, are nothing new. Neither the producers of this program, nor the proponents featured in it, invented this theory. In recent years Anthony Robbins has essentially taught the same principles. But the same ideas were put forth decades ago by Napoleon Hill in his classic book, Think And Grow Rich, when he said, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
Hill’s tome has been a classic best-seller ever since, and for so long that the copyright has run out and the book is now part of the public domain.
But Napoleon Hill didn’t “think this stuff up” either. These principles have been written about for hundreds, even thousands of years. In Proverbs 23, verse seven, in the Bible, it reads, “For as a man thinketh, so is he.”
Common wisdom interprets this to mean your collective beliefs and attitudes make up your character. And it could well be argued that this is true. What’s lacking in this interpretation is the element of autonomy. The suggestion that you can CHOOSE what you think, what you believe and your attitude toward those things, as well as your attitude toward what happens to you.
But even this is inadequate to explain the phenomenon of “attraction.” The law of attraction takes it another step. It suggests that you can more than choose from a menu of thoughts and emotions. It suggest you can actually “engineer” your life, through the pro-active selection of thoughts, beliefs, emotions and attitudes.
And, I submit, your business too… particularly your prospecting and sales.
Cogitate on this for a while. I’ll share with you my experience with it in my next post.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Ackerman is a Salt Lake City-based Marketing Speaker, Advertising Speaker, Marketing Coach, and Writer whose new book is titled How To Market Your Crap When The Economy Is In The Toilet… 12 Vital Strategies for Unclogging the American Economy, One Business at a Time. For a link to The Secret website, go to www.ascendmarketing.com and click on the banner in the upper right corner of the page.
Direct Response Trumping Image Marketing says Marketing Speaker, Jim Ackerman
“It’s not creative unless it sells.”
So said advertising great Leo Burnnett.
But for a long, long time now, this staple axiom of advertising has been ignored by the brand-builders. They can’t do it any longer. And they’re obviously, finally, getting the message.
The premise of the brand-builders has been that while results can’t be measured in terms of specific actions taken as a result of the ads, the over all impact on awareness – specifically “Top Of Mine Awareness” or TOMA, will eventually, someday, whenever the prospect is ready, hopefully, maybe, lead to a sale, or at least to the prospect having a favorable impression of the business or product.
Let me ask you, if you’re a stockholder, what is it you want? SALES! That’s what you want. It’s SALES that bring revenues and profits to the business. It is SALES that result in growth in the value of your stock and generate a positive return on your investment.
Isn’t it time that advertising gets back to doing what it has always been meant to do… sell the product?
Regardless of your answer, it appears the consensus is turning in that direction, from the board room to the corner cubicle; from the penthouse to the home office.
Yes, it appears that Leo Burnett’s definition of “creative” is taking root – or re-root – and the direct result of direct marketing is at last re-emerging as the matric of meaning for all kinds of businesses.
More good news from the Direct Magazine article I referenced in my last post… Investments in direct marketing are apparently having increasingly good returns.
“A dollar invested this year in a direct marketing ad is expended to return $11.65 in incremental revenue across all industries, according to the DMA. This is up from $11.61 in 2008… It does not mean that direct marketers should expect more than an 11-to-1 return on their investments. As DMA research manager Yoram Wurmser stressed during a presentation, these benefits are calculated across all parties affected by a DM-generated sale – fulfillment houses, shippers, contact center workers as well as the marketers themselves.”
The point is, of course, direct response marketing is the best way to build sales, revenue, profits, wealth, and, incidentally, BRAND!
Time to get on with it…
If you’re still wallowing in the “build brand first” paradigm… if the recession hasn’t yet slapped you hard enough to shake you out of this counter-productive thinking, it is time – no, far past time – for you to release this never-true, outdated, costly mindset, and to embrace the idea that the best way to build brand is to acquire tons of happy, buying customers.
All of your sales, marketing and advertising efforts must do four things… 1)attract attention, 2)convert that attention into interest, 3)cultivate wonton desire for your product or service, and 4)get that prospect to take action; get that prospect to either buy or take the next step in the buying process.
This is what marketing and advertising is, and always has been, meant to do. As you embrace the new, old direct response paradigm, you’ll build your brand the right way… on the solid foundation of sales.
Welcome to the rise of the new Direct Marketing Era.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Ackerman is a Salt Lake City-based Marketing Speaker, Advertising Speaker, Marketing Coach, Columnist & Author. His new book, How To Market Your Crap When the Economy is in the Toilet, contains 12 vital strategies for unclogging the American economy, one business at a time. For details go to www.marketyourcrap.com. To find out about Jim’s services as a Marketing Speaker or Advertising Speaker, go to www.marketingspeakerjimackerman.com. And to find out more about Jim’s service as a Marketing Coach, including his 400% ROI GUARANTEE, go to www.pcmcoach.com.
Marketing Speaker Predicts The Rise of the Direct Marketing Era
According to an October 20th, Direct Magazine article by Richard H. Levey, total ad spending dropped to $275 billion from $319 billion. That’s an 11.2% drop in spending, for those keeping score. But direct marketing’s slice of the total ad spending pie got larger this year, increasing from 52.7% of all ad spending to 54.3%.
The Direct Magazine article goes on to say that most ad sales channels will see declines in 2009 from 2008’s.
The notable exceptions are e-mail marketing, search, and the young, “mobile marketing” channel. (The article speculates that, “…even the much-buzzed-about social networking medium is expected to see a falloff in expenditures this year.”)
I’m gratified, both by the timing of the article and the implications of its content. The piece came out about 20 days after I wrote a column suggesting the end of the branding era. (A column that offended some and dismayed many more, I might add.) In my travels as a marketing speaker and advertising speaker, I see two aspects of the statistics that support my hypothesis regarding branding…
First, direct marketing’s piece of the pie was already above 50% of all ad spending and second, direct marketing’s piece of that pie is on the rise.
For most of the recent past, direct response marketing has been the ugly step-sister to brand building. Indeed, as I predicted in the previous column, branding will die a very slow death because so many “creatives” see it as the fun part of marketing. That’s where they get to spend copious amounts of advertising dollars to indulge their desires to be entertainers instead of salespeople.
Trouble is, the available dollars for such indulgences are copious no more. They simply aren’t there. The pleasure of blowing through near-bottomless wells of financial resources in the creation of cute, clever, or even uproariously funny, worldwide location-produced and special effects-laden television ads, which made no offers nor demanded no accountability for results at the bottom line, appears to have passed into the annals of marketing history like the steroid era has in sports. That is to say, it is largely gone, but not entirely, yet. It will raise its ugly head from time to time, for the foreseeable future.
But now “the suits” are finding the stockholders are holding their Cole Haans to the fire. The bottom line is re-emerging as the number one criteria upon which success in marketing is measured.
Long overdue in my humble, but most correct opinion. And I’ll go into it in more detail in my next contribution.
THE BEGINNING…
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Ackerman is a Salt Lake City-based Marketing Speaker, Advertising Speaker, Marketing Coach, Columnist & Author. His new book, How To Market Your Crap When the Economy is in the Toilet, contains 12 vital strategies for unclogging the American economy, one business at a time. For details go to www.marketyourcrap.com.
