Ad Talk 101 Blog

A recent article in Ad Age, Ad Industry Battles Back Against Bad Rep, Forms Ethics Institute, really made me laugh. The very formation of this “Institute� by the American Advertising Federation (AAF) which is the Advertising Industry’s primary trade organization founded in 1905, just reinforces the ethics problems in the advertising industry. They state the reason for this organization is to:

1. Determine what matters to consumers regarding advertising ethics
2. Recognize advertisers who demonstrate high ethical standards
3. Introduce a set of guiding principles for advertising ethics and how to apply them

The reason the AAF is finally showing such concern about the image of the industry is because advertisers are more aware of the problems. Due to the economy, businesses are scrutinizing their expenses more than ever. Advertising, being one of the more begrudging expenses is getting more than its share of scrutiny. Plus, as an intangible product, advertising is ripe for dishonest practitioners.

The first goal as stated above is misleading in itself. They do not define consumer which leads you to believe the concern is over our image with the general public. The consumers of advertising are advertisers, not food shoppers. Sure, we have to convince the public to buy a product, but we are not hired by the public. So who they are really talking about is the advertiser, not the general public.

The second stated goal sounds nice. But all it will do is create some sort of award event. How about creating an internal affairs committee where dishonest advertising people can be exposed to the advertisers, excuse me, the “consumer?�

The third goal is a joke. If advertising people are not being ethical, it isn’t because they don’t know what is ethical. There are some industry specific issues that may need some guidelines like ownership rights and maybe some new issues created by new media such as social marketing. But the real reason for the sudden concern is because advertisers are tired of widespread dishonesty in the advertising industry. I am sorry, but someone finally needs to say it.

In the thirty years I have worked in this industry I have worked hard to gain the trust and confidence of my clients. But in retrospect, I have been part of the problem too. I have seen many, many instances of dishonesty and did not expose it. Why? We like to consider advertising a profession. As a profession, it is considered unprofessional to knock, or sound like you are knocking others in the profession. We also had to work with some of the less professional people in the industry. So as a practical matter we had to get along. As a result, I have looked the other way in order get the job done as best I could for my clients and not to appear unprofessional.

Today it is a new world where the advertiser is less likely to automatically assume you are just knocking the competition. That may be because advertisers today have become more aware as they scrutinize their advertising and make their advertising suppliers become more accountable.
If you’ve followed our blogs, you know we have talked about questionably ethical practices in our industry before. It is too bad the AAF can’t find a way to make it professionally acceptable and practical to expose unethical practitioners.

Running an advertising agency in Central PA and selling advertising for 30 years I have seen it from all angles. One of the main reasons for this site is to educate advertisers which include exposing unethical practices. If you would like to discuss this subject further, please leave a comment below or feel free to contact me.

As you know when a new electronic product hits the market the price drops dramatically over time. That day has come with web site design. In the early days of the Internet, when there was a huge demand for web site design and few highly skilled web designers, the cost of a web site development could cost many thousands just for a relatively basic site.

Today there are millions of highly skilled web designers worldwide. The reliability and availability of broadband Internet now makes it easy for these designers to sell their services around the world. In addition pre-designed templates make it much easier and faster to design exciting looking webs sites quickly. This makes it possible today to purchase powerful and dazzling sites for a fraction of what they would have cost just a few years ago. In addition, many of the new platforms such as Joomla, Word Press and Drupal make it possible for people with little more than the ability to use a word processing program to maintain their own sites.

If you are contracting a new web site or redesign you should know the basic structures of sites can be purchased templates from designers in India, China or Russia and cost less than a hundred dollars. A design from Word Press is free. It takes very little time to fill these templates with text, pictures and graphics. Make sure you are not paying thousands for a web site that claims to be made from scratch but instead are downloaded templates off the Internet.

There are some sites that could take a great deal of time to build, even using these pre-designed templates if a large amount of data needs to be filled in. But in most cases, a skilled designer can build a beautiful site with the technology available today quickly. So we recommend you negotiate the price on any site you buy today based on the time it will take to build the site. Then, make sure you have the option to maintain the site yourself so you are not held hostage by the web designer every time you need something updated. We recommend updating all the time! To see a Joomla template go to www.beavertownhistoricalsociety.org to see a template made with word press go to www.isaacgolding.com.

If the audience is not interested in what you are selling it doesn’t matter how many people can see or hear your ad. This fact seems obvious, but when it comes to mass media advertising (radio, TV, newspaper, billboard), many advertisers really miss the mark. It takes extra effort to make your ad relevant, but in this economy you need every advantage you can get. So don’t be lazy and just run generic advertising in the name of “branding.� Often, that is an excuse to avoid the time and effort it takes to come up with the right offer or copy that could make the difference in getting the attention of your prospective customers. Media sometimes promotes generic ads as branding because it takes less time and effort for them. Advertisers must make a better effort to work with their media reps and/or agencies to create ads that both brand and sell.

You may have heard of something called search engine optimization. Type the words “relevant advertising� into a search engine on the Internet and you will quickly see the key to getting your site to appear first when browsing through the use of search engines is to make your site relevant to what people are searching for. You will also see the key to converting people into customers on the Internet depends on how relevant your site is to what the person browsing is shopping for. The same concerns pertain to mass media advertising.

Before the Internet, advertisers assumed the number of impressions equaled the number of people seeing or hearing their ads. Not true. The fact is only a small portion of the audience, whether its radio, TV or some other media actually noticed your ad. An even smaller number may actually spend significant time listening or looking at your ad depending on their interest in what you were advertising.

The fact is if you expect to reach everyone with any form of mass media, it will not happen. Only the people interested in what you are advertising will pay any attention, and only people extremely interested will pay close attention. So be realistic with your expectations and try to use a media that best targets people who would be most interested in your ad. Then, try to imagine what most of the people you are reaching on that medium will be thinking about at the time you will be reaching them and make your ad as relevant to what they are thinking at the time.

If you’re in business, you know the economy has forced many businesses to cut expenses. Many of the business people I call on in Central and South Eastern Pennsylvania have few expenses they can cut but very often one of them is their advertising.

I have always suggested that if you stop advertising, you would not necessarily see much if any change for a while.  This was the case for one of our former clients (2009 blog What if I Stopped Advertising). I talked about his experience where he cut all advertising while changing nothing else in his business.  For the first few months, the client saw no drop in business.  But after almost a year he saw a 42% drop.  So if you need to lower the bottom line, cutting advertising may save you money, at least for a while.

To the advertisers who cut their advertising in 2008, 2009 and plan to continue cutting in 2010 if your business is still off, ask yourself this question. “Is it just the economy or do I need to change my advertising strategy? Good economy or bad, if you received two dollars back for every one you spent, you would not be cutting your advertising… you would be increasing it, right?

A lot of advertisers are starting to try new things.  But before you do, think about your strategy.  If you’ve been in business a while, you know the world has changed.  Unless your business model has changed, cutting advertising alone is probably not much of a strategy.  If you are not trying new ideas to improve efficiency, cutting advertising budgets without loosing market share is unlikely.

Some advertisers blame it on the economy.  For sure they are at least partially right.  But the advertisers loosing the most business right now are the ones that don’t try any new ideas or techniques such as new media.

The basics of advertising are still the same.  The methods are changing.  Top of mind awareness is still just as powerful as it ever was.  But now you have to learn a new way to grow market share using new tools and techniques.

Top of mind awareness (TOMA) equates with market share. (The more top of the mind, the more market share.) This has been proven by Toma Research.  TOMA has surveyed and measured 1300 markets over the past twenty years. Growing and maintaining your market share is critical and businesses should have a strategy of how to be the first name that comes to mind in your business category.

So how do you increase TOMA, and in turn increase market share?  It is a very simple principle.  You need to reach as many people as possible as often as possible.  This is called reach and frequency.  In the following charts you will see how much information people remember as a ratio of their exposure, and how quickly they forget.  This shows frequency of exposure and time between exposures, which are both important considerations.

Note, in order to fully remember a message, it took 80 exposures.  But after two days, only 10% was remembered.  These charts are from studies done in the early 1900’s.  But it is still relevant today.  What has changed is the cost to achieve TOMA using traditional media.  With audiences shrinking as lifestyles move to the Internet and other technologies it has become very inefficient to use many traditional media to build TOMA.

You know the saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.� So start looking for better ways to keep your business on the top of the mind of consumers. Rather you Tweet, Facebook., eblast or embrace any of the technologies you have got to keep your name in front of the consumer.  And if you try to achieve the same results you got 20 years ago without trying some new tools and techniques, you may find your market share dropping along with the economy.

Time to Check The Infrastructure Of Your Marketing Bridge

The Marketing Bridge is a metaphor for the system that bridges the gap between customers and businesses. This metaphoric bridge is supported by pillars represented by many factors needed to hold it up. Some common factors are: advertising, merchandising, the business, price/value proposition, and personnel.

While most businesses know advertising is only a part of their marketing, too often the focus is given just to the advertising while other factors are ignored. This is because advertising is one of the biggest single factors that can affect your marketing.

Recently I observed a local business drive a lot of customers in his door with heavy mass advertising. The advertiser made a good offer and used an effective medium. But after a while business began to slow down even though he continued the same advertising program. The reason was weaknesses in his marketing bridge, causing a loss of repeat business. In this case the weakness was poor service, inconvenient hours, and poor quality and display of product.

It is important to test your advertising. But sometimes the advertising may test your marketing bridge. In general, you could say if the numbers of customers are high and the average sale is low, the advertising is working while other marketing factors are not. At the same time when the numbers of customers are low and the average sale is high, many of the marketing factors may be working but the advertising probably isn’t.

I?ve seen some interesting formulas for determining the strength of your marketing bridge. But I like to do it by determining the following three factors, analyzing them with respect to which of the three factors need improvement and determining what actions to take to make that improvement.

The three factors are:

• Traffic (depending on your type of business this could be foot traffic, phone calls, emails, direct sales calls)
• Average sale per customer
• Closing ratio

By determining these three major factors you can determine the strengths and weaknesses of your bridge. High traffic with low closing ratio could mean your personnel are not performing well or you are drawing the wrong customer. Drawing the wrong customer could be caused by the wrong advertising message or medium, even if the traffic is high. A low average sale could be caused by weak merchandising or salesmanship. A high closing ratio could mean prices are too low or the advertising is targeting well.

If you want to increase sales, figure out how to increase any of these three factors. This will give you an idea of where you may need to work on your marketing bridge.

What are they?
Viral videos are short video clips posted on popular sites like YouTube, Yahoo, or MetaCafe. Typically, their purpose it to inform, entertain, or promote. Done properly a video can do all three.

How It Works
If you’re a business owner you probably have useful knowledge in your respective field. You can impart some of this information in front of a video camera. Rather then doing a commercial, you do an information program. For example, an electrician might show you how to properly find and reset a tripped breaker. The number of views on these types of videos is staggering, sometimes reaching into the hundreds of thousands.

Why It Works
Several factors make viral video a great way to promote your business. One is that people search the internet everyday for tips and product information. Another is the fact that viral videos hit the popular search engines faster than any other content. Yet another reason is that posting a video requires little effort on your part and doesn’t require you to have a fancy website. The editing software that comes with a store-bought video camera will more than suffice for this type of video.

In Closing
Viral video does not require a high production value. Simplicity, steady tripod shots and clear audio provide your viewers with a sense that someone is trying to help them and not sell them. Online videos allow your potential customers to meet you face-to-face before ever stepping through your door or picking up the phone.

The reason many businesses don’t have the means to increase advertising during a recession is a lack of faith in this concept. I see many businesses in Central Pennsylvania making this mistake. It takes a lot of faith, because during the recession you could increase advertising and other marketing efforts and still see negative growth. Experts like Harvard Business School professor John Quelch says “It is well documented, brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at a lower cost than during good economic times.”

• Cross Promote by offering discounts with same customer profiles.
  Bowling Ally & Skating Rink
  RV Dealer & Motorcycle/ATV
  Restaurant & Restaurant (people don’t always eat at the same place)
  Furniture Store & Builder
  Hair Salon & Dress Shop
  Car Dealer & Car Wash
• Creative signage can reach large audiences at a much lower cost than traditional media such as radio, TV or Newspaper. Yard signs, posters hung in businesses and signs on vehicles are just a few ways you can inexpensively reach large audiences.
  • One business here in the Susquehanna Valley covers unusual vehicles with bold, patriotic designs and the name of his business and web site. He then places these vehicles in high traffic locations where he can reach mass audience. Not only are the vehicles hard to miss, people talk about them, generating more exposure through word of mouth. Plus, he can geographically target areas of the market more effectively than with most traditional media. The money he saves on media advertising could quickly pay for the cost of his painted vehicles.
• If you have access to a few hundred feet of road frontage, something like the famous Berma Shave concept, originally used in the 1940’s and 1950’s is still very effective.
• Improve the return on your advertising investment by better targeting your ads. If you are using mass media such as radio, focus your ads. Do not buy an ad schedule to run across all day parts. If most of your prospective customers listen during a particular time of day, buy fixed times so you can reach that specific audience with high frequency.
• If direct mail has always worked for you, consider the alternatives. With current postage rates, it may be cheaper to hire students to walk around and place door hangers. E-blast is a good possible alternative to direct mail also. Plus you can track your e-blast, which may help you improve responses.