Ad Talk 101 Blog

If you’ve been following our blogs, you know our company is always aggressively looking for ways to improve and increase return on our clients’ investments. One of the most exciting new concepts is email marketing. You may have heard success stories from business people using email marketing or advertising companies like ours, who are offering the service. But this month we asked one of our clients to tell of the results he has seen since he began his Internet strategy employing email marketing.

Check out this video of Keith Phelps, General Manager of Country Farm and Home Gift and Garden Center in Mifflinburg, PA:

This is a great time to look seriously at all the new internet technology available and how it can be employed to market your business. If you are doing as much traditional media advertising as you did 10 or even 5 years ago, you are probably wasting a lot of money. The minimum Internet strategy for most businesses today should include the following:

• A good Internet site built by people who understand how to optimize for high rankings on search engines.
• A plan to build an email list of prosective and current customers
• An email marketing plan

Once you have a great website, email list and email marketing (E-Blast) plan, you can take it further by creating a blog page on your site and using social sites such as Twitter and Facebook to bring people to your site and find prospective new customers.

With the current economic downturn and digital initiatives changing all the rules, if you’re not planning your advertising a year ahead, this is the year you should start.

Start with a Review

First, review your advertising from the past year and determine what gave you enough results to consider doing it again.

Rule of thumb: If something is working, keep doing it until it stops!

If you are unable to determine with any certainty what worked, then assume nothing worked and make it a priority to determine how you are going to track your ads in the coming year.

How Can You Track Your Advertising?

There are many ways to track advertising. The accuracy of the tracking will depend on the form of advertising you are doing, the method, and your diligence.

Advertising such as billboards or radio are harder to track than direct mail, digital, and print. It is important to plan how you are going to track your advertising when you are deciding what media you intend to use. If you choose radio or billboard you will need to incorporate creativity to effectively track your results.

Here are some effective ways we have found to track mass media advertising, based on our experience working with advertisers in Central Pennsylvania and beyond:

1. Do a monthly drawing for a prize giveaway each month for at least a year to build data. Offer a prize like dinner for two at a nice restaurant. On the registration include a questioner such as what radio station have you listened to and what newspaper have you read in the past day or two. This is better than asking, “How did you hear about us� because people rarely remember. If over a period of three to six months you see a trend of more mentions for the media you are using, that is a good indication that media is working. This is also a great way to build a mail and email list.

2. Surveying with the right question may be all it takes, but you need to be diligent in asking. Sylvan Learning Center’s national call center asks the question “what made you call us today.� The key word is today. Since most advertising works after the message is delivered numerous times, it is likely the respondent will think back and remember the last time they were exposed to a Sylvan ad.

3. Ask your customers directly if they have seen or heard your ad in the specific media you are using. While some may consider this to be aided questioning, I believe the majority of people will not tell you they saw or heard your ad if they did not. But there is a possibility of the respondent telling you what they think you want to hear. So this method takes some intuition on the part of the surveyor.

4. Coupons are certainly a tried and true method. But consider that when you use coupons you are also testing the strength of the offer and any other part of your over-all marketing strategy. Your ad may reach a large audience but if the coupon is not suited to the product or service and if the audience and product are not well matched then it is likely no offer will get you results.

5. Compare records from one year to the next. Do this over a period of three or four years and you should begin to see trends that can be very good indicators as to the success of your advertising and your marketing plan. Keep daily records of:

a. The number of customers in the store
b. The number of sales
c. Where each customer lives
d. The average amount of each sale each month
e. Weather conditions
f. Competitive business activities
g. Internal operations such as employees off or other special situations

Choose Your Advertising Media

You will need a marketing strategy to help you determine what media to use. The marketing strategy will help determine factors such as the target market demographics, life styles, and geography. Many businesses are moving away from traditional mass media in favor of more targeted digital media. Some advertisers will get so excited about the results they get from advertising methods such as emails they will stop all other forms of advertising. Others will use powerful media such as email in moderation and use a media mix to reach out to new customers as well as targeting their existing customer bases.

Web Sites
One media everyone should use in some form or another is the Internet. Creating a basic web site is relatively cheap and easy to do. Plus it is becoming expected that all businesses have a presence on the Internet beyond a listing on the phone book pages. If a web site is not something your customers would use as a rule, you should still have one just for credibility and basic information.

That being said, your web site may or may not be an integral part of your advertising strategy. This will depend on your business model and how you determine to best attract customers. If your business is based on walk in customers like a quick lube business, your web site may not be a focus of your advertising effort. But if your quick lube offers on-line coupons or you want your customers to make appointments then your web site could then be a very important part of your advertising.

Traditional Media – A Few Things to Consider
Traditional media such as radio, cable, TV, billboard and newspaper are still the primary mass advertising media in Central Pennsylvania. Due to technology, consumer habits are changing. Time spent with traditional media is shrinking and the fractionalization of channels plus intrusive on-demand and digital video recorders are making these medias less attractive to advertisers. While billboard messages are limited, they can target audience geographically, and billboard is the only mass media not losing audience.

To preserve their value and compensate for loss of audience, radio stations in Central Pennsylvania have lowered rates… but buy with caution. Cheap is not always best. Stations package their strength with their weakness and 30 seconds is the new one-minute ad. Remember being creative is very hard to achieve in a small time frame. Some stations are also offering special rates if the advertiser runs at less premium time, so remember when you pay less you get less. The newspapers are also lowering rates, but like radio, you should be aware that low rates may also mean less return.

Rule of Thumb: Assume when media is offering a package, they offer it to solve their inventory problem, not your advertising objective.

New Media – Digital Media
There are many forms of new digital media. The most well know form is the e-blast or email marketing. This is a form of advertising almost any business can use cost effectively. We recommend you use one of the major companies providing e-mail marketing services such as Constant Contact or Mail Chimp. Without any computer skills, these companies make it easy to set up a great looking e-mail to send to your mailing list. Another huge advantage to e-blast is the ability to track. When you use one of the professional e-mail marketing companies they offer ways to see how many people actually click on your e-mails as well as other information. Never send an e-blast without an opt-out option.

Most of the new digital media you are hearing about are NOT MASS MEDIA. E-blasts are targeted marketing. Targeted marketing is always most efficient if you can zero in on your target New media such as social media services Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have not yet proven to be efficient due to the amount of time and effort needed to work the sites. Another new digital concept that has had a lot of notice this past year is text messaging. Again, this concept is still ahead of it’s time because the number of people using text messaging regularly is limited, especially here in Central Pennsylvania. Another problem with texting is it costs the user money. Very few people want to spend money to receive an advertising message. However, in time we believe as the cost comes down and more people adopt this method of communication, texting will become more viable.

There is one other form of new digital media that is actually somewhat of a cross between mass media and targeted media. Digital sign networks have the ability to reach audiences as large or larger than traditional mass media. At the same time digital signage can target audiences by location. This is sometimes referred to as place based advertising. If you want to reach tourists, advertising on a digital sign network located at a tourist destination has proven successful for many advertisers in Central Pennsylvania. Beware of the perception that people do not look at digital signs. This perception is being created by traditional media threatened by digital signage because of its ability to reach large audiences much cheaper. Plus, digital signage has the ability to be very flexible with the ability to program the ads on the video screens across networks instantaneously from one remote location. One other very powerful use of digital signage is at point of sale. It is widely known that point of sale advertising is effective because in most cases the best time to advertise to an audience is as close to the time when they are making purchase decisions. If you are a retailer or even a professional office such as a dentist, seriously consider how digital signage can increase your sales.

Media Mix
This year, we are recommending our clients learn how to utilize the best of all worlds with a media mix of new digital media and traditional media. Traditional mass media is and will probably always be, important to reach new customers. Once customers are developed, targeted media like e-mail comes into play.

How Much Should I Spend On Advertising?

There is no simple answer to this question. A good place to start is by looking at what advertisers in your industry spent last year as an average. You can see this information by downloading this document containing average advertising expenditures by most industries. This information will tell you if you are spending over or under the national average. If you are a new business or launching a new product or service, you will probably need to spend more. If you are established and have a good marketing plan with an efficient advertising program you may be able to spend less.

If you would like to know more about planning an advertising or marketing strategy, or would like a free one hour consultation on the subject, please contact AIM at 1-800-598-5038

As we approach the end of the year and begin planning for next year, many media outlets with packages and enticements will be approaching you for long-term commitments. The word package sounds nice because it sounds like you are getting something special. Packages are often presented as turn key advertising programs designed to make your advertising easier. But in most cases, packages are designed as a way for advertising media to fill unsold inventory and get long-term commitments.

The importance of Gathering Data to Make Media Decisions

The spring radio Arbitron is out! Arbitron is the official rating service of the radio industry. Has any radio station offered to show you the numbers? After all, wouldn’t you like to know what you are paying for? I understand it may not matter if you are sure you’re getting the results you need, but if you want to improve the effectiveness of your advertising, how can you do it without this data?
There was a time when the stations used to run to the advertisers with the new ratings, but they don’t do this anymore. This may be because many stations would have a hard time justifying their rates based on the ratings they are getting today. Demand to see the audience rating before you make that buying decision.

Have you ever seen a report on how many people are watching cable TV in your market? Probably not, especially if you live in the central or upper Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania. The reason is the numbers are so small most advertisers would not pay the rates cable TV is charging. How can you compare the value of cable to any other media without this important information?

Advertisers tell me their cable is working based on the fact that people mention seeing their ad. In most cases the people who see their ads are friends, neighbors and family. These people are more likely to see the ad because they know the advertiser. Even if they are not interested in the advertised message, the ad is relevant to them.

Traditional mass media such as radio and TV have always relied on the ability to reach relatively large audiences for relatively low cost. In the days when you could reach a lot of people cheap, targeting and recall did not matter as much as they now. In this economy smaller audience leaves less tolerance for the X factors.

The Internet solves a lot of these problems. The ability of Internet to track advertising results quickly and decisively makes it possible to target large numbers of very specific prospective customers, which will in turn increase your conversion rates. And, by the way, the Internet does it cheaper.

In conclusion if you’re planning your advertising today… get the facts. If the media is not showing you their ratings, you can be sure they are hiding them for a reason. Finally, plan on using more Internet related solutions where the audiences are growing and you have access to the most important tracking data.

What are they?

E-blasts can be anything from a newsletter to a basic call to action sales offer sent via e-mail to a list you’ve built. E-blasts are not necessarily free. While you could email to large numbers of people using a traditional email program at no charge, we recommend you either purchase a program to help you do your own e-blasts or sign up with a company that lets you use their service on-line. Both options make it easy with step by step instructions and templates. Whether you purchase your own software or use an on-line service, both make it easier to stay compliant with the CAN-SPAM act.

How It Works
You collect emails and build a list by soliciting current or potential customers for their e-mail address. Common ways of doing this is by offering discounts or valuable information via the e-blast. Most e-blast services offer reporting that tells you how many people opened your message and whether they acted upon the links within.

Why It Works
The valuable statistics in the reports allows you to tailor your message for best results and send it to the right people. By profiling your list you can segment it into sub-interest groups, targeting your customers even further. In the end, relevancy is what really makes the message work. You could run ads in front of thousands of people who will never notice it if there is nothing relevant to them. Running the same ad in front of a thousand people interested in the content and most, if not all will notice it.

In Closing
While it takes some up-front work to build an email list and write and design the e-blasts, this is something you should consider. E-blasts can provide immediate responses and results – something that few advertising methods can provide.

Your customers are turning to the internet more for product education and reviews. In this series we’ll show you how to meet them there with these simple, cheap (or free!) methods.

This has been a very rough first quarter for most of the businesses we know. Aim Advertising has had an enormous increase in business owners calling to ask “what can I do to get business in the door when I have very little money to spend?� In our twenty-five plus years of advising clients we have never been out of great ideas for little or no budget advertisers. Here are two of the calls and the free advice we gave them.

Caller 1 - I have a Chinese restaurant and would like to do a direct mail with my menus and try to increase our take out business. What would that cost?

I suggested several different size lists and went over the mailing cost with each. There seemed to be no small list she could afford. I them ask her if she had a list of email clients and she said no so that ruled out an e-blast. Then I asked her is she had a good amount of menus printed and she said she had stacks. I then suggested she walk the streets and put those menus on doors offering free delivery. She asked, can I do that? I said, Obama did. So that is what she did. Several days latter I had a hair appointment at a local establishment and when I walked in all the hairdressers had just ordered Chinese. Their comment was they did not know she would deliver for free. Our office also did not know that. I bet our whole street did not know! I have a feeling her campaign was a great success.

Oh, and one more tip I gave her. Set up a drawing in your restaurant and on a monthly basis give away a dinner for four. Explain all you have to do to win is give us your email address for our e-news letters.

Caller 2 - We are going to have cut your own flowers for a few short months our business is off the beaten path what can we do to advertise.

Again direct mail or radio would have eaten up all her profits for such a seasonal endeavor and setting up at farmers markets or roadside stands was out of the question because of manpower. Our solution was: With the May elections over within a week pick a winning candidate and ask if you can have some of his roadside political signs. He obviously would not need them any more and you would be doing him a favor picking them up. Recover them with laminated posters from Staples and set them out on the three major highways to point customers to your farm.

There are a million ways to advertise just put your head to it and be ready to do a little work. By the way it was a coincident both ideas came from political maneuvers.

Many times in my career I have heard advertisers say “I would like to just stop advertising, period, and see what happens.� But in my 28 years in advertising I never saw an advertiser really put it to the test until this year.

Sometime in September of 2007 one of our agency clients who owns a furniture store agreed to sell his store. The Store Owner continued to advertise at his usual rate of about 8% of sales up until November of that year. Expecting to change hands by the end of the year the Store Owner decided not to advertise for the last six weeks or so. Then, there were delays in the sale due to things like getting a lease signed and various other procedural obstacles. So the Store Owner and the Buyer agreed to an arrangement where the Buyer would work with Store Owner until they can close on the deal.

One thing lead to another and a year later the Store Owner was still operating the store exactly like he did for the previous 15 years at that location. He operated exactly the same except for one thing, the advertising. He didn’t do any. Well, almost none. With the exception of a few small black and white newspaper ads in August – November which represented less than about 10% of his normal budget, the Store Owner did no advertising for the previous eight months.

The result was a 42% drop in sales from the previous year. An interesting observation the Store Owner made was he noticed the first few months he stopped advertising his business continues to run strong and then began to taper off..

So there you go. But remember, all businesses are unique. That means if you stopped advertising, your results may be different. But if you are in the furniture business you may not want to try this.