Advertising

Traffic Or Customers ?

Do you need traffic or customers? Most of us would say both and for sure that is correct, but what kind of traffic do you want?

The right kind of traffic and customers are what you need to be targeting. All of us need to be concentrating on that, because of the need to continue being successful.

Targeting the right niche for our products is essential to success. We sometimes get off in the wrong direction trying to get more success and we forget that we are in a particular business.

We often go to the extreme in attracting customers and traffic to appeal to a greater audience and try to solve customer needs that we have no idea of how our product is going to solve it. Then we ask ourselves why we are not making more since we are spending so much more on advertising.

For example; We are selling high end automobiles and the numbers are good and we want to increase the sales, so we get the idea that we will advertise in a free publication that has a great distribution number and the price to do so is very affordable, so we do not look at first it is a free publication and it’s appeal is to customers and traffic that would like to own our product, but quiet frankly can not afford it.

If you have money to waste or need to just be in every publication you can then this is your chance to be totally off the mark. I hope you can see that although the cost of the add was affordable and the high number of readers is good, the fact is that the publication appealed to the wrong niche.

The dollars spent would only be wasted and the return would probably be zero, two of the three questions of advertising were good, but the niche you were trying to appeal to could not afford your product.

Now we can turn that around and say we are trying to sell mid price automobiles and look at it then; cost of the publication is good, high number of readers is good and the niche we are trying to reach is the right one so in that case we would simply have a great return on our product because of the three answers to the questions of advertising.

All of us want our product to be the answer and it can be to the right niche. Advertising can be an asset or a liability; you must do the research and know why the source should be a good one for you.

Rental companies have a wide base of customers and traffic, but they must not advertise in certain areas, as they can not appeal to a niche that can be better off going to a retail store and saving a lot of money purchasing the same or better item at a much less cost. If you go and look at these type stores you will find that their products, although are good and the stores stand behind their products fully, you can get more up to date products and save money in the process.

These companies have a place in our society and do provide an invaluable service to people that can not afford or have necessary credentials to purchase those type items in conventional retail outlets. We all see that some of these companies do advertise in places that appeal across the lines and are very successful, but this is not the normal practice and when times get to a point when they need to cut their advertising package, they will go back to the practice that is appealing to their niche.

Can we appeal to a larger niche? Yes in certain cases we have products that can cross over to other niches and do very well, but this is not the normal practice and should be studied in detail to make sure that your advertising dollar is spent correctly. When this type of advertising is done, it would be wise to start slowly and try to effectively focus your efforts.

Do not commit a large amount of advertising dollars to a project like this until you are sure the results can be calculated. Crossover advertising is a risky, but sometimes a rewarding effort. The illustrations above can be a very helpful model to test your advertising efforts, but you still must be careful not to get false results and be careful of how they are calculated. Remember that most large companies have products that appeal to the masses and small businesses must focus on their niche and spend only on the proven methods that are focused to get a return on money invested on advertising.