Advertising

Calculating Your Investment

How do we calculate our advertising dollars and know what we are investing is going to give us the return we expect.

Can we cautiously do a campaign to advertise and expect to get results? Nothing ventured nothing gained is a noted reply that we have all heard in our business lives.

It is a very true statement and is very noteworthy in advertising, but you must be smart and not take the statement too literally.

Have a plan in mind to get your results and then the statement is an asset and not a liability. What is your product and who is the niche that you need to target? What is the age group that you must appeal to and is there a region or some group that is more likely to purchase your product or service than another.

Are there other products on the market that are similar, who do they appeal to and can you learn something from their campaign adds? Use whatever source you can to eliminate cost to you and your company. It is an accepted practice to use others ideas and advance you product, we do not need to reinvent every aspect of advertising.

Maybe you have tried to do a study of who and where your product might appeal to and just did not know where to start and became frustrated and said I will just do my advertising in a local newspaper or follow what everybody else is doing. I have been there and done that, it was a mistake and I knew it and did it anyway.

I had a wireless business and bought into the idea of advertising in school yearbooks and small ads in the local newspaper. What I mean by adds in the local newspaper is a small print add, not big enough to be noticed, but being a reoccurring add each week I was told it would get noticed and people would come in and purchase from that add. I got more business from the school yearbook than I did from the newspaper add. I did my purchase based on price alone and not with any personal education on what would be the most effective way to get customers.

This is like throwing away money and we do not need to do that, I would have been better off giving it to charity and getting a reporter to do a story about what we were doing to help the community.

That by the way is an excellent way of getting publicity for you product or company. Giving to charity is a very noble and heartfelt thing to do and I would encourage you to do this, not for advertising purposes, but for those in need. What I am saying about advertising is to be pro active in the community and give to help develop a community, which is a very successful way to get your name and product known to your local community. I do this kind of thing for the purpose of helping and not for the purpose of advertising, so do not misunderstand my intent.