I’ve heard the same phrase from many small business owners: “I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work for my business.” The practice of advertising is a mystery to most small business owners. It is quite difficult for them to try to perfect the process of doing business with their clients; acquiring new customers is another challenge. Most business owners are not entirely aware of the difference between advertising and marketing.
Let’s remove some of the mystery from the practices.
One of the most misunderstood aspects of the process are the distinctions between: marketing, advertising, and selling:
Marketing: it is the general collection of tools that are used to develop your business. Marketing has an overarching goal: to take customers through the process of realizing your business, buying from your business, enjoying your business products or services successfully enough to tell their friends and family, and come back. for more if applicable.
Some of the marketing tools include:
1. Advertising
2. Public relations
3. Direct mail
4. Personal sales
5. Internet
6. Printed promotions
7. Education
Advertising: Advertising does not sell to your audience, it is a tool similar to the male ostrich tail; Your job is to draw attention to the specific things you do well. Advertising promotes the distinctive features, benefits and advantages of your offering to a wide market. The goal of advertising is to attract valuable leads to the sales process.
I have sold yellow page advertising to business owners who initially felt that yellow page ads were attracting a lot of people who were just buying. They didn’t want to waste time with “looky loo’s”.
If someone takes the time to make a phone call or email you about your product or service, why treat them with disdain? These people search for the correct answers to their problems. Even more important, each knows 250 other people personally. Every opportunity to make a connection or a sale should be treated as equally important.
Sale: Once the advertising has attracted the potential buyer, the sales process takes over. This is done through personal sales or through the use of materials at the point of purchase (i.e. a store display, video demonstration, etc.). The sale should come into play after it has been determined that a potential customer is suitable for the product or service.
The mystery and confusion begin when a business owner must decide which tools to use in the customer acquisition process. Who should you advertise to? Where should it be advertised and why? How do you advertise? What kind of return should I expect to get from my advertising program? When do I use the other marketing tools to reinforce my advertising program? What should be my relationship between advertising and sales?
Who should you advertise to? Let’s be very clear about this one. You should never spend a single dollar on advertising until you know who you will eventually sell your product or service to. You shouldn’t even be in business if you have no idea who you want to do business with.
Marketing is used to identify your ideal market. Sure, you may not get 100% of your ideal market, but if you know who will most likely benefit from what you have to sell or hold, you can get more.
For example, if you are a chiropractor in a big city, your ideal market might be the 40-60 couple who are health conscious and active. They seek to stay in shape and are open to CAM (complementary and alternative medicines). They may have an unfavorable view of the current healthcare system and wish to take a proactive approach to maintaining health. So let’s say after determining your ideal market, you identify 15,000 of them in your market region. So now you have 15,000 potential customers to reach out to on a regular basis.
Where should it be advertised and why? If you wanted to find a 34-year-old Buddhist from Cambodia, where would you look for one? The question may seem a bit silly, but you know that you wouldn’t start by going to all the mosques in the area.
Sometimes you have to eliminate all the unlikely places to search until you reach the most likely ones.
Of course, you need to choose your adware targets based on how many of your potential prospects are likely to see your message. If the local health club in your area has a demographic membership of more than 3,000 people ages 45-65, you may want to advertise in their monthly newsletter. If they don’t have a newsletter, you may want to sponsor one for them.
Remember “The best place to go fishing is where the fish bite.” Take the time to get to know your target audience and their buying habits.
How do you advertise? Imagine your very expensive Mercedes breaks down and the mechanic says it’s your fuel pump. You need to change it, so you will take a blowtorch and cut the hood, open the engine block, and then replace the fuel pump. Once you are done, you will weld all the pieces together and return the vehicle to you.
Would you give this guy permission to get to work on your vehicle? Of course you wouldn’t. Once you determine what to do, you need to be careful how you run the solution.
Going back to our chiropractor, if you find that the best way to reach the 15,000 45-65 year old couples in your area is through the Yellow Pages; then you must decide if it is profitable, timely and competitive.
The goal now is to discover the best way to reach all or most of those 15,000 ideal prospects.
Will you get comparable results from repeat exposure in the health club newsletter where you will have a captive and unrivaled audience?
There is no reason not to use the yellow pages and health club newsletter if you are struggling financially. The goal of advertising is to obtain valuable leads for the sales process to take place.
What kind of return should I expect to get from my advertising program? My response to my clients to this question is usually surprising; the answer is a big fat zero (0). How can a business owner spend so much money on advertising and not expect money in return?
This is the basis of the confusion between marketing, advertising and sales. The value of advertising in the marketing mix is in the generation of leads. When used correctly as such, the measure of its effectiveness is in how many leads are generated.
This is why it is so important to distinguish between the various marketing tools. If our chiropractor had 20 leads each day of his ad campaign and the front desk had a lousy conversion rate, I bet he would blame his ad for not attracting more clients.
Measure your response rate by quantifying advertising results. Measure the number of leads coming in and adjust your ad text to test for better results.
When do I use the other marketing tools to reinforce my advertising program? Advertising should never be used alone. Remember that the average adult has to deal with more than 2,700 messages a day from all types of media.
Marketing should be viewed as a combined effort to reach the minds and hearts of your target market. You should use at least five of the seven marketing tools each week. Depending on the age of your business and your business plan, you should budget 10-15% of your estimated annual revenue for marketing. If you just opened your doors in the last five years, increase up to 20%. There’s a reason Pepsi and Coke spend more than $ 400 million a year each to satisfy their shareholders’ bottom line.
What should be my relationship between advertising and sales? Think of the relationship between advertising and sales as complementary. If your advertising generates a large number of leads, tailor your sales strategy to convert at least 30% of your leads while capturing all of your leads for systematic follow-up.
Keep in mind that at any given time, 3% of your market is ready to engage with your product or service. The goal is to first convert 3% of your leads. Then work on selling to those who are undecided. Whether through personal sales, direct marketing, or point-of-purchase sales, your ratio will be determined by various factors, the offer, the product or service, and the immediate need of the prospects and of course, the price.
Don’t be too anal with the proportions. The most important thing to remember is that marketing is an inexact science. You will have to keep testing and trying to get better results as the market changes.
Determine the value of a new customer and the lifetime value of your customers. Once you do, make sure your marketing efforts generate enough new business to cover the cost of getting new customers and that your sales efforts cover the cost of keeping you in business.
Modify the numbers and track them consistently. If your estimated marketing budget is $ 37,500 for the year and your estimated income is $ 250,000, then you have a standard starting point.
By the end of the year, your numbers should add up. If you haven’t made the $ 250,000, don’t just blame your advertising – look at your list of potential customers and determine if you’ve converted the required number into sales.
If you don’t have a list of potential customers, we need to re-evaluate your advertising purpose.