Why do we care about marketing? Why do we advertise? You're probably already answering in your head: To create awareness, to attract customers, to build our brand, to promote our products, the list goes on. Sorry to break it to you, but you're wrong. These are all just ways to accomplish the true goal of marketing, which is as follows: To multiply our money. The fact of the matter is that at the end of the day we market so that we can turn dollars of adspend into dollars of profit. When we lose focus of this we get into dangerous territory. We start to spend money on things we can't measure, we start to put out ads who's aims stop being maximum Return on Investment.
We've all seen ads like these: The shot pans across a gorgeous vista as inspirational music starts to play, cut to beautiful people doing an activity you probably have on your bucket list, you watch unsure of what this commercial might be for. Fade to black. The company logo appears for a few seconds.
You may come away thinking "that was pretty cool," but did it make you run out and buy something? Did it ask you to do anything? Time and time again advertisement greats like David Ogilvy have proven to us that nothing can beat direct response advertising, yet advertising like I described above continues to be popular, not just among huge and established companies, but small players trying to emulate them. It is time for us to take a step back and accept a few basic facts:
1. If we can't measure the effectiveness of our ad it is no good.
Ok, you decided to publish an ad somewhere. Now what? Your business continues to run as before, but can you identify who is there as a direct result of your ad? In order for us to know if our money is being put to good use we have to be able to identify what business it generated. Not only will this keep us from losing money, it will allow us to use that information to improve on the ad and make more.
2. If we can't put a number on how much each new client cost us we can never know if our advertising is worth it or not.
Business and advertising is a science. Using ROI (return on investment) as our guiding star we must have defined values for every single step in our client attraction funnel. You need to know how much you're paying per click of your landing page, per email opt-in, per appointment set, per purchase of your services, etc. Only by having a solid grasp on these numbers can we hope to manage a successful and profitable campaign. If you're running ads right now and can't break that down for me, then you have a problem.
3. You're not selling a product, you're selling a desired state to your customer.
When we buy our favorite food we're not buying it for the physical makeup and properties of the item, we're buying it for the taste we know we're going to experience, we're buying it for the sense of satisfaction after eating it. When advertising our product or services we need to focus on what our product means to our customer. We need to present ourselves as the vehicle to bridge the gap between their current state and their desired state. If we can show ourselves as such then you will have profoundly effective advertisement.
If you keep just these 3 things in mind you're already miles ahead of most people out there.
