There are a lot of marketing options available to you today… everything from the sublime to the ridiculous.
And if you listen to a lot of the advice out there you have to be doing almost everything to get a decent return on your marketing investment. Here’s what some of the industry experts have to say.
The problem is, of course, that an expert who says that you have to do everything really isn’t an “expert” at all.
Imagine if you went to your doctor and he said that you could have anything from an allergic reaction to an aggressive cancer… and proceeded to give you a dozen different medications and said, “If you take all of these hopefully one will work?”
I think you’d want a second opinion… I know I would.
So respectfully, I’ll offer you a second opinion on your marketing.
Let me preface this by saying, what ever you are doing now is almost certainly wrong… at least to some degree.
Let’s start with traditional media (direct mail, radio, newspapers, television, billboards etc)…
The obvious down side to traditional media is the cost… it’s expensive. And as response rates to traditional media decline (due in part to saturation… people aren’t taking as much notice, and in part to changing media consumption… people are consuming more of their media online) it’s only going to get more expensive, driving your acquisition costs higher and higher.
But the upside of traditional media is that it gets your message in front of people who aren’t specifically thinking about you… someone who wants to lose weight but was considering Jenny Craig… someone who wants more energy but was considering a nutritional supplement… someone who wants to tone up but was considering liposuction. You get your message in front of them and if you have a compelling offer you might be able to convince them to try you.
What about lead boxes?
I’ve talked about the downside of lead boxes before… you can check it out here, here, here, and here. Basically, lead boxes were a good idea in their day but most consumers don’t trust them, they are a lot of work, and they produce a lot of very low quality leads.
The upside of lead boxes is that they are inexpensive to implement, they target your local community, and they are always on.
What about new media?
The downside of new media is that it mostly targets people who are looking for you (or someone like you) anyway. Unlike traditional media which provides you with the potential to reach a broader potential market new media is much narrower in its reach.
Of course, there is a lot of upside to new media, it’s cheap (if you don’t count the pretty steep learning curve and ongoing time invested), it’s targeted, it’s where media consumption patterns are headed, it provides immediate feedback on the success (or otherwise) of your offer, and it has a strong social component.
So which ever approach you use you are missing out on something… which is, I guess, why the experts are telling you that you have to be trying everything.
Let’s break it down… if we could take all the upside and eliminate the downside what would that look like?
It would be… cheap (like new media and lead boxes)… it would have to reach a wide audience (not just people who are looking for you anyway, like traditional media)… it would have to produce high quality leads … it would have to target your local community (like lead boxes)… it would be easily to implement (like lead boxes)… it would provide immediate feed back (like new media)… it would have to be always on (like new media and lead boxes)… it would have a strong social component (like new media)… it would have to use a compelling offer (like Groupon)…
Of course there is no single marketing approach that can offer all of this… until now.
It’s called iPOS and you can learn more about it by clicking here.