If the old adage is correct that 50% of all marketing budgets are wasted on programs that do not produce a meaningful response, then small businesses should be pretty worried. Most businesses in the United States need to market themselves in order to grow. But how? And where?
As I look through yet another local magazine at my office in Atlanta, GA, I am struck by how many companies have paid thousands of dollars for an ad placement that has the same call to action (what you want your audience to do once they see your ad) as they do with everything else. They list the same telephone number in the magazine that they have on their website, yellow pages ad, banner ad, etc. They also just list their main website address with no specific landing page (a sub-page of a website) that has more information around a particular offer or campaign.
So, what happens if people actually respond to the pricey ad in the magazine? From a tracking perspective, that would be a disaster. Without the ability to directly attribute traffic from each of your marketing outlets, the marketing budget is basically being used for a Public Relations campaign. By the way, PR campaigns are expensive.
Small business owners and their marketing teams can no more afford to engage in a PR campaign than they can to put money in a garbage bag and toss it out every week. The only viable way for them to know exactly where their responses are coming from is to use tracking tools that are readily available and very affordable today.
In the next blog, I'll talk about those tracking tools and how to implement them across Online, Offline, and Mobile marketing outlets.
Until then, here's to your healthy balance sheet!
Tim O'Connor
As I look through yet another local magazine at my office in Atlanta, GA, I am struck by how many companies have paid thousands of dollars for an ad placement that has the same call to action (what you want your audience to do once they see your ad) as they do with everything else. They list the same telephone number in the magazine that they have on their website, yellow pages ad, banner ad, etc. They also just list their main website address with no specific landing page (a sub-page of a website) that has more information around a particular offer or campaign.
So, what happens if people actually respond to the pricey ad in the magazine? From a tracking perspective, that would be a disaster. Without the ability to directly attribute traffic from each of your marketing outlets, the marketing budget is basically being used for a Public Relations campaign. By the way, PR campaigns are expensive.
Small business owners and their marketing teams can no more afford to engage in a PR campaign than they can to put money in a garbage bag and toss it out every week. The only viable way for them to know exactly where their responses are coming from is to use tracking tools that are readily available and very affordable today.
In the next blog, I'll talk about those tracking tools and how to implement them across Online, Offline, and Mobile marketing outlets.
Until then, here's to your healthy balance sheet!
Tim O'Connor
EVP-Marketing
888.808.6656
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