Last Updated on October 24, 2017 by
Traditional Marketing is Dead. Not Dying…Dead.
Just last week, we met with a potential client who is currently spending over 12k per month on their advertising and business marketing, most of which is traditional advertising, like ads in the phonebook. Here’s the worst part: They had no idea how much return they were getting on that investment, if any.
Whether you are a small local business, huge multi-million dollar conglomerate, or just a sole proprietor like a working actor or musician, at some point you have to learn to market yourself, to become a better internet marketer, if you want to succeed. The bottom line is, if no one knows about you, you will never sell your product or service…ever.
Marketing Flow and Customer’s Decision Process
To help understand the marketing process and why you need it at all, you should first have a brief understanding of the customer’s buying process and how marketing affects their decision.
- Problem or Need Recognition – People realize they need a product or service to fix something.
- Information Search – This is where the marketing phase lies. When they’re looking, you need to be visible.
- Evaluation of Options – This is where your compared to your competitors.
- Purchase Decision – They buy.
- Post-Purchase Behavior – Whether or not they return, leave a web review, etc.
Every customer goes through this process, aware or not, for every purchase they make. Therefore, the reason you market your business is so that when people need a service, you are there either on a search, or even better, you’re already in their mind because of long term brand exposure (think of the Gecko from a certain car insurance company).
Why You Need to Measure Your Marketing ROI
In any business model, large or small, you need to make the correct buying decisions and always ensure that you have the highest profit margins you can within your industry. This is especially true with business marketing and advertising services. Small business marketing and sole proprietors can’t afford to make bad mistakes here.
In the above example, it’s easy to see where the potential client I met with last week was spending his money. It was all on #2. He had about 3/4 of that 12k on yellow pages full page ads insisting that he ‘knows it works’. But when we asked to see his marketing ROI, he suddenly was at a loss.
The big, huge, glaring problem is he had no idea what percent of his PPC traffic converted to leads and then to sales. Or how many phonebook listings turned to phone leads and turned to sales.
When you measure your marketing, you can see what’s working and what’s not. This allows for quick and rapid changes in your plan to better meet the needs of your customers.
Why Traditional Marketing Sucks
Traditional marketing is dead, quite simply, because it completely fails to measure your marketing ROI. Yes, you can go spend 12k a month on phone book ads. I’m sure you will get sales out of it. But, will you be able to measure your marketing efforts with quantifiable data? (aka Marketing ROI?)
Not likely. While it can be done, it’s much harder. Think about having one phone number for every print ad you published. That’s the kind of lengths you’d have to go to to be able to measure traditional advertising.
Then, if you can measure your traditional marketing efforts, you likely be spending a great deal more per call, lead, sale, or other metric than you would with an internet marketing campaign.
How Internet Marketing is Better
Internet marketing is still a lot of work, and believe me, it’s still very easy to spend 12k if you want to. I know an internet marketer that spends 10k per day on Google PPC ads alone (pay per click). However, the difference is simple: everything can be measured from whatever goals you have and as long your marketing dollars are within the margins for your product, service, or business model, AND you’re making money….then you’re doing fantastic.
When we set-up an internet marketing and visibility campaign, they typically have a few components: Search Engine Optimization, PPC (pay per click), Social Media Management, and Content Management. Not every business needs each of these, but these are the most commonly used today.
Coming soon, I’ll go over the easiest way to set-up marketing measurement to become a better internet marketer.
