Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
In Advertising Bigger isn?t Always Better
If you have been following the recent advertising news you will notice that more and more major advertisers are looking to smaller ad agencies to handle their campaigns.
Is it because they feel bad? Is it because they are cheaper? Or is it because they see the level of creative talent of smaller agencies?
Lets take a quick look at why this is happening and how this is good for the consumers and the advertisers. When I use the term smaller it doesn't mean that it's a one-man show, but that they aren't part of the "BIG 6". Now with that said lets continue, smaller agencies have a hunger to succeed, they have a need to be customer service oriented, they have a desire to be more creative without the fear of upsetting upper management. Take these points into account and you have an agency that will be tenacious and with the number one goal of showing their clients results.
At New Age Media Concepts, we believe that major advertisers deserve better results from their campaigns, don't get me wrong there have been great campaigns launched but who are going to be the new creative minds to develop the next memorable moment in advertising history?
If advertisers like General Motors, Ford, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Microsoft, Burger King, Toyota, Home Depot, Wendy's, ConAgra Foods, Wal-Mart Stores, American Express, Colgate Palmolive, Intel and the many others are looking beyond what agencies they are accustomed to working with and are looking towards connecting with their consumers in a big way, then they have to look beyond the brick and bring in a creative team that can help them do that.
Consumers today aren't ignorant and in this age of reality television and the shock factor mentality, advertisers need to step up to the plate and shed their skin to be able to reach the new age of consumers, the ones that are their core audience, the ones that will have brand loyalty.
Louis Victor has been involved in the investment, advertising, marketing and public relations indutries for close to two decades. Through various articles he looks to give some insight on various topics as it relates to these industries.
Is it because they feel bad? Is it because they are cheaper? Or is it because they see the level of creative talent of smaller agencies?
Lets take a quick look at why this is happening and how this is good for the consumers and the advertisers. When I use the term smaller it doesn't mean that it's a one-man show, but that they aren't part of the "BIG 6". Now with that said lets continue, smaller agencies have a hunger to succeed, they have a need to be customer service oriented, they have a desire to be more creative without the fear of upsetting upper management. Take these points into account and you have an agency that will be tenacious and with the number one goal of showing their clients results.
At New Age Media Concepts, we believe that major advertisers deserve better results from their campaigns, don't get me wrong there have been great campaigns launched but who are going to be the new creative minds to develop the next memorable moment in advertising history?
If advertisers like General Motors, Ford, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Microsoft, Burger King, Toyota, Home Depot, Wendy's, ConAgra Foods, Wal-Mart Stores, American Express, Colgate Palmolive, Intel and the many others are looking beyond what agencies they are accustomed to working with and are looking towards connecting with their consumers in a big way, then they have to look beyond the brick and bring in a creative team that can help them do that.
Consumers today aren't ignorant and in this age of reality television and the shock factor mentality, advertisers need to step up to the plate and shed their skin to be able to reach the new age of consumers, the ones that are their core audience, the ones that will have brand loyalty.
Louis Victor has been involved in the investment, advertising, marketing and public relations indutries for close to two decades. Through various articles he looks to give some insight on various topics as it relates to these industries.
Marketing Lessons I Learned in Chicago this Week...
I was in the fine city of Chicago this week to speak at a marketing conference. And I learned some interesting things:
1 - Traffic in Chicago is much worse than the allegedly bad traffic in Atlanta where I live. We left the hotel downtown at 3 p.m. and were parked on the "highway" a few minutes later.
The Lesson Learned:
I am thankful - as I know many of you are - that I don't have to leave home and fight through this terrible traffic on a daily basis. Life's too short to suffer like this regularly. The stress level of doing this would take years off my life.
2 - Despite the traffic, I arrived at the airport early enough to rebook my ticket (by paying the $25 fee) on a flight leaving 90 minutes earlier than my original schedule. That was the good news.
The bad news turned out to be that this flight would leave 45 minutes late so I didn't gain very much for my $25.
Obviously, I can afford the $25, but that's not the point.
The Lesson Learned:
It's not about the money. It's about the perception of value received for the money. When I made the deal with the airline to book the earlier flight, I did so with the specific understanding that I was investing $25 to buy 90 minutes.
But, I ended up only getting 1/2 that time - 45 minutes. So, I felt like I'd gotten screwed in the deal.
People - like us and our customers - invest money with us based on the perception of the value they'll receive in exchange. If you don't deliver on your promise, then the customer is not going to be happy with the deal.
If you deliver more, the customer should be ecstatic. That's why you'll usually find extra - unadvertised - bonuses when you purchase my products.
It doesn't matter that I probably would have spent the $25 to get the 45 minutes anyway - that's not the deal I bought.
3 - When I booked my hotel reservation, the website promoted the fine history of the property. When I was standing in the lobby, they had an interesting wall display listing the famous people and many presidents who had stayed there years ago. And they specifically mentioned how they had upgraded the hotel with the latest in electrical, plumbing, etc.
I'm not sure how long ago someone wrote this fiction, but it must be at least 30 years ago - maybe longer. Perhaps the reference to Diamond Jim Brady should have clued me in.
I won't bore you with the sordid details about the sagging mattress and matted down carpet, but it was depressing to enter my room. Especially when I opened the curtains so I could look 15 feet across the air shaft at other rooms.
The Lesson Learned:
Next time I'm booking a reservation in a "historical" hotel, I need to be certain to ask if they've stayed true to their history or entered the new millennium.
Of course, for $39 a night, I might have expected something like I got. But, when I'm paying $120 for the discounted conference special rate, I'm not seeing the value in the deal.
For many products and services - like hotel rooms - we have an understanding of what we think we should get for the money we spend. It doesn't matter whether our preconceived notion is correct - we've got it in our heads already.
As marketers, we have to deal with the public that has these preconceived ideas. When we're not going to fit with them (like charging way too much for a crummy room), we should be fair and make that clear. But we'll obviously want to do this in a fashion that will show why this is a still a fair, if not great, value proposition.
4 - But this story gets even more interesting...
I was chatting with Paul Hartunian (the PR expert who once sold the Brooklyn Bridge - legitimately) and mentioned that I was not happy with my room. He remarked that other people had also voiced similar opinions, but he loved his room.
Turns out he had asked the hotel about upgrade options and, for $20 more, you could get a completely updated room with a wonderful view of the city and Lake Michigan.
Of course, no one volunteers this when you call to make reservations. And it's not mentioned at all on their website.
But I'll bet the people that work in this hotel are wondering why more people don't choose the upgrade option.
The Lesson Learned:
Don't hide your light under a bushel basket!
Think about this...the hotel could have turned many unhappy people into raving fans simply by mentioning the $20 option. Plus, they could have been grabbing an extra $20 a night from dozens of people for doing absolutely nothing.
Sure, we're sitting here in judgment thinking how stupid this is. But...unfortunately, we occasionally make the same kind of silly mistakes and don't make the really fine benefits of our product or service crystal clear.
To sum up:
1 - Don't play in traffic. It's hazardous to your health.
2 - Explain the value in your offers and deliver what you promise (preferably more).
3 - Don't hide your best benefits and offers. Put them right out front so your prospects will become happy customers.
Yours in success,
Shawn Casey
P.S. If you missed the incredible Jeff Paul teleseminar this week - or just want to review it and take some more notes (Jeff talks fast and delivers a lot of info), you can hear the recorded version here:
(Scroll down a little when you get there)
Internet Millionaire Shawn Casey's "Mining Gold On the Internet" is one of the best selling Internet books with over 85,000 copies sold. In "Mining Gold", Shawn reveals the same step-by-step strategies he uses to create millions in Internet sales Benefit from Shawn's 7 years of Internet experience and learn from someone who has actually made millions online.
1 - Traffic in Chicago is much worse than the allegedly bad traffic in Atlanta where I live. We left the hotel downtown at 3 p.m. and were parked on the "highway" a few minutes later.
The Lesson Learned:
I am thankful - as I know many of you are - that I don't have to leave home and fight through this terrible traffic on a daily basis. Life's too short to suffer like this regularly. The stress level of doing this would take years off my life.
2 - Despite the traffic, I arrived at the airport early enough to rebook my ticket (by paying the $25 fee) on a flight leaving 90 minutes earlier than my original schedule. That was the good news.
The bad news turned out to be that this flight would leave 45 minutes late so I didn't gain very much for my $25.
Obviously, I can afford the $25, but that's not the point.
The Lesson Learned:
It's not about the money. It's about the perception of value received for the money. When I made the deal with the airline to book the earlier flight, I did so with the specific understanding that I was investing $25 to buy 90 minutes.
But, I ended up only getting 1/2 that time - 45 minutes. So, I felt like I'd gotten screwed in the deal.
People - like us and our customers - invest money with us based on the perception of the value they'll receive in exchange. If you don't deliver on your promise, then the customer is not going to be happy with the deal.
If you deliver more, the customer should be ecstatic. That's why you'll usually find extra - unadvertised - bonuses when you purchase my products.
It doesn't matter that I probably would have spent the $25 to get the 45 minutes anyway - that's not the deal I bought.
3 - When I booked my hotel reservation, the website promoted the fine history of the property. When I was standing in the lobby, they had an interesting wall display listing the famous people and many presidents who had stayed there years ago. And they specifically mentioned how they had upgraded the hotel with the latest in electrical, plumbing, etc.
I'm not sure how long ago someone wrote this fiction, but it must be at least 30 years ago - maybe longer. Perhaps the reference to Diamond Jim Brady should have clued me in.
I won't bore you with the sordid details about the sagging mattress and matted down carpet, but it was depressing to enter my room. Especially when I opened the curtains so I could look 15 feet across the air shaft at other rooms.
The Lesson Learned:
Next time I'm booking a reservation in a "historical" hotel, I need to be certain to ask if they've stayed true to their history or entered the new millennium.
Of course, for $39 a night, I might have expected something like I got. But, when I'm paying $120 for the discounted conference special rate, I'm not seeing the value in the deal.
For many products and services - like hotel rooms - we have an understanding of what we think we should get for the money we spend. It doesn't matter whether our preconceived notion is correct - we've got it in our heads already.
As marketers, we have to deal with the public that has these preconceived ideas. When we're not going to fit with them (like charging way too much for a crummy room), we should be fair and make that clear. But we'll obviously want to do this in a fashion that will show why this is a still a fair, if not great, value proposition.
4 - But this story gets even more interesting...
I was chatting with Paul Hartunian (the PR expert who once sold the Brooklyn Bridge - legitimately) and mentioned that I was not happy with my room. He remarked that other people had also voiced similar opinions, but he loved his room.
Turns out he had asked the hotel about upgrade options and, for $20 more, you could get a completely updated room with a wonderful view of the city and Lake Michigan.
Of course, no one volunteers this when you call to make reservations. And it's not mentioned at all on their website.
But I'll bet the people that work in this hotel are wondering why more people don't choose the upgrade option.
The Lesson Learned:
Don't hide your light under a bushel basket!
Think about this...the hotel could have turned many unhappy people into raving fans simply by mentioning the $20 option. Plus, they could have been grabbing an extra $20 a night from dozens of people for doing absolutely nothing.
Sure, we're sitting here in judgment thinking how stupid this is. But...unfortunately, we occasionally make the same kind of silly mistakes and don't make the really fine benefits of our product or service crystal clear.
To sum up:
1 - Don't play in traffic. It's hazardous to your health.
2 - Explain the value in your offers and deliver what you promise (preferably more).
3 - Don't hide your best benefits and offers. Put them right out front so your prospects will become happy customers.
Yours in success,
Shawn Casey
P.S. If you missed the incredible Jeff Paul teleseminar this week - or just want to review it and take some more notes (Jeff talks fast and delivers a lot of info), you can hear the recorded version here:
(Scroll down a little when you get there)
Internet Millionaire Shawn Casey's "Mining Gold On the Internet" is one of the best selling Internet books with over 85,000 copies sold. In "Mining Gold", Shawn reveals the same step-by-step strategies he uses to create millions in Internet sales Benefit from Shawn's 7 years of Internet experience and learn from someone who has actually made millions online.
Understanding Internet Banner Advertising
Banner advertising is an effective way of getting your advertising message seen on the Internet. Banner ads should not be your only online form of advertising, but they are an essential part of your online advertising mix.
This article assumes that the reader knows what a banner ad looks like, but do you know how they work, and how you can derive benefit from them? Let's define a few terms before answering these questions.
1. "Page views" or "page impressions." These terms are interchangeable and they refer to the number of times that a page within a website has been displayed on a website.
2. "Banner view." Like a page view, a banner view is the number of times that a banner has been displayed on website.
3. "Click through." A click through is the number of times a website visitor has "clicked" on a particular banner ad and was transferred to the website of the banner advertiser.
4. "CTR." CTR is the acronym for "click through rate," which is the ratio of the number of banner view versus the number of times visitors have "clicked through" to your website. CTR is expressed as a percentage, so a click through rate of 1% means that for every 1,000 banner views, 10 visitors have clicked through to your site.
5. "CPM." CPM is an acronym for "cost per M," where "M" is the ancient Roman numeral for 1,000. Translation: CPM is the price your business will pay to have its banner advertisement displayed 1,000 times on a website, e.g, the cost of 1,000 banner views. So, for example, if the CPM to advertise on a site is $80.00 your business will pay $80.00 for every 1,000 banner views.
6. "ROS." ROS is the acronym for "run of site," which simply means that a banner ad is displayed on every page in a website, as opposed to being displayed only in a particular category of a website or only when a particular keyword is entered into a search engine.
Everyone who is in charge of a advertising or marketing department (that's you if you're the sole shareholder of the company) knows that advertising is, in large part, a numbers game. The more frequently your message is seen or heard, the more likely the consumer is to purchase your service or product. Take Mattress Mac with Gallery Furniture , for example. If you live in the Houston area, or if your radio can pick up the signal of almost any Houston area radio station, you cannot go a single day without hearing or seeing an advertisement for Gallery Furniture. Peppering your senses with constant reminders that "Gallery Furniture Saves You Money!" has enabled Mr. McIngvale to build his single location furniture store into an empire. (Of course, advertising alone won't do it; you still must have a quality product or service). I have no scientific data to support this assertion, but I'll make it anyway: I'm willing to bet that Gallery Furniture is known to more people in the greater Houston area than any other single business. How did that come to be? Mattress Mac understands the advertising numbers game and plays it better than anybody else.
Banner ads are a numbers game. The industry standard click through rate for online advertising in general is around .5%. Not 5%, but .5%. Doesn't sound very encouraging for your banner ad campaign, eh? Well, there are ways to significantly increase the CTR of any given banner. The best way is by targeting a particular banner ad to a narrow audience, an audience that is looking specific for a product or service just like yours. Highly-targeted can boost your CTR to as much as 2%-3% or higher and significantly increase the traffic to your website.
Another valuable purpose of the banner ad is branding. Intertwined with the messages Gallery Furniture delivers about particular sales events or types of furniture is the company's consistent and recognizable logo, color scheme, and tag lines. Your banner advertisements can, and should, perform the same function; they should be designed using your company's logo and colors, at a minimum. Sometimes incorporating the tag line is the way to go, but other times you may want to advertise a particular special offer, product, etc. The important thing is that you take advantage of the numbers game by continually displaying your name, logo, and colors. The more visitors that see you, the more they will come to associate your name with your type of product or service, and the more likely they will be in the future to buy from you.
This article assumes that the reader knows what a banner ad looks like, but do you know how they work, and how you can derive benefit from them? Let's define a few terms before answering these questions.
1. "Page views" or "page impressions." These terms are interchangeable and they refer to the number of times that a page within a website has been displayed on a website.
2. "Banner view." Like a page view, a banner view is the number of times that a banner has been displayed on website.
3. "Click through." A click through is the number of times a website visitor has "clicked" on a particular banner ad and was transferred to the website of the banner advertiser.
4. "CTR." CTR is the acronym for "click through rate," which is the ratio of the number of banner view versus the number of times visitors have "clicked through" to your website. CTR is expressed as a percentage, so a click through rate of 1% means that for every 1,000 banner views, 10 visitors have clicked through to your site.
5. "CPM." CPM is an acronym for "cost per M," where "M" is the ancient Roman numeral for 1,000. Translation: CPM is the price your business will pay to have its banner advertisement displayed 1,000 times on a website, e.g, the cost of 1,000 banner views. So, for example, if the CPM to advertise on a site is $80.00 your business will pay $80.00 for every 1,000 banner views.
6. "ROS." ROS is the acronym for "run of site," which simply means that a banner ad is displayed on every page in a website, as opposed to being displayed only in a particular category of a website or only when a particular keyword is entered into a search engine.
Everyone who is in charge of a advertising or marketing department (that's you if you're the sole shareholder of the company) knows that advertising is, in large part, a numbers game. The more frequently your message is seen or heard, the more likely the consumer is to purchase your service or product. Take Mattress Mac with Gallery Furniture , for example. If you live in the Houston area, or if your radio can pick up the signal of almost any Houston area radio station, you cannot go a single day without hearing or seeing an advertisement for Gallery Furniture. Peppering your senses with constant reminders that "Gallery Furniture Saves You Money!" has enabled Mr. McIngvale to build his single location furniture store into an empire. (Of course, advertising alone won't do it; you still must have a quality product or service). I have no scientific data to support this assertion, but I'll make it anyway: I'm willing to bet that Gallery Furniture is known to more people in the greater Houston area than any other single business. How did that come to be? Mattress Mac understands the advertising numbers game and plays it better than anybody else.
Banner ads are a numbers game. The industry standard click through rate for online advertising in general is around .5%. Not 5%, but .5%. Doesn't sound very encouraging for your banner ad campaign, eh? Well, there are ways to significantly increase the CTR of any given banner. The best way is by targeting a particular banner ad to a narrow audience, an audience that is looking specific for a product or service just like yours. Highly-targeted can boost your CTR to as much as 2%-3% or higher and significantly increase the traffic to your website.
Another valuable purpose of the banner ad is branding. Intertwined with the messages Gallery Furniture delivers about particular sales events or types of furniture is the company's consistent and recognizable logo, color scheme, and tag lines. Your banner advertisements can, and should, perform the same function; they should be designed using your company's logo and colors, at a minimum. Sometimes incorporating the tag line is the way to go, but other times you may want to advertise a particular special offer, product, etc. The important thing is that you take advantage of the numbers game by continually displaying your name, logo, and colors. The more visitors that see you, the more they will come to associate your name with your type of product or service, and the more likely they will be in the future to buy from you.
Localized Advertising ? Door-to-Door Ad Distribution on the Fly!
Have you ever had to distribute door-hanger advertisements for your business?
Have you ever employed door-to-door sales techniques to increase your brand awareness?
Have you ever had to walk mile-after-mile repeating the sales pitch, over and over?
Have you ever had to stand outside of an arena event and pass out flyers to exiting patrons?
If you stop to think of the cold calling technique of door-to door advertising, you would discover how sometimes humiliating it is to have a disinterested and irritated individual slam the door in your face, yell insulting things toward you, or be escorted off of their property. To combat this instantaneous humiliation, the idea of door-hanging advertisements gives the sales person a means of getting the word out to more people faster than before but more importantly, it saves the person the anguish of the advertised becoming irate over the interruption. Having been in situations were I have used these techniques either selling for other companies or trying to gain customers for a newly opened business, I came up with the idea of trying a door-to-driveway or door-to-doorstep advertising campaign to build brand awareness for a national car sales corporation that needed grass roots advertising for the local area around their dealerships.
Basically, I was a car salesman that was responsible for bringing in customers to buy cars, and my pay was determined by how many people actually came in and bought. Since I have leg injuries from an auto accident, I needed to find a way to cover the same amount of territory as my competing sales people. The company already supplied a few thousand door hangers; however, the advertisement brought awareness to all of the local 11 dealerships and I wanted to build awareness just to the dealership that I was at, and more specifically, I wanted the traffic created to come specifically to me.
Keeping in mind the flyer campaign I was apart of at a professional basketball game in which the sales team handed out 7,000 flyers to build awareness of a local college basketball season, I designed a half-page flyer text advertisement-therefore, two ads can be printed on every page-that put emphasis on my name, my contact information, and schedule. You can substitute any advertising design on this half-page ad.
I chose a colored card-stock weighted paper for printing because I needed paper weight for the distribution method used and a lower cost than the cost of printing in color. Printing black and white on colored paper is easier and cheaper than printing expensive color ads, unless you can afford it. But for the purpose of this campaign, you do not need to spend a fortune making your company look good in print.
Once the printing is done, cut the full-page printed page in half, which produces two half-page ads. Next, take the ads and roll them into a cigar shape and secure with small rubber bands. Tiny rubber bands can be purchased at the local office supply company, but the best bet for the appropriate size can be located at a local beauty supply company-ask for small hair braiding bands, usually kept in 500 and 1000 count. Keep a large box handy to place the rolled ads in until it is time to distribute.
Now it is time to distribute. Normally, door hangers would take about 2 ½ hours to distribute 500 hangers and would receive a few inquiries for the effort; so being limited to the amount of walking I could do, I decided to drive a car and throw the ads onto the edge of the driveway at peoples houses. I wanted the advertisement to be in the same placement as the local newspaper so the ad had the best chance to be noticed, picked up, and acted on by the potential customer.
As a homeowner, I myself have had numerous advertisements thrown in my driveway, and as the homeowner I am responsible for picking up the ads in my yard. I have seen ads for grass cutters, electricians, Avon sales, donations to thrift stores, and many more, so any kind of message can be placed on these ads.
Now with the new way to distribute, I could get 2000 ads out in approximately 1 ½ hours and had responses before I returned to the dealership. It makes me wonder how many people really do watch the front of their house and wonder what a slow moving vehicle was throwing at their house. After seeing the instant results of my effort, every sales person at the dealership enacted the same door-to-driveway campaign for the shear fact of the number of ads distributed for the time distributed was achieved with far less effort than before. Results we quicker and slightly higher; but, I do not know the exact increase numbers because I did not do any kind of analysis on exact number of responses for the number distributed. I do know that I got a lot out a lot quicker than before and I didn't have to walk anywhere except to the car.
A few things to keep in mind:? Make sure it is NOT going to rain on the day that you distribute.? Try NOT to distribute after 2:00 PM because of children being released from school and them walking and playing in the streets.? Try NOT to distribute during the weekend because that is when you want people to be acting on the ad that has been delivered, and the kids are in the streets again.? The perfect time seems to be between 10 AM and 12 PM, a two-hour break in morning commute traffic and the beginning of lunch hour traffic.? Keep a map and mark the streets covered as to not deliver in the same area too often.
Have you ever employed door-to-door sales techniques to increase your brand awareness?
Have you ever had to walk mile-after-mile repeating the sales pitch, over and over?
Have you ever had to stand outside of an arena event and pass out flyers to exiting patrons?
If you stop to think of the cold calling technique of door-to door advertising, you would discover how sometimes humiliating it is to have a disinterested and irritated individual slam the door in your face, yell insulting things toward you, or be escorted off of their property. To combat this instantaneous humiliation, the idea of door-hanging advertisements gives the sales person a means of getting the word out to more people faster than before but more importantly, it saves the person the anguish of the advertised becoming irate over the interruption. Having been in situations were I have used these techniques either selling for other companies or trying to gain customers for a newly opened business, I came up with the idea of trying a door-to-driveway or door-to-doorstep advertising campaign to build brand awareness for a national car sales corporation that needed grass roots advertising for the local area around their dealerships.
Basically, I was a car salesman that was responsible for bringing in customers to buy cars, and my pay was determined by how many people actually came in and bought. Since I have leg injuries from an auto accident, I needed to find a way to cover the same amount of territory as my competing sales people. The company already supplied a few thousand door hangers; however, the advertisement brought awareness to all of the local 11 dealerships and I wanted to build awareness just to the dealership that I was at, and more specifically, I wanted the traffic created to come specifically to me.
Keeping in mind the flyer campaign I was apart of at a professional basketball game in which the sales team handed out 7,000 flyers to build awareness of a local college basketball season, I designed a half-page flyer text advertisement-therefore, two ads can be printed on every page-that put emphasis on my name, my contact information, and schedule. You can substitute any advertising design on this half-page ad.
I chose a colored card-stock weighted paper for printing because I needed paper weight for the distribution method used and a lower cost than the cost of printing in color. Printing black and white on colored paper is easier and cheaper than printing expensive color ads, unless you can afford it. But for the purpose of this campaign, you do not need to spend a fortune making your company look good in print.
Once the printing is done, cut the full-page printed page in half, which produces two half-page ads. Next, take the ads and roll them into a cigar shape and secure with small rubber bands. Tiny rubber bands can be purchased at the local office supply company, but the best bet for the appropriate size can be located at a local beauty supply company-ask for small hair braiding bands, usually kept in 500 and 1000 count. Keep a large box handy to place the rolled ads in until it is time to distribute.
Now it is time to distribute. Normally, door hangers would take about 2 ½ hours to distribute 500 hangers and would receive a few inquiries for the effort; so being limited to the amount of walking I could do, I decided to drive a car and throw the ads onto the edge of the driveway at peoples houses. I wanted the advertisement to be in the same placement as the local newspaper so the ad had the best chance to be noticed, picked up, and acted on by the potential customer.
As a homeowner, I myself have had numerous advertisements thrown in my driveway, and as the homeowner I am responsible for picking up the ads in my yard. I have seen ads for grass cutters, electricians, Avon sales, donations to thrift stores, and many more, so any kind of message can be placed on these ads.
Now with the new way to distribute, I could get 2000 ads out in approximately 1 ½ hours and had responses before I returned to the dealership. It makes me wonder how many people really do watch the front of their house and wonder what a slow moving vehicle was throwing at their house. After seeing the instant results of my effort, every sales person at the dealership enacted the same door-to-driveway campaign for the shear fact of the number of ads distributed for the time distributed was achieved with far less effort than before. Results we quicker and slightly higher; but, I do not know the exact increase numbers because I did not do any kind of analysis on exact number of responses for the number distributed. I do know that I got a lot out a lot quicker than before and I didn't have to walk anywhere except to the car.
A few things to keep in mind:? Make sure it is NOT going to rain on the day that you distribute.? Try NOT to distribute after 2:00 PM because of children being released from school and them walking and playing in the streets.? Try NOT to distribute during the weekend because that is when you want people to be acting on the ad that has been delivered, and the kids are in the streets again.? The perfect time seems to be between 10 AM and 12 PM, a two-hour break in morning commute traffic and the beginning of lunch hour traffic.? Keep a map and mark the streets covered as to not deliver in the same area too often.
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