I keep coming across business owners striving for improvement in their marketing return on investment. This can be hard to prove admittedly. However, when the investment needed is £0 and the audience size is comparable to business and consumer magazines, then does ROI really matter if the decision is no-brainer in the first place? Mind your head on the low hanging fruit, as you come in and find the tricks that business owners are consistently missing out on.
One of the problems with people who work in advertising sales is that they tend to be quite good at their jobs. They receive ongoing training to hone their sales messages, and because they are heavily commission-based, they need to sell if they are put anything more than bread and jam on the table.
Persistent some are – and they are cute at getting meetings with potential customers. One of the popular sales tactics at said meetings is to use impressive statistics about how many people will see your advert if you advertise in one of their publications.
Consider this example.
For just £150 per month your advert will be seen by 50,000 local people. Then the dialogue might go something like this… – 50,000 is a lot of people, but they are not all going to be interested in what I have to offer, and £150 a month is a lot for a local business like mine.
That’s true, but let us take a tiny figure like 0.1%. If just this amount expressed an interest you would have 50 new enquiries every month. That sounds reasonable doesn’t.
OK perhaps, but not every enquiry becomes a sale and the lead times can be long too.
That’s fine, let’s take a pessimistic assumption that 90% don’t buy from you. That still leave 5 that will, and how many sales do you need to cover the advertising cost each month?
Err, just one…maybe two.
Right, so the campaign should pay for itself AND you’re getting all of the additional brand exposure to local people who are not interested today, but might be in six months time.
OK let me try it for a month or two and see if what you say is true.
It needs a little longer to get your brand recognised in the publication, but we are doing an offer of 12 months for the price of 10, payable monthly, so the campaign will actually cost you £125 not £150 and you get continuity for a whole year.
Oh alright then let’s go ahead if it means I can get back to doing my day job.
For an easy life a business owner has just parted with £1,500. I’ve gone through all this because I wanted to make you aware of something.
You can reach the same local people, with the same (or a different) message each time, more frequently than once a month for the grand total of: ZERO, zip, nowt, nothing!
Business owners are missing out by not joining independent local Facebook Community Groups. Each will have their membership terms and conditions to ensure ‘good order’ online and many allow businesses to promote their goods and services on certain days. Here are just three examples: Yateley Community. 18,000 members allows one advert per business every Monday Fleet Parents. 15,000 members allows one advert per business every 1st and 15th of the month Camberley Trades. 1,000 members allows one advert per business every Monday. There are thousands of such groups across the country. To find them, simple search in the Facebook groups section to bring up a list near you. Some groups are open and others require a few questions to be answered to ensure authenticity.
PS – on what will I spend the £1,500 I’ve just saved. Holiday, wardrobe re-fresh, spa etc etc.
