Electronic Media | Charlie Moger's ADmissions

Do you buy advertising like you buy gum?

Samantha: It was an impulse purchase!
Carrie: Gum is an impulse purchase… this is more than gum!

Samantha trying to justify her cosmetic chemical peel decision
as an impulse purchase she has on Sex and The City.

Carrie has perfectly expressed the reasonable expectation of an “impulse purchase.” Much the same can be said about impulse purchases with your business’s marketing – they should be strictly reserved for stands in grocery shopping lines.

There are many scams, tricks, sneaky tactics, dodgy offers, (you get it…), out there – victims often being new businesses. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”.

The issue you face when making an impulse purchase is that you aren’t efficiently thinking about the resulting consequences of this decision, resulting in actions that aren’t working towards the needs of your business as well as wasting a huge amount of money… You need to ask yourself every time, “Is this the highest and best use of my money?”

Stoking your impulses

Sales reps use a lot of tactics in order to sell you something. Some of the common ones include:

Offering “free” editorial with your print Ad purchase, therefore making the “package” more appealing. It can be appealing to have the opportunity to write more about your business, but be warned – the publication usually will have no obligation to print your editorial exactly as you have supplied and may change if they wish. You haven’t paid for the editorial space so it leaves the door of your business wide open.

The allure of “distress rates” which are the rates that are discounted at the 11th hour just before the publication needs to go to print, whereby spaces need to be filled and therefore prices cut. The main issue is you will most likely not have sufficient time to produce a well-structured message and attractive Ad, therefore you are really just placing an Ad for the sake of it.

With broadcast media, (i.e. radio and TV), bundling a schedule with a lot of bonuses. Bonus spots are not paid for by you; therefore the station has no obligation to actually run them. They are the push up bras of the broadcasting world – FILLERS that are all for show – used to make things look bigger, better, and more attractive but when it’s time for action, they seem to disappear… Also, bonus spots cannot be scheduled to the time slots/shows as paid spots can – they can play at any time and therefore you aren’t getting the consistency and repetition required for effective advertising.

Advising you “your competitors are doing it.” This is an all time pet hate tactic used by reps which comes back to the old adage your Mum would have said to you, “If little Jimmy was going to jump off a bridge, would you?” Just because your competitors are, doesn’t mean you should or have to. And being in the same places as your competitors can often work AGAINST you.

If you don’t have an effective marketing message and strategy the above sales rep tactics will cause you to make impulse purchases. The result being, more wasted marketing dollars.

So, keep impulse purchases for the grocery store and out of your business – even if it does sound amazing, as chances are, your impulses will stifle your business’s growth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sarah Ripley, Wizard of Ads Australia

Sarah is a young marketer who attempts to challenge the “grey hair syndrome” where you need to be middle-aged and balding to know how to market a business.

End of an era, again

Mark Haines

Television news lost something big the day NBC News’ Tim Russert died of a heart attack at 58. Business television lost something bigger with the passing of CNBC’s Mark Haines at 65. Both became giants of their industry, in large part, due to what they didn’t do.

Both were authentic to a fault. They both asked direct questions and hung on to get direct answers for us. It’s said Russert’s interviews could be like talking to a clenched fist. Haines’ interviews, on the other hand, were more of a dry-witted slap-down—but only when deserved.

Tim Russert

Haines’ willful disregard for television’s glamour set him apart visually from the packaged presenters we expect to see. His aww-shucks style, though, couldn’t mask his comprehension of subject. His ability to deliver it to us in terms that bridged the electronic gap made Mark Haines a trusted friend to many who never met him, including me. It’s all equally true of Russert as well.

What’s lost in the passing of these two men highlights the steady erosion of a quality important to television and radio. Compelling content is the byproduct of people speaking directly to us, not down to us; people of standards, who draw a line for principle because doing less would be letting us down. Television seems a little smaller without them. Placing a higher value on trust and respect than on popularity and profits is the stuff of giants, after all.

Paid vs. earned: secrets of better advertising ROI

Social media solutions are peddled the same way as quick weight loss programs. And, we buy into both for the same reason: we want to believe there’s a quick, instant, easy way to get a better return on our advertising investment. Sure you can. Just like you can get buff without workouts and responsible eating. As one who’s been (and still going) through the fitness mill, I find it particularly satisfying to see a universal truth of the gym proven in advertising: you gotta workout to work it off.

Social media’s Kool-Aid sweet treat is seductive. Who wouldn’t want the viral impact of the Coke Zero-Mentos campaign, or sex appeal of Old Spice’s shower guy ads. But, is it really more cost-effective to earn exposure instead of just paying for it?

While social media’s viral engagement may occasionally generate miraculous results, experience proves it can’t predictably deliver the round-house reach punch of paid media. Evidence is mounting that earned media’s cost-efficiency is best realized as a compliment to paid media; paid drives the eyeballs, social earns engagement.

Co-created engagement

Ray-Ban, Levis, Activision, and Nike are some of the examples used in this discussion where even the largest social media efforts still require paid support to initiate the wave of earned distribution. What does this have to do with your advertising? Invest time to watch this round table on the topic.

Push with paid, pull with earned

You don’t have to be Activision or Nike to apply these same principles. But, you do have to think ahead to synchronize your advertising and social media messaging. Here are five ways you can leverage better results from both:

Synchronize messaging. Populate your blog with content tied to your advertising message: when putting specific products on sale, create authentic consumer-centric stories about them on your blog. Speak to your customers’ WHY.
Be engaged. Customers will give you their spark, you must provide the fuel. Monitor comments on your blog to isolate points of interest and pour gas on the fire: join the conversation, add information. You will be communicate with greater connectedness and cement a deeper relationship.
Take a stand. Shamelessly take a stand for what you believe. Yes, you will hack off some people. But, you will define yourself clearly to those who agree. Being liked is nice. Being loved is better. My partner Tom Wanek illustrates this point brilliantly in his book Currencies that buy Credibility. Read the chapter about Patagonia. Where do you draw the line?
Invite participation. This one is tricky. New Coke is a cautionary tale of what happens when customers are asked what they would like in a new product. Don’t go there. Customers only know about what they already know. Instead, ask how they use your product in unexpected ways, how it has made their life better, why they gladly pay for it. “What do you like about….” If you have done the first three things listed here, you will get answers.
Expose yourself. Put a face on your company. Whether you use pictures, Flip videos, or professionally produced videos, bring customers behind the curtain to see who you are. People do business with people. Be personable. Be real. Be available.

Please pass on the Kool-aid

There’s no denying the benefits of earned media. But, it’s only part of the equation. Paid and earned media is like diet and exercise. You build muscle with exercise. You shape up with diet. Paid media is the exercise. Social media is the diet. The work best when you work them together. Just another one of those pesky universal truths.

By the way, the difficult truth about universal truths is, they’re universal. Which brings us to another one: you get what you pay for. How much do you suppose this cost?

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Bullies, bites, and buggy whips

WEDNESDAY’S WEEKLY READER

New to adMISSIONs: a weekly sampler of tasty news morsels caught in my net as I troll the web, delivered fresh to you:

95% of customers: a waste of money

4-5% of customers account for most of your business? That’s what Daisy Whitney says in OMMA magazine. “It’s not what is most efficient, it’s what is most effective. It’s not how big your share of voice is, it’s how important your customers think you are.” Roy H. Williams developed a formula for quantifying effectiveness in his bestselling Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads. My partner David Young explains application of Roy’s Advertising Performance Equation.

SEO is killing the web

That’s the upshot of this article by John Dvorak. Rampant SEO strategies, he says, ruins the search experience for users, requiring the search engine folks to constantly work on countermeasures to minimize the impact of SEO techniques.

TV Everywhere bullies you into buying it all

Cable is like a buggy-whip giant in the early days of the car biz: Comcast’s TV Everywhere product offers shows airing on cable and over-the-air TV networks. The catch: you must subscribe to both Comcast and its Internet service. To get what you want, you gotta buy what you won’t use.

You thought we were done with Top 10′s?

Springwise has gathered what they think are the Top Ten business ideas for 2010. Take it from the source: they’re based in Amsterdam. I’m still waiting for wooden shoes to take off.

Watch your mouth: words to avoid in 2010

Word “czars” at Lake Superior State University “unfriended” 15 words and phrases and declared them “shovel-ready” for inclusion on the university’s 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

Cool app: Visual Thesaurus

A graphical thesaurus displaying unexpected word connections. Great brainstorming tool. Confession: I’m a word geek and love their Word of the Day. While most of the words fly the face of the “use common words uncommonly” rule, stories behind words expose new ideas. If only they had an iPhone app.

Only one thing worse than a foot in your mouth

Sporting over 145 million views, this is the most viewed clip of all time on YouTube. So simple, yet strangely compelling. Consider that next time you’re cooking up an online video: keep it simple and authentic. Unless you want to sound like this guy.