Every week I hear from potential clients these similar stories. – Heres a few recent ones.

 “I’ve just spent $2,000 on a mail drop and it didn’t work!”

“I’m spending $10,000 on a radio campaign and the sales are no where what I expected them to be.”

“My yellow pages cost me around $20,000 a year and I don’t even know if it works!”

“I have just put 4 weeks of ads in the local paper and I’ve only had one phone call.”

I’m sure somewhere all of us have heard these stories before, or they may have been experienced by your own company.

I feel very lucky in my job sometimes, as I get placed on a pedestal and called a saviour as I have helped these stories turn around into positive ones. The truth be  told is  that I am no saviour, it’s just that I’ve been doing advertising and marketing for over 12 years and that I just have some good sound knowledge and experience of what’s right and what will work.

So for what’s its worth, here are four tips I personally recommend!

Tip No. 1:
What’s the ROI (Return on investment) and what results should I expect?
 If you are going to spend money on marketing or advertising, no matter if its $1,000 or $ 100,000 (as every dollar is just as important) – get the right advice on what your return on investment will be (ROI) That way you will get a realistic result and can plan appropriately. If the supplier you are booking your work through can’t give you some kind of guide, then you better think twice!

Eg: Direct Mail benchmarks are only around 1-2% return/response and if the letter and envelope is personalised, then your hit rate may increase by a further 1-2%. So if you send out 1000 letters you may only receive 20 calls and out of those 20 calls, you may only convert 10% onto sales. Using guidelines like this will help you ensure you get the best ROI and also help you identify which is the best marketing strategy to implement, as it may or may not be direct mail.

Tip No. 2:
So you have identified which is the best strategy to use, now what about your art/script for your ad?
Whatever you do, don’t just use the art for your new campaign -“Because you already have it”. This is one of the worst mistakes I have seen clients make. The art/script has to be designed specific not only to the campaign, but also to your target market and fit in the style of the advertising medium you are going in. One example is a colleague of mine at another agency had a client book $10,000 worth of TV commercials, but the client was dead set insistent on using their old TV commercial filmed in 1980, and mind you it was filmed with a hand held video camera! No matter what my colleague said, he could not convince them to develop a new commercial. So sure enough the ad went to air, his sales did not increase, and infact my colleague and I reckon the ad posed as a negative effect on the clients business. So the moral of the story is, if you are going to spend you’re hard earned dollar on advertising, then make sure you budget to give your campaign the best chance to succeed.

Tip No. 3:
The paper/radio/magazine has offered to do your art/script for free!
Well we all know that nothings for free these days right? Wrong! They won’t charge you for the art, that’s correct! What a bargain, nothing to worry about, you'll even see a proof…

This would have to be one of the biggest errors I see or hear about. The ad was made for you for free, but what it may have cost you, is sales and loss of your advertising dollar you just spent!

Marketing Mechanics works with the media everyday, and yes they are great at selling you and organising your ads, but in my experience, they are not the best at developing your ads/scripts/or campaigns.

Agencies like Marketing Mechanics are successful in business because we are there to help you, as without you and your business being successful, we wouldn’t be around! We would take into consideration many aspects of your art/script that the paper/radio station may not. Important points like:  are all your contact details on there correct and is the spelling all correct?, what’s the offer – would it please your potential customer, does it have a call to action, is the design appealing to your audience from a sales and marketing angle, could you have used better typesetting and design so your ad doesn’t look like a cut and paste job or a word document., is your graphics at the correct dpi for optimum colour, and the list goes on. There are so many variants to consider and that’s why I decided to write this article this month.

Another example is radio stations. We get approached by lots of clients asking us to re-write their scripts for their radio ads as they weren’t happy with the ones the radio station wrote for them. One thing you should remember is that the radio stations have teams that basically just sit and nut out radio ads day in day out, so more or less your product may become just another script. Marketing and advertising agencies do all we can to work with your radio station and “push the boundaries” to give your ad a point of difference. One perfect example I would like to share with you is a client approached us earlier on in the year and told me they spent $ 100k on one of Sydney’s top radio stations. They told us the script and recording was done “free of charge” by the radio station. They also told me that the 100k they had just spent brought them an appalling return. I simply asked to listen to their ad so I could comment on it.

Without disclosing the client or talent used, I can tell you that the voice over sounded exactly like a well known figure from their opposition, needless to say who was benefiting from this clients 100k –not them –their competition!  Which brings me to my next tip…

Tip No. 4:
A fresh set of eyes and ears always helps.
Its very difficult in these busy times, we are all time poor and working very busily. You can only fit so much into a day! Working on your own campaign and putting your heart and soul into it, sometimes leads to what I call “Advertising Blindness.” That is, you have seen and proofed your ad so many times, that you may of missed important information. Even simple things are left off like a critical phone number (and yes I have seen that happen!), or possibly the offer needs to be revised.

Marketing Mechanics are only too happy to run a keen eye over your ad and make comments for you. My staff and I are always available for some free advice if you want to run something by us.. Who knows it could end up saving you time and money!!

I hope I have covered an important topic this month and would love to hear your feedback. Just drop me an email.

Kind Regards,

Diane Costa
Director, Sales and Marketing

back to top