VP of Internet Marketing - AdzZoo
It’s a very simple concept that needs to be revisited occasionally. Business owners don’t need to be sold, they needed to be educated. Advertising, if done right, is an investment and not an expenditure.
I was thinking back to my youth when I got my first advertising sales job. I was young, eager and ready to go. I even had a cell phone when they were still just the punch-line to yuppie jokes (maybe there’s a future blog about that…). I got in my jeep and headed out to make my fortune and change the world. However, I ran into a brick wall (not literally). The businesses to whom I tried to sell radio advertising were all broke – or so they said.
Countless business owner after business owner all told me the same thing. They all either said they didn’t have any money to advertise, or that they don’t have enough business to advertise.
Looking back now, after 17 years of marketing and an MBA, I know I wasn’t just duped by cunning business owners looking to get rid of yet another salesperson. There was a legitimate business phenomena going on. Many of these businesses actually believed what they were saying. The fact is no one has ever shown some of these businesses that advertising can make you money. I am sure that many, many sales people try to SELL them advertising and they just followed like lemmings and threw money here or there because everyone else did. They chose ineffective advertising like business card sized ads in weekly papers or even worse – the same business card size in the city’s daily paper. They went for the yellow pages and a few coupon mailers because they didn’t know any better.
Most of these business owners I approached didn’t need to be sold, they needed to be educated. What I failed to do was to show how my proposal was a profitable business decision and how reaching the right audience at the right time with the right message can work. Advertising makes you money, just like investing in a cash register or office furniture. I focused on the cost (discounts, free add-ons, etc) and trying to convince the businesses to spend money with me. I should have been focused on the investment of their money, but most importantly the return on investment (ROI). If I had asked these businesses to spend $500 and showed them how that investment could make them $1,000 within a reasonable time period, I think I would have made many more sales. These businesses could have learned the true purpose of advertising – to make money… not spend it. Remember, all advertising will not make you money. Only effective advertising will make you money.
Right medium – right target – right message.
To sum it up, there’s a quote that my coworker Michael likes to use (and I’m going to paraphrase and make it my own: Stopping advertising to save money is like turning off your open sign to save money.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Your comment, “business owners … didn’t need to be sold, they needed to be educated”… the key to AdzZoo’s secret sauce. Once aware of what we offer, no ‘enlightened’ business person could argue against our program for delivering customers at the moment they are ready to buy. Great article.
Reading this brought a tear to my eye. I have spent over 9 years at Idearc. Not a huge fan of the last 2. Not a huge fan of the print publishing industries method of saturation distribution.
I am a huge fan of educating business owners and sharing creative search marketing ideas and new strategies for driving traffic to an online presence.
I just got off the phone with a former Idearc rep and his AdzZoo “pitch”…….
Cheers,
Mike Stewart
Dallas SEO Guru
This program at AdzZoo looks amazing. You guys got your act together. I agree- Let the pros bring you to the top.
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