Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Money- Part Three

Wednesday, April 1, 2015 8:11 AM
In Part 3 of our discussion about “Money” we are going to keep going and dig further into marketing. There may be some of you out there in blog land that want to skip this but I suggest that you don’t. This is vital to your survival and growth so stay with us as we are going to really start heating this up.

As we discussed in our previous posts, marketing is vital to your business but what is even more vital is money. Without the money you are dead in the water, a sitting duck, literally you will be heading under with no hope of getting another breath so pay attention!

The way to get the money is through planning, marketing, sales, customer service and so on. Let’s start with the marketing since we have covered planning in posts prior to this one and will come back to it again in the future but for now we are going to stick with marketing. We want you to be able to finish reading these posts and immediately get to work and make some money.

What are your marketing options? In reality they are endless so we will cover some of the main ones that most people know about and use on a regular basis. In subsequent posts we will get into other marketing tactics that will be fun, zany and off the wall but if used properly will be highly profitable. Let’s go through these main options which are:

  • Print Ads
  • Direct Mail
  • Referrals or Word-of-Mouth

Print Ads:

Print Ads are what many, many small and large businesses run. They can be effective but can also be very expensive. Now when I say very expensive that doesn’t necessarily mean they cost a lot of cash out of your pocket although this is generally true. What I mean is the business you are missing or not getting as a result of the ad is concerned. What do I mean by this?

Let’s say that you are a small business and you are in the business of selling fabrics and items associated with the fabric industry. You take out an ad on a certain day in your local newspaper and wait for the people to line up at your door to come in and buy all of your goods and services. You wait and you wait and only a few people show up. What’s wrong?

There are lots of possible scenario’s, it could be the ad, it could be the newspaper that you placed the ad in or….it could be that the ad won’t work no matter what you do. Why?


Whenever you run an ad anywhere you have to take into account many things, the biggest thing that you have to keep in mind is the audience. Is this audience hungry for what you are selling? This is the biggest question that you must ask yourself. Keep in mind I said that you MUST ask yourself. There are so few people asking this question that it is no wonder so many people give up and close up shop and say the economy is bad. This may or may not be true but it is likely something else.

You then have to know about the media you are using. What do you know about this newspaper? What do you know about their audience? Big questions that you MUST get the answers to and don’t take no for an answer. Can they show you a return on the ads from others that have run ads in their paper? If they can have you spoken to any of these people to find out what they have to say?

If the newspaper has a daily readership of 100,000 and you run an ad to reach your audience, you were being sold on the idea that 100,000 people will see your ad. But is this really true? Is it the right audience? Are they hungry? What demographics and statistics can the newspaper offer you to make you feel more comfortable?


Keep this in mind, although the newspaper may have 100,000 as their circulation, not all of those papers are delivered and even less are actually read. However, the real issue is the question of how many people are seeing your ad and how many of them are in the market for what you sell?

When you run an ad in your local paper you have to hope that a certain amount of people have actually seen and read your ad (your audience is now beginning to shrink). You then have to hope that of those people that have actually seen your ad that a certain number of them have actually read your ad (your audience is shrinking again), with any amount of interest (your audience is shrinking even further).

Keep in mind that each time we hope for an outcome (seen, read, have an interest), the size of your potential  audience keeps shrinking. Of those that have any interest in what you offer, your ad has to be so compelling to actually get them to get out of their seat and come to see you.
 
If all of these factors are spot on, you will drive traffic. If any of these are not spot on then you will not get the result of the ad you were hoping for. For all of this you had the pleasure of actually paying for this for one time and now have to do it again!

Here is another part of this that you must keep in mind: When most people run an ad in their local paper or magazine, etc., they are asking for advice from the person at the paper regarding their ad. Do you really believe and I mean really believe this person is an expert in writing ad copy? Are they an expert at creating a “Call to Action?” What is a “Call to Action?” Great question which we will cover in detail at a later time.

But seriously, the person that is trying to get you to pay them for the ad, the person with virtually no real-life business experience, the person that has no idea what drives people to act is going to give you good, money-making advice for your ad? Seriously?!

Again, I am not saying not to run ads in your local papers, I am saying that you better be great at writing ad copy and you better know all of the stats on the newspaper you are running the ads in.

In the world of marketing and advertising these ads are known as “tomb-stone” ads because they are dead!


Is there a way to make these ads work, of course. How? That’s for another post at another time. We are going to dig into each of the possibilities that we have for marketing your business in detail so stay tuned.

Take this to heart and get started working on this and we will be back shortly with our next post about “Money.”

Until then, subscribe to our different sites and start to get a world-class education that is far and away better than anything you will get in any school. Why? Because this really works, no theory, no psycho-babble, just real, hard-learned knowledge that will launch your business!



Important:

If you know one person that would really benefit and could change their circumstances with this information; be their hero and share this post with them right now!

If you would like help with this or any other business, sales, marketing, social media issues and more, contact us at:

Or leave us a comment below!

Until our next post – we wish you all success!

Dean Marchese

The Dean of Success! ©
 
Toggle Footer