Hunting for Customers with Advertising
One traditional approach to advertising is to “hunt” for customers with our advertising. Here’s what that means: we have a product and/or service to sell and we are going to contact as many prospective customers as we can in the hope that when we contact some, they need or want our offer immediately.
Radio and television advertising fall in the category of hunting for customers. To be effectual, both of these related mediums require a sustained commitment and a significant budget. Why so?
By far, the majority of us now fast forward through television commercial messages. So we only see an advertiser’s message if we inadvertently forget to hit the >> button on the remote. If we do, it’s normally because we’re preoccupied with something other than the TV. Therefore, if we’re not watching, we probably miss this commercial as well. A television campaign must be run for a sustained period of time.
Radio is now a background noise to almost everyone. We have the programming on while we’re otherwise occupied. The easy, affordable availability of music and information we prefer without any commercial breaks is a reality. Therefore, a radio ad must be run hundreds or even thousands of times to effectively catch the attention of our audience.
At their best, radio and television still haven’t captured any revenue. Why not? The last time you heard a commercial message on TV or radio and thought to yourself “I should call them” what telephone number/address/website did they give? Can you remember right now with no memory aid? Probably not. There is something to be said for these mediums in gaining name recognition and establishing branding. This choice is a challenge for a fledgling organization on a shoestring budget.
The other advertising method of hunting for customers is direct mail. This is called “geo-targeted”. Very specific geographical areas are selected for a direct mail campaign. A variation of this is being market specific in your mailing. This is self explanatory.
Once again, our aim is to have our mail piece arrive just at a time when our audience is primed and ready to accept our offer; or will be soon.
This time, our contact information is in print, in their hand. Some innovative advertisers even attach a small magnet to the printed material so it can effortlessly be put on the refrigerator for future reference.
Using TV, radio and/or direct mail will yield opportunities to make your full presentation. That is true whether it’s done one on one, or as a shopping experience associated with a trip to a retail location. Advertising brought this prospect to us. Our marketing and sales skills must be able to “close” the deal with the potential customer.
Historically, the methods of advertising we’ve identified as “hunting for customers” yield a response of approximately 1%. This is normal and acceptable performance. Simply stated, for every 100 people our message reaches, 1 will afford us the opportunity to present our offer.
Then we apply a factor to the number of respondents. It is our closing ratio. If we are an excellent sales and marketing organization, we will typically close 6 out of 10 opportunities we are given to present our offer.
To keep the math simple, let’s say we reach 1000 people with our message. Our advertising campaign should have produced 10 responses. We can make 10 presentations; or our retail location has 10 new visitors from our advertising effort. When we close 6 of those, we have seen a 0.6% return on that effort. We should have made 6 sales while reaching 1,000 people.
There are more intricacies and nuances to the advertising mediums mentioned above, but these are the basics.
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