Off Line Businesses can learn from online marketers. Have a look at this case study where an off line marketer wants to stop and the publication does not know how to address the issue. What can we learn from the incident?
One of the Coffee News Publisher received an email from an advertiser wanting to stop his ad in Coffee News.
The Coffee News Publisher:
I received the following from a computer repair company that started with me on April 3, using a version of the “Computers gone bad” ad that is in the ad exchange:
Martin,
The Advertiser:
I writing this letter to cancel my advertiser agreement, once the 4 months are up. I signed the contract on 3/20/09, according to my paperwork. Although we get a few calls here or there, it’s just not worth the $160 a month (that’s my base rate for this edition). Most of the calls are just people asking for prices. So far (editors note – in just 5 weeks!) we only had two customers that brought in their computers. It seems most of the customers are from referrals and repeat customers. So on that wise (sic), after my 4 months are up, I no longer want to continue the advertising.
Signed by one of the owners.
The Coffee News Publisher:
I intend to go see this customer. My thoughts are that after only 5 weeks, they have had several calls and 2 sales. The sales should result in additional referrals and repeat business. I tell every advertiser that they may not get any response for 8-12 weeks at least. This looks like great response to me, considering they are a new advertiser, using an ad that is just starting to brand them. As to the calls, I would like to know how many is “a few calls here or there”.
Tell me if I’m wrong, but it looks to me like their ad is working well for them and that things are only going to get better. What other things might you suggest I say to them? I would appreciate anyone’s thoughts on this one.
Best Regards,
My Answer:
The Coffee News publisher is correct in saying that 2 sales in 5 weeks are not bad depending on the conversion cost or rather the long term income projected for each customer. The problems that I see are:
- Most businesses don’t know the long term the projected income per customer. If this advertiser gets two customers at $160 or $80 per customer and the long term profit per customer is $400 then the ad cost is not an issue. And we have not even calculated the referrals that a happy new client can bring this business.
- Many businesses are oblivious to the cultivation of relationships. They ignore the people they are doing business with, the people they have done business with and they have no way of creating trusting relationships with people who only make inquiries.
- Most businesses advertise today and then expect the kiss on the first date.
- Most sellers of advertising, like Coffee News publishers, have no idea how to educate advertisers, how to lower advertisers inflated expectations regarding advertising response rates.
- Most off line advertisers cannot measure their response rates and therefore have no clue what their real response rate is. Their best measure of success is the wasteful number of copies distributed.
I Believe We Can Learn Lots from Internet Marketing
Let’s compare the online approach with the traditional off line marketing approach.
- Online: The expert online marketers know that people are first searching for information. Therefore visitors arrive at their website, read but are not ready to buy and they move to the next website.
- Off Line: The same happens with the off line business. People see an ad and then phone to ask for more information. Again they are not ready to buy. They move on and then buy later when they are ready. From someone else?
- Online: The marketers quickly realised that potential paying clients get info from their website and then disappear. When the visitor has collected all the information he might purchase from the next guy. To improve their success rate online marketers only give you some of the information and then get you to exchange your name and email for more information. To entice potential clients the online marketers exchange free gifts (information) for the permission to educate them via blog/newsletter. This allows them to inform and then create a trusting relationship.
- Off Line: Let’s look at the computer guy, above, he provides info on costs but have no way of educating the potential client. He did not use the opportunity to ask for the name and email address to send the costs via email and then regular free computer tips via a blog/newsletter. Therefore the off line guy wasted money advertising because he does not have an automated tool to convert a potential customer into a paying customer.
- Online: As soon as person on the pre-sales newsletter decides to purchase he gets transferred to product/service newsletter dedicated to her purchase.
- Off Line: Most off line businesses have no way of cultivating relationships with people who bought from them. For example; as a Coffee News publisher you have potential advertisers, paying advertisers and past advertisers.
- Online guys talk about traffic and how many visitors convert into subscribers and then spenders.
- Off Line: Contacts need to be categorised, added to a relationship marketing tool and the conversions measured. (Off line businesses have the following different contacts; contacts interested in what’s on offer but not ready to buy, contacts already paying for a service/product and contacts who stopped paying for a product/service).
- Off Line: The Kiss On The First Date Mentality
The computer guy thinks he can advertise, get the girl responding to his ad today and get the kiss on the first date.
He’s smoking his socks. Ask me.
Our problem as off line marketers publishers are that we do not educate our users.
Coffee News publishers sell the ads/service/ to advertisers who think they know what advertising is all about. Some of them think that when they advertise people will immediately start running in to their shop and start queuing up for the kiss. It took a long time for me to get my first kiss. The first time I tried I got a smack. It’s only after I gave and gave and gave; did the girl trust me and I got my long awaited kiss ;-)
My Proposed Solution can be found here:
What I did not include at the link above:
- If you advertise find a way to measure all responses.
- If you are selling advertising educate your advertisers and show them how to measure response.
- Decide how may many new paying customers (give the life of a customer) is enough to pay for the ad.
- Make it easy for people, who want to do business with you, to stick to you. And automate the process.
It takes time before people part with money; they need to know you, like you and trust you. And we can do it with the right approach. Give them gifts (information) and then ask them for the kiss.
