Question mark in Esbjerg by alexanderdrachmann

Time and again I’m amazed at why small businesses spend over $2500 to be the “featured business” at the back of my local newspaper… right before all the classified ads. I’m tempted to call the advertising department and listen to their sales pitch. It’s obviously very convincing. Week after week businesses waste money on this “service”. Last year I actually made a phone call to a couple of the small businesses that had been “featured” (or should I say “conned”!). I asked them how it was working for them. Their response?

“Ummmm…. we’re actually not quite sure. Our enquiries haven’t increased. I guess it hasn’t really made a difference at all.”

Surprise, surprise.

Well, I shouldn’t be so smug. How are these people to know any better? After all, their skill lies at the heart of providing their service – not in marketing! And yet, they have placed their faith in an advertising salesperson… and their dollars down the drain.

That’s right! They had been talked into spending over $2500 on advertising that brought absolutely NO RESPONSE!

Obviously there’s a big problem with the style of advertising; but there are more problems that YOU must be aware of before paying for any kind of print advertising:

You must be able to track the response to your ad. Even if these local newspaper reviews were working, these business owners wouldn’t know. They had not incorporated any means of tracking the leads from the ad. It’s as easy as a designated phone number – or even a “when you call, tell them Bill sent you” printed next to the phone number.

That’s about all I have time for writing this quick post. I know I haven’t written for ages – I have been busy writing copy!

Let me leave you with this little message:

Rather than spending over $2500 on a print ad (like my local business friends), why not invest that $2500 in a lead-generating website? You can setup a simple web page with sales copy to sell your product/service and a form to capture leads (which you would then follow up). You would send traffic to your website through online advertising (such as Google’s Adwords), your business cards, classified advertising, flyers, word of mouth, etc.).

Now doesn’t that sound like a much smarter way to spend your advertising dollar?