Are You Marketing Enough?

Every business needs to market, but how much is enough?

by Brock Henderson Principal, Henderson & Associates [September 30, 2008]

I was talking with a prospective client a couple of weeks back who wanted me to write some advertising copy for some postcards and a print ad. During the course of our conversation, it became clear that he was under the impression that he only needed to do one mailing of postcards to start raking in the customers. When I told him that it would take multiple mailings, and multiple exposures in different media, he was stunned. "You're kidding!" he said.

It is surprising, but many intelligent business owners think that sending one mailing or running one ad will have the phone ringing off the hook. Unfortunately, it just isn't so.

You don't run out and buy something from Target just because they are having a sale, so why should anyone else pick up the phone and call you just because they saw your ad one time? They won't.

We all tune out commercials. On the radio, on television, in the mail, in newspapers and magazines; they are seen by our eyes and heard by our ears, but they don't fully register in our brains. Because of this, we need to be exposed to a company or product multiple times before the light goes on and we take some sort of action. It takes a minimum of three exposures to a specific commercial or ad before our brain registers it; then it takes five to seven of those "registers" for our minds to kick in and say "We need to do or buy that".

That's a minimum of fifteen to twenty-one exposures before the potential customer wakes up and takes notice.

Then there is the question of timing. Just because I have seen and my brain has registered your ad doesn't mean I feel like I need your product/service. I may have heard dozens of car commercials, but the one that sparks my interest and gets my attention is the commercial that I see or hear right after I decide I need to shop for a new car. If the car dealership only ran one commercial a year, they would be out of luck unless that one commercial hit right at the same time my need appeared.

You need to advertise multiple times to penetrate the customers natural inclination to "tune out" commercials, and to try and hit the same time frame that the customer decides they need your product/service.

In addition, you need to advertise in different mediums. You can't accomplish your sales goals by just advertising on the radio, and on one station. Diversification is a crucial element in marketing. Utilizing various advertising mediums accomplishes two things:

1. It reaches a broader potential customer base. Not everyone reads the newspaper or listens to a particular radio station, so by advertising in different forms and on different stations you increase your opportunity to be noticed by different market segments.
   
   
2. The various advertising reinforces each other. Thus a prospect may see your ad in the newspaper, hear your commercial on the radio, and see your billboard, all adding up in a cumulative "registering" that you exist.

This should also help to explain why there is no single "best" form of advertising; it all works together.

So now come the questions: Where should I be advertising? How much should I be advertising?

Where should I be advertising?
The answer is different for every business; heck, you may advertise your T-1s one way and your webhosting a completely different way. It will depend on what you are trying to sell, your market area, and it will even to an extent depend on what your competition is doing.

Here are some general suggestions:

• Talk radio is effective because people are actively listening and their minds don't automatically tune out the commercials. A disadvantage is that some talk radio stations have very expensive advertising rates.
  
  
• Religious radio stations have loyal listeners who tend to support businesses that advertise on the station; this is very good when it comes to the residential market. While their advertising rates tend to be considerably lower than premium market stations, their listenership is also lower, but it is the loyalty of their listeners that makes them worth the investment.
  
  
• Direct, opt-in, e-mail campaigns—when properly targeted and repeated—are effective. The problem is that when you buy a list of opt-in e-mail addresses, it will be difficult to keep the list within your service area unless you are in a large metropolitan area.
  
  
• Telephone sales are annoying and universally despised, but they work. It was through a telephone solicitation that I first subscribed to DSL.

How much should I be advertising?
There are a couple of ways to answer this question; if you mean how much should I be spending on advertising, the answer is . . .

You should be spending 10 percent to 15 percent of what you want your revenue to be. If you want revenue of $1,000,000 then you should be spending $100,000 to $150,000 on advertising.

The old "rule of thumb" of spending 5 percent to 8 percent of revenue simply does not get your message out the way it used to. Five to eight percent might be a realistic figure for some business and some industries, but ISPs need to be much more aggressive if they want to compete against the major telcos.

Most ISPs put any extra money into improving infrastructure. Unfortunately, the improvement in infrastructure doesn't help your market share. The reality is that unless you gain more customers and revenue, you will continue to fall behind; thus I urge you to put every spare nickel into increased and improved marketing.

If you mean, how frequent or heavy or diverse should my advertising be, the answer is . . .

Very. You want to beat your prospect over the head repeatedly with your message to get your name and message "registered" in their brain. You need to be advertising frequently because while they may not need you today, tomorrow could be a completely different story and you want to get their attention when their need is high. You should be advertising in a variety of different media to reinforce your marketing, and gain the attention of those who might have missed you in one or more of the other media.

Diversity and repetition are key components of any successful marketing plan.

I realize that most of you will not see any immediate improvement in sales with increased marketing, but you need to give it time. Fight the urge to kill your Marketing Director when sales don't immediately skyrocket; suppress the urge to strangle the various media sales reps; and do the hardest thing of all: wait.

Over time (and we're talking three or four months) things will gradually start to improve. Think of it as pushing a car, it takes a lot of time and effort to get it rolling, but once it starts to roll the pushing becomes easier. So too it is with marketing. It takes time, effort and money, but the results will come—if and only if your marketing campaign is a solid and well-coordinated marketing campaign.

—End