Can You Measure The Advertising Results?

The Single Most Effective Way
Green Product Manufacturers Can Waste Their Advertising Dollar

and

A Forgotten Old Time Trick For Finding
The Most Lucrative Advertising Avenue For Your Business.

Dear Green Manufacturer

Flicking mud at the wall to see what sticks. That’s what a lot of businesses seem to do. Actually, now that I think about it, there seems to be a great deal of building product marketers who flick mud at the wall and then turn their backs so they have no idea of knowing what stuck where.

Advertising is not cheap. So why would anyone create a campaign they cannot measure? I mean you want to know how much you spent in order to get some business in. Don’t you? 68% of marketing managers across all industries do not know their campaign ROI.

Who Knows?

There are only three methods of advertising I know of which are directly measurable. And a whole heap which are not, unless you use the old time trick below. By far, more money is spent on the methods that are inherently immeasurable. They are all effective, if they’re used properly. But you can’t effectively measure them.

These include

• TV
• Radio
• Billboards
• Directories
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Other businesses Newsletters

Each of these methods will be seen by lots of people. Most of which will not be in your target market with the exception of industry specific magazines and periodicals. But how many people exactly? How many of them actually mentally registered your ad? How many read it? How many of the actual readers of your ad responded? How would you know?

Verifiable

If you want to know weather you are about to invest in a measurable method of advertising you only need to ask one question of the people you are about to pay. “Can you provide me with verifiable return on investment data for some of your past customers?”

If you are about to engage in any of the media listed above you will get a hesitant, lip biting “No”. And they will most likely try to avoid giving you that no. They don’t like it. It doesn’t look good.

Don’t get me wrong. The media above would not have stuck around if they did not produce results at all. Just keep in mind that you have very little ability to know who read it, and why they didn’t call. And testing for better results can be very expensive.

Why Measure?

Well you gotta know if you’re making a profit. That’s obvious. But there’s a bit more to it than that. What you want to know is where are the holes in your marketing. Where are you being ineffective and how can you make your campaigns better.

If you’ve spent a small fortune on a Billboard campaign and it’s returning nothing simply because the emphasis is on the wrong word, you want to know about it so you don’t make that kind of mistake again. Of course, how can you ever know why people don’t respond to something you can’t really test due to the cost.

You also want to know the kind of clients you are getting from which avenues. For example. For a building industry product manufacturer you might be getting hundreds of customers through an owner builder magazine but they all only buy one unit of a $50 product. Whereas you may only get a few customers per month through an architecture magazine read by multi-level residential specifiers, but of course they are worth considerably more because they buy hundreds of units a pop. And repeatedly.

What to Measure?

The reason I like direct mail and email is because the cost of testing is cheap. You can send out to just a small portion of a list of highly targeted prospects. Track the result. Alter and test again till you get a winner and then send out the full blast.

You want to know about every campaign…

• Number of people you are contacting (fairly straight forward for direct mail)
• Responders
• Response Rate
• Conversion Rate
• Number of Buyers
• Profit per sale
• Cost per new customer
• Total Profit from campaign
• Cost per piece
• Time length of campaign
• Return On Investment

Don’t Spare The Details

Now Direct mail campaigns are traceable through tracking numbers. Email is automatically traceable and cost cents on the dollar. So direct mail campaigns in print or digital make measuring those things very easy. But before you can do any direct mail piece you first need the leads. Which is why we need all those different media advertising.

To get the personal details of highly qualified interested prospects. But as we have established there is little way to effectively measure their effectiveness.

Unless.

Unless we use an antiquated old strategy which seems to have been forgotten. I don’t remember the last time someone asked me over the phone or in a response email how I found them. It’s a simple enough question. It takes all of 1.2 seconds to ask and an approximate total of 3.4 seconds to get the response and yet very few businesses care. Perhaps they feel it’s embarrassing to ask. But I quite like being asked questions like that.

It tells me I’m dealing with a business that looks after the details. It gives me confidence I’m dealing with someone who’s going to look after me.

And it tells you where you are being effective and where you are wasting your money.

Wouldn’t you rather know?

Warmest Regards

Chance.

Get New Customers From Research Surveys

Dear  Green Manufacturer.

Has your intuition ever let you down? I started and walked away from three dismal failures based on intuition.

There have been highly successful businesses built on a foundation gut feeling and intuition. There’s no doubt it works some of the time. But can anyone afford to rely on that alone. Better decisions come from being profoundly related to reality.

Research is a far more sturdy foundation.

Surveys are the personal, in the trenches method of getting an insight into what customers really want, how they want it delivered and what they are willing to pay for it. Armed with that information we can design our businesses in a way that powerfully attracts exactly the customers we want to serve.

But they can be a little scary. I write great Surveys and get honest results but I still feel like I’m going to look like a fool when I’m asking the questions. What I want to share with you will help take the heat off conducting surveys for you or your staff and actually bring in sales at the same time.

The easiest survey is to just ask the people in your target market “Hey, wadya want?” They’ll tell you. People love telling you what they want. But you may want to get a little more specific than that.

Surveys produce money making information in a short time from relatively few people. You only need to ask 100 of the right people the right kind of questions and you’ll learn exactly what your market would love you to deliver and how much they will be willing to pay. But you have to ask in the right way.

But wait, there’s more. A well constructed survey, conducted in the right way, can also lead to new customers and sales.

So what is a well constructed survey and what is the right way to do it? A good survey has these qualities.

• It’s about the person being survey
• It’s warm and inviting
• It focuses on core desires and fears first.
• Makes an offer at the end

About Them Not You

It seems counter intuitive at first. When you are conducting a survey you want to know about YOUR market. So YOU can produce better products for YOUR business and make more money for YOU. But YOUR customers do not give a fig leaf about YOU and YOUR profits.

For a survey to produce reliable information, or to get any answers at all, it needs to focus absolutely on the person you are surveying and what is important to them. It simply does not matter what is important to you. And this is because your customers only buy for reasons important to them. It’s that way now, always has been, and always will.

So when you ask your questions, ask for what they think and feel.

Warm and Inviting

Interestingly, if you focus on them and what they think and feel about the area or issue in question, it will automatically come across as warm and inviting. Who can resist feeling enamored toward someone who is genuinely interested in us and what we find important.

You will be familiar with the opposite of course. The guy who sits at the dinner party and bangs on and on about himself until people are leaving early.

We live in a world where so many businesses are doing just that. All hollering “Look at me, notice me. I’m terribly important to you, can’t you see.” When someone begins to take an interest in you in the current marketing environment you will naturally want to engage in that conversation and you will naturally like the person who wants to talk about you.

It feels warm and inviting.

Core Desires First

Core desires are what drive sales. We all buy whatever we buy because we believe it will bring us closer to what we really want.

We don’t buy a solar panels. We buy independence.

We don’t buy insurance. We buy safety.

We don’t buy nutritional supplements. We buy health and vitality.

If you know what a persons core desires are you will know how to design your products and services, and your promotions so you can sell your customers what they really want. Your surveys will give you far more important information if you ask questions that get you closer and closer to understanding exactly what your prospect desires most. Remember, a desire can also look like avoiding a fear.

Interestingly again, this is exactly what people really love to talk about. And it will have the effect of making them fall in love with you and leave them open to answering other questions of a more technical or specific nature. The idea is to open them and warm them up so they have no problem giving you all the information you want.

And knowing their core desires is the most important part of any survey anyway. So you may as well start there. The perfect way to get into core desire is to directly ask…

“Why do you [insert niche specific activity here]?” (eg. Why do you Design Homes?)

Whatever answer they give, you’ll need to dig a little deeper because they won’t give it up straight away. So follow up with…

“Great. Any other reasons?”

The Right Place

You will waste your time if you try to conduct a survey on people who are not interested in your niche. So conducting a survey in the middle of a busy city mall for example is completely pointless. You’ll get an average view of the average person. Not a focused view of the people in your niche.

Surveys should be conducted where the people in your niche congregate. Perhaps at an event that relates to your market. Or on a website or forum that serves your crowd. And if you have a list of customers, ask them!

Make An Offer

Consider this. If someone has taken the time to answer your questions because the subject interests them. And you’ve done a good job of being warm and inviting because you’ve asked all about them and what they really desire. Don’t you think they are going to be open to an offer at that point?

The last question on any survey should be.

“We have created an offer especially for people who have taken this survey…[enter special deal here]. Are you interested?”

Power Research

Now there’s some powerful research. You know all about what they want. You know some extra details because you asked for them, and you know they are interested in your products enough to take you up on a special offer. You also have a concrete opportunity to get their full details and you got some money. You won’t always get the sale. But it’s worth the question.

Survey’s are an extremely important part of developing your products, services and promotions. Make them interesting and inviting by focusing on the prospects core desires and make an offer to get an immediate sale.

Warm Regards

Chance.

The Secret’s Secret Secret

Ok, look. I really don’t like cheesy, new age, positive thinking, “The Secret” watching freaks. I can’t stand people who use terms like ‘journey of discovery’ or words like ‘Transformation’. But to tell you the truth, my recent transformation has been an amazing journey of discovery.

But here’s the thing. It had nothing to do with synchronicity, the stars aligning, nude crystal chanting or deeply intense daydreaming. Any transformation I’ve undergone in the last two years has been a direct result of one thing. I did the work. I did what my coaches and mentors told me to do to get the results I wanted.

Results like having copywriting clients call me from word of mouth only. Without them seeing even a whisper of marketing. Being invited to give presentations at music festivals (that was weird), and creating a philanthropic project which after only a couple of conversations is already gaining momentum and being noticed by a couple of big organisations as a way to do great things across Australia for troubled youth.

Don’t get me wrong. I think “The Secret” is a great lark. Not because of it’s content. Because some clever marketers got together to create a film with a message everyone wants to hear. Sit on your arse and think about what you want and it’ll all just happen. Wouldn’t it be cool if it were true. But it’s not. So get over it and get on with doing what it takes to get things done.

Which isn’t much by the way. Unless you try to do what I always did. Which was everything. I just can’t do everything. Fact of life. Which I think is the problem for most people. We look at a task. Look at how much there is to do. Say ‘I can’t do all that’ and then go looking for fairy tales to believe in so we don’t have to take responsibility for what we think we can’t do.

We don’t need to do it all. What we need is the ability to inspire the world around us to join in the creation of what we want to create.

For me that took training. Notice I didn’t say ‘for me I was born with that ability’? No, it took training. Training which anyone can do. But it’s not any sort of training I can explain. It’s not about inspiring others by the way. It’s about being inspirational, if that’s what you want to be. I don’t know, you might want to be something else. Like courageous, energetic or beautiful.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. The point is, when you really be those things (and not just a cover up which looks like you are) that’s when the world around you starts to move. Along with doing the bloody work.

If you want to know what that training was. Ask. Happily tell you. But you will have to take the initiative to do the simple things required to get you where you want to be. Which is ask.

That’s my rant for the day.

Scott

Everything/Nothing

This is a blog post of pure potential. It hasn’t happened yet. But, by golly, when it does it’s sure to touch move and inspire.