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(Article first published in Sept '08. It has been modified slightly to suit its publication on our site)
When people think about marketing, they tend to think about the big impressive stuff, like full-page adverts in the national newspapers, or even radio and TV ads. The problem with these types of activities is that they are expensive, so many business owners will run one ad or a short, one-off campaign and hope that it pays dividends. Unfortunately, marketing rarely works like that and so the business owner ends up having spent a lot of money with nothing to show for it.
There is a rule in marketing and it's called the "Rule of Eight". This states that it takes on average eight views of a business name before the brand becomes memorable. This means that running a single ad will at best get you a one-off small return, but it won't deliver long-term return from new customer acquisition.
The answer therefore is consistency and that means repetition of whatever activities you plan to run. So a simple question you should ask your self is this:
Can I Afford To Run This Ad/Activity For At Least 8 Insertions?
If the answer is no, then you should probably think again and plan to use a different approach.
I am going to give you a prime example of an alternative approach to traditional advertising based marketing. This example is based on the fact that any activity you run that helps to promote your business is 'marketing'.
Meath Widget Supplies is a new business that doesn't have a lot of marketing funds to spend. They have already developed a simple catalogue and they want to target fabrication companies across the county and eventually the country. The traditional approach would be to look at creating an advert and running it in the relevant trade publications. The only problem is that each ad is coming out at over €1,000. This means that they would have to spend €8,000 before they see any long-term return on their investment. No problem for an established company, but not an option for them.
Instead, they create a punchy sales letter and have 1,000 custom mouse mats made (approx €1 - €2 each). They then informally and personally visit each potential customer and leave with them their letter and catalogue, plus a few mouse mats (one for each relevant employee).
This means that every customer now sees 'Meath Widget Supplies' repeatedly every day, so who are they going to call when they need to re-stock on widgets?
You might be asking, "Why Mouse Mats?" Well if you've ever visited a fabrication company you'll know that the mouse mats get very grubby, very quickly. So a new, clean mouse mat is always welcome.
This highlights another important point - knowing how to get to your target market. If you know who they are then you can start to figure out what marketing activities are going to work best to attract them.
Of course, if you can afford to run print advertising or other more traditional forms of marketing, then the moral of this story is that you should plan a longer term campaign rather than just one insertion every few months.
Franco De Bonis has worked in the field of sales and marketing promotion since 1990 and was most recently the global marketing manager for a major international technology company before setting up DG Group in January 2007.
DG Group is dedicated to delivering all the marketing solutions any company may require. Whether it's a website or leaflets and brochures, or even some product packaging; DG Group will manage the whole project and even provide guidance along the way.
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