“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted,” Philadelphia department store magnate John Wanamaker was famously quoted as saying. “The trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Almost 100 years later, and while it could be argued that today we have a more scientific (less pie-in-the-sky) approach to marketing, I’m yet to meet a marketer who hasn’t experienced this sentiment at least once in their career.
You are a new business, with operational and cash flow challenges, not to mention a ‘to-do’ list as long as your arm.
Maybe you’re in the midst of a major identify crisis. Whatever your financial situation (and state of mind), your marketing activities need to deliver a strong return on investment (ROI), and fast.
Explaining ROI
So let’s start at the beginning.
What is ROI? Think of it this way: You rent a targeted list of 100 local dentists, and send them a package containing free samples of your new dental floss.
After adding up the cost of renting the list, printing, postage and samples, you could easily end up spending £3 for every package.
This means that your campaign needs to make £300 in revenue to break even and £600 to double your money, or achieve a 100% return on investment.
Building a brand
I would always recommend to any new business that the first area to invest marketing spend in is building a strong brand identity.
You need an instantly-recognisable brand that represents what you stand for as a business.
It’s just common sense: You can’t effectively market yourself to others, if you don’t know who you are yourself.
As part of the brand building process, you’ll need to create a website, regardless of your industry.
Your site should be simple, clean, easy to navigate and be search engine optimised.
This is your ‘shop window’ – your book cover that you will undoubtedly be judged upon.
If you do nothing else at this early stage, do these two things.
You can’t add building blocks to grow your business in the future if you don’t have strong foundations in place.
Choosing an advertising channel
The roadblock that almost all startups face, is their shoe string budgets and let’s face it, routes such as advertising can be expensive.
Yes, it can enable you to reach highly targeted audiences on a large scale but there are many different types (tactical and local advertising looks very different to national advertising), and it’s important to understand the difference.
Certain channels are more effective in terms of generating leads and others perform better for building brand awareness.
For example, television advertising vs. e-mail and content marketing.
In the short term, digital marketing is more likely to deliver more bang for your buck.
It can be highly targeted and with today’s technology, easier than ever to track, analyse and refine. Longer term, having a well-established brand is invaluable.
Whether your budget is £5,000 or £50,000, you have to make every penny count.
It sounds obvious, but the key is knowing which media channels are the best fit for your business, and it’s wise to work with an experienced marketing agency to help you work out what these are.
A major factor that will affect the way you engage with prospective customers is whether your business is B2B or B2C.
B2B marketing is much more about reaching smaller, highly targeted audiences using email marketing, SEO, paid search, selective social channels, direct mail and vertical press advertising.
B2C also utilises these channels but can also include bigger and more expensive opportunities such as PR, television, radio and outdoor advertising.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) published an interesting report in 2014 which revealed that email marketing and SEO deliver the best ROI for most companies:
As demonstrated here SEO is a cost-effective way of boosting the visibility of your company’s website through unpaid results.
These are often referred to as natural, organic or earned results, and differ from paid search, whereby you are bidding on keywords and paying on a results basis.
Similarly, clever email marketing can be extremely effective, however investing in a quality platform can be expensive and time consuming.
For smaller, new businesses, working closely with a specialist agency to run targeted campaigns and set up a customer contact strategy can be far more cost and time effective.
Whatever channels you choose to invest in, make sure you take your time and do the research.
Avoid ending up John Wanamaker’s position by understanding which cogs of your marketing machine are working at all times.
Here at City Road Media, we have been successfully converting audiences into buyers through dynamic marketing solutions since 2008. We work closely with our clients as their marketing partner to seamlessly plan, execute and measure every step of the campaign process from strategy, data and design through to delivery and analysis. We offer a flexible combination of email, digital, advertising, direct mail, inserts, outdoor, radio and TV.
In today’s climate, it can be tough to cut through the noise and make an impact. We know what sticks, and we’re constantly adapting to ensure we guide our clients on the most responsive approach. As a smart and nimble agency we consider our strengths to be our people, experience and passion for helping our clients to achieve long-term success.
To learn more, visit cityroadmedia.co.uk or call us on +44 (0)207 502 8220