So….there’s lots and lots and lots of ways to spend money in marketing. One way I tried was combining a quarterly promotion with advertising space. I tried it…..ONCE. When you’re trying anything and everything to figure out your customer, to get them to respond, to see what they like, what gets them to buy, etc., you’re bound to try something that generates little no results. Case in point: the coupon ad.
Get 10% off your next order!
I love the coupon ad, it works for grocery/drug stores and large television/appliance/video game retailers. I personally look for the plethora of coupon ads for black friday, who doesn’t??? So I figured it was worth a shot. I was running a promotion way back in Q4 of 2009 and was thinking about all the various ways I could promote it. I had just done a direct mailer (uber successful, results exceeded expectations) and thought I might try to promote the deal in a large prominent magazine. I didn’t do a full page ad (very expensive) but opted to do a junior size ad (still very expensive). The magazine reaches over 50,000 people, I figured, why not??!! It may just generate better results than my direct mailer did.
Wrong. Apparently, the customer group I was targeting does not respond to coupon ads in a magazine. I had a total of 4 buyers….yep, 4. Not only did I not sell the product thru the promotion, but I didn’t even come close to recouping the costs for the ad. Now, in my book, this is not a failure. This is simply a channel that did not carry the message in the best way possible. Yes, it was there for all to see, but what is the customer’s behavior when flipping thru a magazine? Do they typically leaf thru every single page? Or do they look for articles that appeal to them, read those, close the magazine and place it on their coffee table? Quite possibly.
Here’s what I classify as a failure: running the same type of promotion via an ad again. If it didn’t work the first time, it won’t work the second time. Lesson learned. Now what I HAVE done that generated some good results was promoting trade show giveaways/promos via a full size ad. The promo was a small component to the ad, it certainly wasn’t the focus, and it did generate more traffic at our booth.
Marketing for me is a lot of problem solving and trying out new equations to see if they equal success. The equations that don’t work, I simply don’t bother with ever again. And until money starts growing on trees, this will be my very disciplined approach to marketing.
Remember, you don’t KNOW until you TRY 🙂 These experiences, the good and the bad, make you a more aware and experienced marketing person.
To view more pieces from my portfolio, click here!
Design Butterfly Blog 