The arrival of the internet has changed whole industries, and .one of the ironies of life is that one of the industries most .changed has been the advertising industry..
Way back in the “good old days” advertising was all about .brand building and brand awareness, and any advertising .agency would have visibly recoiled from any idea that its purpose was to “drive traffic” to an offer.
And if you had tried to suggest that their performance was measured in terms of sales that would have them diving under their desks !
But now with the internet the idea of driving traffic (traffic generation) to an offer is one of the key underlying concepts behind the whole purpose of internet advertising.
And of course everything that we do in online traffic generation is almost instantly measurable.
We can develop and test adverts quickly, we can easily evaluate the profitability of each source of traffic, and work out what our lifetime customer value is by traffic source..
Way back when Dave (my husband) was a marketing manager for a brewery these were things he could only dream about..
But some things don’t change….
Dave…
“ I remember when I was a marketing manager for a regional brewery up in the North East (in the early 80s) and I had this advertising agency who wanted me to spend money advertising on TV.
They had prepared this wonderful schedule showing all the advertising spots they could buy on the right sort of TV programmes that adult males 18-45 watched.
I fell about laughing when I saw this and the account planner asked “why ?”.
I said “you do realise that most of my customers arent’ sitting at home watching TV when these adverts go out.. They are in the pub drinking my ale”
So the smartest thing I did was to NOT advertise . but spend my money on making the brand look attractive and interesting at the point of sale – on the bar.
Now you may be wondering why I am telling this story and how this is relevant to internet marketing 30 years later ?
Well one of the best things I did was print up a few thousand business cards with my name on the front, and an offer on the back.
I then went and handed them out, and put them on seats, at a load of internet marketing events in the UK…
Was it effective ? YES you bet !!
Some of the customers I got then are still customers now and are some of my best customers too…
Why did it work so well ?
Principle 1 from Sarah’s book of Internet Marketing
“advertise where buyers congregate”
Principle 2 from Sarah’s book of Internet Marketing
“advertise as close as possible to the point of purchase”
Just what Dave was doing 30 years ago. Like I said some things don’t change….
all the best,
Sarah