The other day I got an email from a firm called AdvertTracker, whose skills either do not include literacy or who do not bother to check their emails for grammatical errors before they send them out.
“This is one product that’s (sic) works equally well for Large Corporations and small SME’s – Increasing the efficiency of your advertising spend –Know for sure what advertising pays AND WHAT DOES NOT!”
Below was a testimonial from Chris Hayden, Chairman, Ford Retail:
“AdvertTracker provides our business with the facts about media cost per call, and call handling performance – as a result both areas have dramatically improved to maximise return from our marketing spend and our sales from phone enquiries”.
I looked to see what AdvertTracker does and was amused and astonished when I found out.
They measure firms’ advertising effectiveness in a way so ludicrously obvious and easy that it is laughable.
Guess what? They count and measure. What they count is phone calls – how many each ad gets, how many are answered, how many ignored and so on.
Then they stick a fancy little page online with a few colourful graphics that tells you what’s happening day to day. It’s like Google Analytics for simpletons.
It is staggering to reflect that direct marketers have been counting and measuring since the days of Queen Victoria, but some fools haven’t got round to it.
You don’t need to pay anyone else to do this. But AdvertTracker will do well – and deserves to. Not because their prospects are as illiterate as they are but because their service does what anyone spending advertising money should and can do very easily, but so many are either too idle or too thick to.
A chief reason is that their advertising agencies blind them with bullshit about branding and awareness so as to avoid their efforts being properly measured.
I hope AdvertTracker charges like the Light Brigade, because people too stupid to be doing this already deserve to be punished.
There is a massive flaw, of course. Those who measure properly know that the ads which produce the most enquiries don’t always get the most sales. I learned this the hard way in the mid ’70’s – by going broke.
And even if you get that right, those that get the most sales don’t always get the best roi in terms of long term customer value. But let’s face it, these people need to learn to walk before they can run.
If you have read this far, you may be wondering about the tantalising moment I mentioned.
Well, it is to do with getting more leads off your website. One of your big frustrations must be that you get visitors – but they don’t turn into leads.
There is a tantalising moment when people are browsing on your site. It is that moment when they are thinking of enquiring – but don’t.
Some technology developed by a firm I know prompts visitors to act. For one firm it increased product trials by 400%.
Does this interest you? If so would you like to see how it works?
I don’t mean a hard sell face-to face sales pitch. It is a video we did at EADIM last year.
