Real Price of Marketing
Some business meetings and decisions are like staring out of a window whilst drinking coffee and thinking about the next day of. That has a real measurable price.
The Real Price of Marketing
Businesses complain about the costs of marketing. You want to know how much marketing REALLY costs?
After working with clients for the past 15 years or more there are certain things that remains the very same every time I get a phone call and its this.
Marketing sounds too expensive I can’t afford it.
Then they fly away and start working with what they think is a cheap marketing team that have no idea how to create strong powerful direct marketing. The campaign predictably then fails so they move on to the next team and do the same again. And then to the next team and do the same again. Then after trying for a year or two they call me again and ask me to review, critiques and then help with a new marketing campaign.
So truthfully what is the REAL price of marketing?
If you are a business owner and entrepreneur or a marketing guy running a team read this and prepare for some truths.
I am going to base the following article on 5 staff because that isn’t uncommon although its a lot lower that what a lot of my clients have.
Look at this. This is male or female but I have used male for the example.
- £50,0000 for a Marketing Director
- £35,000 for his car
- £1,200 for his mobile phone
- £20,000 to install his office
- £1,500 for his MacBookPro
- £600 for his iPad
- £20,000 a year for his bonuses
- £10,000 per year (low) for travel, hotels, overtime and other bits
That is £138,300 per annum so far for one marketing expert.
Then ...
£130,000 for 4 team members
They might have cars and they certainly have offices and equipment.
£150,000 at a very low guess
Total estimate (which is way under) is
£288,300 annually for a team of marketing experts.
Once the team is in place the years of feedback I am getting is this … most of these guys have no idea what they are doing.
- Adverts don’t work
- Direct mail campaigns fail to respond
- Social media flopped
- Email is a waste of time
- Billboards irrelevant
- Database marketing (the most profitable) is never used and if it is used its used badly
The most the marketing experts ever seem to do is book in advertising space and then spend the companies cash on marketing into that empty space.
The ads are mostly developed in-house by graphics guys that have zero idea on what makes the mind of a buyer actually work and the words are usually done by the in house copywriter that rarely writes anything apart from a 10,000 texts a day to everyone and anyone.
They appear to know nothing as judged by their results. Please prove me otherwise!
You know the things like the 16 micro-second mind response to an image and how the beta brain decisions then react. Pros know there are mind triggers or switches and what we do is create powerful words or images designed to flick triggers that are already in place.
Yet strangely enough most marketing geniuses in offices have no idea.
They will create new urls like Facebook.com/thebrand yet who goes to Facebook to buy a BMW?
Here's the bizarre thing... The owners/directors.CEOs can allow that behaviour to go on for year after year after year.
Recently I got an email from a client asking for his adverts to be reviewed. He runs 300 staff and a huge business yet the business had flatlined over the past two years.
I have to say the adverts were bad, really bad. Everything was slick but what a glass of orange with a straw and a cocktail umbrella had to do with property services is beyond me.
These ads were failing - they had failed!
It was obvious why to me and it was obvious why to the CEO that had contacted me.
I wrote half a dozen new draft ads for his team to use.
He loved them and told me they reminded him of the market that built his empire 25 years before. He then sent them to his director who was getting paid a huge sum to make this company profitable.
Three months later I heard nothing back. Six months later I still heard nothing back. Eventually I got a reply telling me marketing he has the adverts in the review pile. Almost a year later I contacted the client that contacted me in the first place and he said he had almost given up trying to get his director to review them.
God knows if they were ever used but think about the scale here. A business that is flatlined is in decline. The life of that whole business was now in the hands of a few people that couldn't make a decision because the director of marketing had a new baby and he was tired. He actually emailed me personally telling me to stop making demands to his boss as he was very tired and at the time of emailing me drunk! (true)
That's a 25 year empire and 300 jobs or 300 lives on the line because no one can see the value of marketing.
Think about this also.
The lost time, the lost sales and the overall decline of a business that has a far wider reach into the community than just the 300 staff.
If they went bust that means less taxes paid into the economy. That means more unemployed, That means more stress on a fragile economy.
And can you imagine writing a pay check for 300 staff each week when your business is struggling?
That's the real price of marketing yet... It can be fixed easily and the companies out there can stop paying the price for bad un-directional marketing.
Here's the thing in his case...
A new set of adverts could have created a new set of incomes and clients yet... They failed to think through the real cost of marketing.
- Did you know database marketing can increase almost any business by well over 100% in just 12 months?
- Did you know sending out lower volumes with more targeting can give you huge rewards?
- Did you know sometimes it isn't even about the words just one simple image can make or break and advert?
- Did you know the worst thing you can ever do is buy in a list of any kind?
It doesn't take a lot for a business to tip into the red that's for sure.
Do you need help, reviews, critiques, copy, advice, or a strategy session so you can avoid the real price of marketing?