Advertise or Marketing, Which is Right for You? Part 1

     There is a common misconception that advertising and marketing are the same thing. Indeed they are not. Admittedly they have the same goal, that is, of course, to get more business in your front door, but the similarity ends there.

     To understand the difference and thereby use each effectively, let’s discuss advertising and marketing for a few moments and then make a decision which is best for your business, although I suspect the reality is that both are right for your business. But a business owner needs to use both correctly for the right results.

     Advertising is relatively simple. Notice I said simple, not easy. It’s a lot like losing weight. How to lose weight is simple, eat less calories than you burn. Simple yes, but not easy. It can be hard to stick to a regimen that requires you to eat less than you burn. Just ask any Bariatric Physician. Those good folks help their patients fight that battle everyday of their lives. Like advertising, the concept is simple, execution is not!

     You place an ad in a media. Whether it’s successful is a different story. Successful ads normally mean that the placement of the advertising brings in more business than you spent on the advertising itself. This is a very important point, because many in the advertising profession will tell you that you have to advertise constantly and build on the advertising. That is not true! You build on your marketing efforts and use advertising like a laser to pin point marketing strategy.

     This concept of having to sell more than you spend on advertising seems to escape most advertising sales people. They would have you believe that if you spend $2000 on a campaign and you see approximately $2000 in sales from that ad, then it has paid for itself. This way of thinking is a perspective that comes from a person who deals in intangible commodities. By the time you figure in cost of goods, overhead etc. you can realize about 20% margin on your efforts. That $2000 ad campaign needs to bring in about $8000 in business to have really paid for itself. And that seldom happens. Which is why the relationship between advertising sales people and the business owner is so often adversarial.

     Marketing is different. First it’s not nearly as expensive, often costing little or nothing.. Second it effects people in a different way. With marketing you are doing things that attract people to your business without blatant advertising. Please don’t misunderstand, I am not saying advertising is bad, in many cases it is exactly what is needed. But advertising is not always the best course of action. Let’s look at the difference.

     Let’s say you have too many coffee cups in your gourmet coffee store and they are not selling as well as you thought they would. You want to get rid of them and restock with a faster moving product. So you place an ad in the newspaper and offer a 50% OFF sale. You know that you will attract the attention of anyone looking for a good deal in coffee cups that day in which the ad runs. You also hope that when people come in to your store to buy the coffee cups they pick up another item or two at retail and help you make up the short fall on the coffee cups. Many retail stores use this method as regular fare to attract customers. It’s called lost leader advertising. You actually sell something for less than you can afford to in order to attract business and hope you get other sales.

     The limitations are obvious however. People only see the ad the day it runs in the newspaper or on radio or television. If they are looking to buy coffee cups, you’ve got a sale. If they don’t need coffee cups, you don’t!

     I have heard people say, "Any ad is a good ad, as long as you are in front of the customers." That is simply not true any more than people who tell you that being a consistent advertiser is the key to success. What is true is being a consistent marketer, and a target advertiser.

     Sometimes advertising even can go wrong. Do you remember the Kellogg’s Special K commercials on television about a year ago? They featured a gorgeous young woman standing in front of a mirror admiring herself and saying to herself that she looks ‘hot’ and it’s all because of a breakfast cereal. The idea was to make women think that they would look like the woman in the commercial if they eat Special K. Guess what? It bombed! It is known as one of the biggest bombs in advertising history. Kellogg’s insulted millions of women and spent millions of dollars doing it. Women were turned off and a few months later you suddenly saw Special K being advertised with more mature women in slightly larger bodies. And no mirrors!

     Now let’s say that you have just bought a new machine that takes a photo and imprints it on a coffee mug. You could advertise, but you could also put up a sign in your store telling customers that with any purchase of $25 or more, they get a free mug with their child’s picture on it. Sign proclaims ‘Great gift for Grandma.’ It won’t take long before people are carrying around their new coffee mugs with that darling picture of their kid on it, and other people wanting to know where they got it. That’s marketing!

     I went into an upscale women’s clothing store to buy a Christmas present. This store is well known for advertising to young women and has established itself as the place to shop if you want to have the "right" look today. The advertising obviously worked because the 14 year old female in my life (my daughter) made it clear to me what she wanted under the tree this year. But when I got home and took the clothes out of the bag, I found coupons for big discounts that were good only for specific days after Christmas. It became obvious that this was a very good marketing ploy on the part of the store.

     First, retail business is down slightly after the holidays and this was a good way to attract business into the store. Second, this is a good way to help clear excess Christmas stock. Third, it gave the customers a reason to come back and buy that matching blouse or skirt to go with what they had been given for Christmas. And since the store served thousands of customers during the Christmas rush, and they stuffed every bag with discount coupons, they were able to entice all their customers and all their customers families and friends to come back in January. And they did all this for the cost of about 1/2 cent per customer with a printed coupon. Pretty cheap marketing. You can bet it worked!

     One thing to note here and this is important. The discounts this store offered were substantial. They didn’t insult their customers by offering them small discounts. Too many stores do that. They offer tiny discounts to their customer. That more often offends rather than builds confidence in the business. If you can’t offer a substantial discount, don’t offer one at all.

End of Part 1. Stay turned for part 2 in our next Marketing Newsletter

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