The death of a marketing cliche
Here it comes:
Half of my advertising works, I just don’t know which half!
I’ve heard it used as a joke and I’ve heard it used in a completely serious manner – I’m just happy I focus primarily on Internet marketing. Here’s why this phrase is dead to me:
- With $1,000 you employ me to launch a Facebook campaign for your brand which directs visitors to your website where you sell [insert product here]. For the sake of this article, I’ll use handmade chocolate gift packages which are sold through your website.
- Targeting just a single city, I segment your audience into groups. Males of three specific age ranges and females of three specific age ranges.
- 10 different ads are created for each segment – a total of 60 ads are launched for the campaign (60 may seem like a lot – more on that later)
- After the campaign is live, I review the statistics and learn:
- Males age 24-30 don’t respond to ads with heart related pictures
- Females 30-35 respond strongly to “catch your man off guard this valentines”
- Males & females both seem to like the “surprise that special someone this Valentine’s” message
So at this point we have a leg up on print and other traditional means of advertising. We were able to run 60 ads simultaneously targeting specific demographics, but it doesn’t stop there – now the visitor is on your website:
- You have 4 packages ready for sale, each at different price points:
- A variety of chocolates plus a teddy bear
- Heart shaped chocolates with chocolate body paint (my favorite)
- Dark chocolate package (the healthy choice)
- The highest of high end product for those chocolate aficionados out there
- With proper tracking, you can learn which of the above groups are most likely to purchase the teddy bear package versus the heart shaped package.
So in the end we’ve learned that 25-30 year old males have a tendency to opt for the teddy bear package, while the females aged 35-40 spring for the dark chocolate package. These are purely speculative results, I don’t have any clients in the chocolate business.
So we’ve proven this cliche wrong and more. At the Facebook Ad level we’ve learned which advertisements grab our audiences attention – yes we had to create 60 ads instead of one or two print ads but it was well worth it. Then we’ve also followed the visitor from Facebook along with his or her information straight through the purchase phase. We’ve learned what messages work, what imagery works, and what demographics are interested in which products. This is part advertising, part market research – pass this information on to your sales representatives to help them suggest the right products on the floor. There’s a legitimate reason to double the advertising budget you had in mind!
I have one critically important addition to this fabricated campaign – let them sign up for your email newsletter after they’ve made the purchase! Let them tell you special dates so you can send email reminders in time for their anniversary. They’ve taken the time to make a purchase, now grab a quick chunk of information from them so you can generate future sales.
