Do Ads Work?

A great post to kick-off the new year for anyone buying (or selling!) advertising. Forward this post to your favorite media salesperson or buyer.

Do ads work?
by Seth Godin

If the local bank were offering a sale on dollar bills, ninety cents each, how many would you buy?
Most rational people would say, "I'll take them all please." Especially if you had thirty days to pay for them.

So, why, precisely, do you have an ad budget?
If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don't work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you're not sure, that ads are risky, that you can't tell. And for some sorts of products and some sorts of ads, you'll get no argument from me.

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that's positive, buy, buy, buy.

And if you don't know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

When Amazon was at its key growth peak, the mantra there was $33. They would buy unlimited ads, of any kind, as long as they generated new customers for $33 or less each. There was a risk that $33 was too high a number for the business to sustain, but the ads were no risk at all. As long as they came in under that number, there was unlimited money to buy them.
How often do year the marketing person say, "that's a neat idea, but we don't have the budget this year"?

Shouldn't she say, "We have an unlimited budget for ads that work"...

Blogs Become Key Marketing Tool for Legal Eagles

This is excerpted from a recent story in the Philadelphia Business Journal:

Lawyers are becoming quick learners in the blogosphere
Saul Ewing partner Robert Louis didn't know what a blog was three months ago. Now it is a key marketing tool for the 60-year-old trusts and estates lawyer.

"I talked to some of the younger people here and after they explained to me what a blog is, it struck me as a good way to get small bits of information to people without burdening them with a five-page memo," Louis said.

So in July, Louis started "Personal Wealth Law News," one of three blogs -- short for weblogs -- that can be accessed through the Saul Ewing Web site, and joined a rapidly growing number of lawyers using the blogosphere for marketing purposes.

Louis' blog updates readers on the latest trends in personal wealth law. A recent entry asks whether the estate of Leona Helmsley, the billionaire hotel owner who died last month, would have to pay federal estate tax for a $12 million trust to take care of her beloved dog (while her four grandchildren were guaranteed nothing). Louis offered a 150-word item asking whether the taxes would be paid from the residue of the Helmsley estate.

Blogs as marketing tools are being taken seriously by the legal, medical, banking, real estate, and other old-school professional categories. Podcasting is coming up fast as a new area of new media they can exploit.

Need a VBR for approaching this category?
You could start by citing the article above. Why not offer the opportunity to become the official source of legal advice on the radio station websites? Of medical knowledge? Financial advice? If they have an existing blog/podcast, we can repurpose the feed on a landing page within our own website. If they do not, we can assist them in producing the content.

While they may state they already have their own blog, nothing matches the power of the Radio as a way of telling the public about its availability, nor the built-in audience our websites can contribute in growing their audience. It's worked for Ask The Beauty Doctor and for Your Micro Minute. There are currently podcast pitches in the field for a "Green" report and a Money Minute.

Who will be next?

Boomers are a Booming Business Online

WashingtonPost.com (free registration required for access to the source article) reports that the Boomer generation is taking to the web in increasing numbers, and supplies info on how they are using features and service found online --

Half of all Americans over 60 years old use the Internet, while more than 80 percent of baby boomers are online. Nearly 21 million boomers and 7 million Americans born before 1946 have been online for more than decade.

Most older Americans use the Internet for e-mailing, but some users make travel arrangements, check news, and find health information online. Thirty percent of web-savvy boomers shop online a few times a month, the same percentage as younger generations. "Our goal for this study was to find different behaviors than conventional beliefs," said Mike Irwin, president at Focalyst, a market search company focused on older consumers. "The degree to which these Americans use the Internet is much greater than what most people would think."

Irwin expects to see older Americans to increasingly use the Internet for financial transactions and management as they become more confident in Internet security. Online social networks that have lured younger users may also become more popular with younger boomers.

Focalyst's findings are part of a larger survey studying the behaviors of older generations.

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VBRs & HALF-BAKED:

• Excellent source material for calling on verticals mentioned in the article.
• Rebuttle statements for claims that the web is strictly for the young.
• Companies that train Boomers to use their online tools ahead of the competition will win.
• Create member-interactive social hubs on the web targeted to Boomers.

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