Advertising

Via Newmark’s Door, an article on an article on how to evaluate advertising. What’s missing from it… how to evaluate the only thing that matters about advertising: is it effective? Which requires looking at numbers. But its not hard to do.

My experience with advertising:

1. Most people in advertising do everything possible not to actually measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns
2. Most advertising campaigns do not pay for themselves
3. Some advertising campaigns are tremendously effective

Recently I had to tell a potential client not to hire me, but rather that it was time to sell the business. (Unrelated… the Ex-GF is now starting a new career as a business broker. Regular readers may recall she was originally considering real estate, but since she has been an entrepreneur all her life, and has had to sell her own business, this seemed like a better fit. I have not, however, recommend her services, or even suggest them, to that client, though I may do so if we have further discussions.) What I could do for him, while lucrative for me, would not pay off. When I went to see him, he told me he was also considering spending a substantial amount on a one year advertising campaign. The ad company is highly regarded, and somewhat expensive. I asked him how he knew they were worth it. They had shown him material they had done for other clients, and in his opinion it made sense according to information (which he had also gotten from them). Nowhere was there any attempt to measure, to put a dollar figure, on the benefits they provide.