This is a followup to my last post about PPC and the importance of tracking advertising.
As old media outlets continue to go belly up it is worth asking ourselves: “Have we have been overpaying for advertising all along?” Think about it – the NY Times is a great newspaper with an absurd amount of traffic but they can’t develop a profitable monetization strategy. Ten years ago The Times was profitable with an ad-based business model, so what has changed in the last decade? Clearly marketers have found better ways to track the success of ad campaigns and thus rewrote the conventional wisdom about how much to spend on impression-based advertising.
That leads me to another point that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately – how many more years are we going to be suffering through the same generic branding advertisements I see everywhere? (I’m looking at you Travelocity, P&G, Orbitz and Corn Refiners Association.) Generic platitudes about Tide are not going to convince my generation to spend an extra $0.01 on your detergent. Time to rethink that strategy.
Here is one of Travelocity’s recent commercials. While it’s an okay commercial I have to ask – wouldn’t it have been smarter for Travelocity to spend the money (I’m sure this was multi-million dollar ad campaign) creating a fantastic customer experience that would likely be talked about online? Or at least invested in a trackable PPC campaign that delivered consumers to relevant travel products?
A recent tweet from @travelmuse really sparked this whole rant. “Customer service is the new marketing.” In the year 2009 your customers are talking about their experience with your product and your business. Wouldn’t you be better off spending money providing an incredible product and great service than spending millions on a super-bowl ad?
Edit: appropriate on a number of levels check out this great article from yesterday’s NYT. Courtesy of my good friend @KathyDragon. My favorite part:
“a direct marketing mailing cost $15,000 and brought in 200 new customers; a billboard ad cost $7,500 and won 300 new customers; and tweeting the promotion on Twitter attracted 1,800 new customers.”
Great post Tyson. I’m with you to a greater extent but would argue that there will always be a role for brand level marketing. Although the isolated returns from these campaigns are too low, they lower the cost of acquisition in direct marketing campaigns. Without the brand awareness would the company have got 1,800 new customers from Twitter and would the DM have converted at the same rate?
By: Ben Colclough on March 13, 2009
at 9:09 am
Ben – Thanks for the comment and good points. You’re probably right that brand level marketing will always be around.
I do think companies could find more effective ways to invest in branding. I think investing in great customer service could be consider a branding investment. I also think supporting great community events could also be considered brand building. Branding doesn’t necessarily need to be $3 million Super Bowl commercial.
By: Tyson on March 13, 2009
at 9:31 pm
You’re totally right that PPC has changed the way we look at traditional advertising. Every time a magazine contacts me to sell advertising space, I think of Google clicks.
Let’s see… The price of a 1/8th page ad in one issue could get me HOW many Google clicks? And those are targeted people looking for what I’m offering, delivered straight to my website. The print advertising doesn’t fare too well in this comparison.
By: Deanna Keahey on March 27, 2009
at 3:47 am