How do I determine the type of advertising my business needs?
Well, that's a really important question because you can really waste a lot of money if you don't think the thing through. I was on the board of a company once. Their products were fairly high, fairly sophsticated electronic products for banks, and one of the division managers was approached by a fast talking, radial, advertising sales person that showed him that he could reach these millions of people at a relatively low cost, which he wanted to do. He wanted the board's approval. I said you're just throwing your money away and he said yeah but look, we're going to reach... I said but how many of these people are your target market, your customers are all banks. How many of those guys are not only bankers but actually have the authority to make these kinds of purchases? And the answer is next to nothing. He did it and he threw the money away. You know it was a total waste. You get one customer from it. And so really you have to consider who your customer is. There are so many different ways to advertise, so you want to consider, are you reaching this target market? That's the issue, that's part of the issue and the other part of the issue is it's not so much what it costs, although, that's important because you've got to have the money to pay for it. But, once we're through that it's what the return will be. In other words, if you figure out, and you ought to keep good records, that such and such advertising is very expensive and it costs so much to bring in the customer, but, over a life of a customer then start making all this money from them and spend the money. It's worth it to spend the money because over the life you'll make it back. You know, whatever happens you pay it ten time twenty times whatever. So you really have to think through these things and don't get enamored by just, oh everybody in the world is going to see my product.
