“A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.”
-Henry Ford
Return on Investment
When it comes to digital marketing it’s much easier to track the results of your efforts. Every month we examine the number of leads and how many converted to a sale. I measure the success of my company on our ability to provide services that generate a return including new customers and higher search engine rankings. We can definitively say how many people saw an ad, clicked on it, called from it, filled out a form, and then when we meet with our customers, as long as they track results too: we can determine that they are getting a return on their investment for the amount money spent.
When customers are not receiving a return on their spending, that’s an indication that we may have to switch up some of our efforts. The great thing about digital marketing is that you’re not usually locked into a lengthy contract, plus you can change up your advertisements based on what is working in most cases within minutes. Unlike a phone book advertisement where once it’s published, you’re stuck with for the full year!
Should I Try Print Advertising?
As much as the digital marketer in me wants to say that print is dead, that would not be accurate. While nowhere near as successful as digital marketing in my experience, print advertising provides branding opportunities and reaches consumers slow to adapt to technology. I have clients that report new customers from their phone book advertisement. I haven’t opened a phone book to look up a business in over a decade! Just because I don’t participate, doesn’t mean others do.
For phone book advertisements to be successful, you need to purchase a prominent space such as a large ad or the front or back cover of the book. Cover advertisements get very expensive. At the end of each year, you’ll have to see if it generated enough sales to justify the expense.
Like anything when it comes to a marketing budget, you’ll want to think about the return on investment. You see, marketing is not a simple expense. Marketing should help you generate more new business.
How Do I Know What Digital Marketing Company is Right for Me?
Pick a company that is passionate about what they do. At Zen, we think it’s fun to watch our clients climb on keywords, outpace their competitors in search results. We enjoy chatting with our clients at least once per month to review how their campaigns are working. We like to think of ourselves as part of your company’s team and find ways to improve your marketing performance and overall digital strategy at a fraction of the cost of an in-house marketing department.
Whether you work with a company like ours, or someone else: be sure that you select a company that is transparent and one that gets your business. You want to work with a company that tries to understand your business because that is the only way to successfully market a company.