It's A Numbers Game

We went to a seminar recently that talked about the return on investment your business can gain through newspaper advertising. The particular newspaper that hosted the seminar has a plausible readership of 49,000 people. Their research claimed that 2% of their readers become spending customers on ads in their paper. So 2% of 49,000 readers equals 980 people. Attendees were then asked to calculate the average customer spend at their business and multiply this by 980 to get an idea of what revenue they could generate from a single newspaper advert! Surprisingly the room buzzed with hope as most of the attendees were amazed at the number of sales they could make by placing a newspaper ad. Newspaper advertising suddenly became small business’ answer to riding the recession.

For those of you playing at home, there are at least 8 things shockingly wrong with this logic:

1. Not all of the readers will see your particular ad
2. Of those who see your ad, not all will need or want your product
3. Where did the 2% purchase rate calculation come from in the first place?
4. Perhaps 2% buy something from the paper but not from every business that advertised
5. The industry type or demand for the product was not considered
6. The size and quality of the ad was not considered a factor in effectiveness
7. In short, attendees left the seminar believing that 2% of the readers will buy from them after they place a newspaper ad.
8. This means that today, many small businesses who received a discounted newspaper ad on this day are turning away hundreds of customers ready to buy!
   

Interestingly, the seminar did not give a single mention to the web or Internet advertising! Of course, this would be a careless thing for a newspaper to do.

If this is meant to be a comparison to Internet marketing, then 2% sounds like a possible rate of enquires caused by a newspaper ad – for a very prominent and well targeted ad. In Internet marketing this could be likened to an ad being clicked for more information. An Internet ad can easily achieve 2% of clicks (CTR) but not all of this 2% will buy. This is what the seminar implied.

It is a numbers game in all types of marketing. But in Internet advertising, your impression numbers can be as small or large as required and your response rate is higher – because it is targeted advertising. Unfortunately, at Attractum® we cannot guarantee or even suggest to you that 2% of your ad impressions will be sales. Not without taking into consideration your product and website. But we can get you 2%, 3% or more in CTR (click-through-rate).

Dozens of small business were undeniably deceived on this day - but they will find that out the hard way when they don’t get anywhere near 980 phone calls or even 980 extra website visits let alone 980 sales as a result of their brilliant newspaper ad!