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WHERE TO FOCUS YOUR MARKETING
Imagine that you ran an ad, mailed a brochure, or sent an email ad to a new list of people who fit your target market profile and everyone who saw it responded right away and made a purchase.
Has this ever happened to you?
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So you've spent an enormous amount on advertising in the media and got very little response -- or maybe you were scared enough by the prices that you never put the ads there to begin with. You're annoyed at how expensive it is to get even the...
MLM Training- The 4 Steps To Building A Huge Network Marketing Organization
The 4 Phases of Building Your MLM Organization.
You will build your MLM group in Phases.
That is one of the best kept secrets in Network Marketing. It is a business of phases and growth and seasons.
What is a phase?
It is a period of...
The True Value of Network Marketing
The true value of network marketing is not the product or the money. Yes, you read my statement correctly. The value of network marketing is in the education component. This article is not intended to endorse any specific network marketing...
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Not Being Advertised...How the Advertising Business Has Changed Over Time
There are three words which often bother me. " I remember
when....." When my peers and friends use them, I always feel
like telling them to switch gears and think about today and
tomorrow, not yesterday. They seldom comply. Now, having been
invited to write about how the ad agency business has changed
since I was in it on a day-to-day basis, I suppose I have to
"remember when."
If you remember when Channel 10 did a live, (LIVE!) daily,
(DAILY!) Network (NETWORK!) show, you're probably as old as I am.
If you remember when ad agencies relied heavily on Type Shops
for fast, efficient service, you are probably in your forties.
If you remember when word processing people were called typists
and when they used a thing called carbon paper, you are probably
in your fifties. (Side effects from typewriters and carbon paper
were messy erasures and blue-stained fingers.)
And if you think FedEx, cable TV, B101, All News All The Time,
Video Conferencing, and Satellites have always been there, I'm
jealous for not being your age.
In the ad business, the only thing that's certain is that what's
certain today will not be certain tomorrow.
Which brings me to the agency business and some significant
changes that have taken place in my career-lifetime.
Whereas client/agency relationships changed focus from print to
broadcast over many years, the changes now move with lightening
speed. For example, when UHF television came along, it was big
news because viewers in this market could see six stations
instead of three. Now, who can keep track of all the video
available with cable and internet access for movies and on and
on. How will agencies have to adjust? Who knows? We do know that
the media challenges that face agencies are already causing
several significant changes.
First, some are not fighting the media wars. Many are farming
out their media requirements. That means they are actually
trusting another organization to collaborate directly with their
clients. That's something that was unimaginable just a few years
ago.
Second, many of the larger agencies now have very robust Media
Divisions and those divisions are involved with sales promotion,
sponsorship and even some creative tasks. Many of them actually
feel like full service agencies if you study them closely.
Third, agencies must take steps to become more aware of
accountability as it relates to their clients' spending.
Welcome, Internet Marketing. Just a few years ago, many
marketing folks started thinking about one-to-one marketing.
Today it's becoming an absolute necessity for agencies to
understand Search Engine Marketing, Optimization and other terms
which were virtually unknown just five years ago.
Those agencies which relied on creative radio ideas no longer
have a fairly simple pallet to deal with. AM radio was dominant
and the change to FM dominance took many years. Now we have two
major factors which already influence how radio is utilized by
the consumer: Satellite and a little phenomenon called IPod.
Cost per thousand is still important but specific, measurable
results are more important. That factor is pushing today's
agencies into thought processes which require greater strategic
ability as well as a keen understanding of how to meld
communications for image/brand with clients' demand to see sales
figures climb as direct ways to measure ROI. Whoever succeeds in
finding the best way to turn IPod users into a demographic group
that's
available as "media" will harvest big rewards.
Think about how Internet advertising has changed and is changing
marketing strategy. That new media increased by 21% in 2004.
It's projected to take seven billion dollars away from
traditional ad budgets in 2005. Soon, it will be "traditional."
Maybe it already is. Agencies must take a leadership role in
finding optimum ways to apply those funds.
There are other important topics and terms today which might not
have existed for agencies in the past but are core factors today
and are likely to become even more important: Broadband,
Customer Relationship Management , Video on Demand, Paid
Inclusion, Latino Media, Collaboration Extranets, Streaming,
High-Definition and even IMAX theaters. More and more
advertisers of all sizes are trying to save money by taking
routine responsibilities away from agencies and doing them
inside. Many agency executives believe that their real value for
clients is their business knowledge and their strategic
capability along with their creative execution. These trends in
thinking drive change and challenge for agencies. Not only are
there fewer employees per million dollars of billing, but there
is a large gap between well paid and not-so-well-paid agency
employees.
Believe it or not, there was a time when, on average there were
ten employees per million dollars worth of billing. Today it's
one and a half employees per million. Who knows where it's
headed? One of the country's fastest growing agencies, Kalan
Thaler Group reports $600,000,000 in billing with only 140
employees. Yes, they must work very hard but they also must be
smart, creative and, as they say, "cutting edge."
Why the salary gap mentioned above? Because strategic support is
hard for clients to find and comes in expensive packages.
Therefore, the agency which probably has the best chance to
retain its client is the agency whose client trusts the
recommendations that come from the agency. Translated, that
means smarts, strategic thinking and courage on top of the usual
high expectations about effective, wonderful creative solutions.
Translated further, that means expensive brains at the agency, a
salary gap between those brains and the other folks as well as
fairly low salaries beneath the top thinkers. In a way, the CEO
of an ad agency is now responsible for managing salaries in the
same way major league teams do it. They place the big dollars
where the big benefits are, in star performers.
In summary, the only way to view changes in the ad business is
pretty much the same as changes in other businesses. Lee
Iacocco, of Chrysler fame, once said , "Change or die!" That's
true of our beloved ad business. It always has been. It is now.
And it always will be. Figuring out how to be ahead of the curve
is the challenge of today's agency CEO. I guess I'm glad that I
no longer have to live up to that title and those expectations.
Instead, I'm doing my best to provide agencies with ways to get
along with fewer employees and, at the same time, to give
clients what they need and want: easy collaboration, accurate
communications and, above all, efficient and effective use of
their most valuable assets, brains, creativity and time.
About the author:
Allan Kalish is Chairman of Trichys, providers of advertising agency software and client extr
anets.
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