I have a confession to make. My firm wasted a lot of money on ineffective adversing last year and it's my fault. I didn't realize quickly enough that old media buying habits weren't working as effectively as they used to.
We are fond of the saying “in God I trust, all others show me data.” When it comes to advertising, data wins over the hype of advertising salespeople. Our website analytics and in-house tracking shows us where all our online leads come from, but I was guilty of being too busy working in the business rather than on the business. One day something angered me so I decided to look closer at the data specifically relating to our print advertising. Boy was it sobering. What had worked well in the past was simply no longer working.
Sure writing the periodic article and seeing our name in a traditional print newspaper was great for the ego, but was it generating business? The data said “no”. In fact the data was so telling that in January we shifted most of our print advertising dollars online. And let it be noted that the online marketing we did was no longer with the old traditional media. They're busy trying to put a glossy online look to old methods.
So what was our result? Less money spent on ineffective advertising and more results from online marketing activity.
If you haven't looked at where your business is coming from, do it today. You, like us, might be wasting a lot of money on ineffective advertising simply because of old habits. And be wary of old media with shiny new offerings. They may simply want to take advantage of your old buying habits.