Advertising Tips for Your Company
By Stuart Stephens, CEO
Too often, we as business owners or managers look for ways to cut costs. If you cut your advertising budget, how can you expect to grow or add new customers? Let's face it. Your company's success is directly related to your company's image. So goes the saying "Image is everything."
The big question is what type of advertising works and what doesn't. About thirty percent of all phone calls to our offices are solicitations for health insurance, donations, or some type of "advertising." If you are not careful you can blow your whole advertising budget on marketing ploys that do not help to generate new business in the long run.
"What will work for my business?" The answer really depends on what type of business you are in. I will use our own company as an example. A large portion of our business comes from referrals from existing customers. A significant portion of new business comes as a result of dissatisfied customers of other local imprinted sportswear providers. The most significant source of new business comes as a result of quotations given over the telephone.
We have experimented with our Yellow Page advertising by purchasing big fancy ads and just plain listings in the yellow pages and by surveying customers that would call us. Every year the sales rep for the yellow pages would come by and try to get us to upgrade our add to a huge ad that costs more than most people's house payment. We realized that for our type of business that we did not need a huge ad. Most potential customers were looking at the "in column" listings and going right down the list calling for the cheapest quote.
The Yellow Page rep always talked up how important it was to have a big add and how it would definitely get us more calls. Hogwash! Our own surveys proved that an in column listing was all we needed. Well, when it came time to renew our adds for 2001, the rep came by and wanted us to buy a big fancy layout. It soured him when we actually cut our advertising budget by only purchasing in column adds.
We purchased a few small in column ads. When the book came out, we got the surprise of all time. They left us out of the book completely. Ouch! This little "mistake" by our ticked off yellow page rep cost us at least $50k in sales that year. We also learned through our attorney that the yellow page company is protected from their mistake by federal law; whether it was fair or not. We did learn that by not being in the book, it was a huge disadvantage.
The whole point of this is that sometimes it is not how much you spend but where you make an effort. I am not advocating that anyone go out and cut their yellow page advertising. This is just what works for us.
Take a look at the most successful companies in the country. They all have fairly simplistic, neat looking, logos that are on everything they do. Their logo is on their advertising, the company trucks, their letterhead, their business cards, website, pens, pencils, and most importantly on the employees who represent them. The employees are wearing shirts, hats, aprons, etc. By using an attractive logo and placing that logo on everything, using specific colors, the company is able to create an "identity" or image that makes them immediately recognizable to all.
Everyday, we have new customers come into our showroom and it never fails that one of these customers wants to embroider his company name on the left chest with his phone number and address underneath it. Let me ask you; have you ever stopped some guy on the street and written down the phone number that was on his shirt? Most likely not. But you probably noticed the logo and made a mental decision about whether it looked nice or not. We also have customers who think they have really accomplished something by buying the cheapest, ugliest, hat available to embroider their logo on and that they have saved a few bucks. They give these hats to their friends and their customers and they in turn usually throw them away or hang them in a closet never to be worn again. If you buy a hat for $6 that no one will wear but could have bought a hat for $7.50 that everyone would just love to wear, how have you saved any money at all? Isn't the point to get people to show off your logo? Now, after saying that, let me emphatically say that we are not trying to be critical of any of our customers. We do our best to make suggestions and give advice and some choose to accept it and others choose to not listen. Some people have their own ideas about what looks good and who are we to judge?
In our opinion, vehicle advertising is the cheapest, most effective advertising a company can ever do. Second to that are custom printed or embroidered T-shirts, caps, jackets, polo golf shirts and other imprinted apparel items that the company employees wear day in and day out. These same items make great gifts to customers to create a feeling of goodwill and if your customer wears your logo he is basically advertising your business for free.
Before you spend money on advertising you should ask yourself some key questions:
1) Is the advertising actually reaching the potential customer.
2) Is the advertising cost effective? In other words, does the cost generate enough of a return to make the advertising worth while? Note: The point here is not how much it costs.
3) Does the advertising help to promote my company in a positive and professional manner?
4) Is the advertising part of an overall advertising plan or is it just a whim?
5) Are the products / advertising I am considering being presented to me from a reputable, honest company? Is that company a respected leader in their field?
Let us say for a moment that you are considering hiring a contractor to install a new heating and air system in your building and this will cost you about $10,000. You call two companies listed in the yellow pages. The first contractor shows up driving a beat up 1981 van and is wearing dirty clothes, ripped jeans, and a 5 year old stained t-shirt advertising his favorite brand of cigarettes and he quotes you a price of $9400. The next contractor shows up driving an identical 1981 van that has been well taken care of and it has an attractive logo on the side of the van. He also is wearing a clean embroidered polo shirt with his company logo that matches the logo on the side of the van. Topping it off is an embroidered hat to match and he gives you a quote for the same job and products as the previous contractor but his quote is $9600. Is there any question about which one you are going to hire to do the job?
There are many people who will come to this web page and never read down to this point. These are the same people that will walk into our showroom and the first thing they will say is the age old question of "How much does it cost?" Which leads me to another point: If you want a company to just throw a logo on any shirt at a rock bottom price then we are not the company you want to do business with. If you want a company that will give you the best products with highest quality printing and embroidery found anywhere and give you unprecedented customer service for a fair price then you have come to the right place. We are here for our customers to give them suggestions about the image they want to present and help them select the types of products that will get them there. I would like to thank you for visiting our website and to say that if you are reading this you do care about who you buy your products from and we would like to have you as a life long customer.
FACT: Three out of five screen printing and embroidery companies do not actually fill the orders themselves. They farm it out to the cheapest bidder to get it done with no control over quality or delivery time.
-Stuart Stephens, CEO