Do you know my business? Why that question doesn’t matter…most of the time.
If the desired result is to sell more product, tell me how knowing your product helps me achieve that, when you are asking me to sell that product via advertising or SEO. See it all boils down to the consumer. What you are missing when you want your agency to be an expert in your product or service is the unbiased knowledge of the market place.
An ad agency needs to be able to tell you with out “contamination” that there is something better our there for you. Think broadcast news here, you don't want our judgement clouded or biased because we are required to punch your clock every day. In advertising it should not be about you, it should be a consumer driven focus that will lead to increased business. So please consider this when you look to an ad agency for help.
Billboards…Are They Valuable? Is Your Message Strong?
How can you remain effective? Well I am in the midst of my cross country journey shooting the Friends, Family, Future project, and I am constantly reminded about the same lack of clarity being displayed…and yes I am seeing a TON of billboards, and this is why I started out talking about them. I saw an ad for Mc Donald's in the Chicago area, and it was about how healthy an egg McMuffin is. But it showed just a typical picture of the sandwich, and some weak tag line about calorie count.
McDonald's has a long way to go in the health food game, we all know this and so do they, and a tag line about 300 calories isn't the way to do it. There is a better way to get someone wanting to be healthy to eat something like McDonald's – but I won't say what it is until they pay us!
The moral of the story is, please please please be thoughtful in your selection of your message, it is the difference in “effective” media placement and spending!
Why does SEO matter?
I have had clients that used a SERP (basically a “ranker”) when approached by another company, and they showed our client that they weren't a top result when searched – and by the way there about a million sites that yield different SERP numbers. Yet our clients traffic has increased over 300% year over year. They were told, “you need more links”, we can do link building like no other. Our client was told, you are paying too much, we can get you the #1 spot thanks to our unique approach. Now correct me if I am wrong, it isn't about our approach, it is all about Google's approach and catering to it.
The client is still with us, but you hear these stories on a daily basis. Obviously you know that SEO matters to your marketing efforts, but how do you know who to go with? Ask for research and results from previous clients – this will give you a huge understanding of their abilities. Our focused research is what sets our bar so high and why we consistently experience triple digit growth in traffic for our clients. At the end of the day I encourage to spend $20 – buy a book on understanding SEO, so you have some basic knowledge…then start asking questions and see if you feel good about the responses you are getting. If you don't feel good about the responses…call us. It works on mobile too…
Lost & Found – Fresh Ideas
The company was a great place to have great ideas. If you had an idea, and it made financial sense or was a good enough idea to take the risk, then your idea was put in play. I was 21 when I became General Manager of the Jacksonville office. At this point in my career risk was all I had. Risk and good ideas that is. I found myself becoming a maverick among many great account people, managers, creatives, and just about any other position you might find in an advertising company. I learned a great deal from one of my RVP's, he said that you have always be “top grading” – not up grading. Building teams around great ideas and instilling focus. This led me to believe in one great driving principal that you will find at Mad Men Marketing – clarity of vision.
So where is clarity of vision in most companies today? I see a lack of creativity almost every time I see an add or a sales piece. Why do companies tend to lose that “idea edge” over time? What is it that happens? I think it is lack of clarity of vision. I can assure you that every company in the world is in need of a “vision check”. Here is the test you should be taking to see if you, as a marketing person or person in a C level suite somewhere:
1. When did your company begin to lack clarity of vision? Believe me it has most of the time.
2. When did experience matter? Remember when you started your company, or you heard about the humble beginnings of the now corporate giant you may be working for?
3. Why should it matter now? Again, at one point your experience or your company's experience did not matter, it was about being a focused scrappy up-start.
4. How can I change it? It starts with one step….you have to be willing to hear some hard discussions about your marketing efforts.
Call today, take the test, call today…the creative lost and found bin is Mad Men Marketing – take the test.
Buck this! GM at it again…I love it!
What's even better is that the networks apparently think they can do without a share of that $1.8 billion in advertising revenue. Lest they forget there is an outside chance that if they take no share of on-air dollars, they will get no share of the digital dollars? Coming from a broadcast television station I have seen it hundreds of times, tell them we don't need their money (Q1), to maybe we should have taken the money (Q2), oh well we have political now and don't need it (Q3), audit report comes out and stations find a major shift in rev share – why didn't we take the GM money (Q4)?! I say continue to act on this well planned and well played attack on an industry that needs to have a trend bucked from time to time.
I think the best thing to do is buck the traditional spot schedules and force a more competitive interactive approach from the networks. Make them earn the ad dollars by being more creative than punching some numbers into a system and generating a schedule with day parts that are “must-have”. Force the network hands to creating a package that a $1.8 billion budget demands. There has to be a better effort at product placement, social contesting and interactive digital experiences, to warrant any real investment. I would challenge the networks to develop an interactive online campaign that the market has never seen, really make the digital dollars go to the next level. If you can tell we have some ideas for you…
At the end of the day just continue to do what you are doing and it will be just what the media industry needs…to be bucked!