Advertising optional. ROI required.

I work in advertising.

Yet Scrappy Marketing is really about everything but advertising.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t think advertising can have a role in your marketing campaign. It should. It just means that you shouldn’t try to use advertising (at least not solely - other than if you're Nike or Coca Cola) to build an emotional connection with consumers anymore. While it might work if you’re in the soda business, no matter how emotionally charged your advertising might be, it won’t cover up what I call a shitty product, and it certainly won’t cover up a useless website. Because the fact is that brand connections are built by delivering a great product, quality customer service, and a website that helps your consumers make a decision by providing useful and compelling content.

Advertising should be used to communicate an offer (a promotion, a giveaway, free education) and get people to either purchase your product or at the very least allow you to make a connection with them by submitting their contact information or email address. That is performance marketing. And as marketers, you need to be able to quantify the value of a consumer, of a lead, and even of an email newsletter subscriber. Hence you need to become intimately familiar with terms such cost-per-acquisition, cost-per-lead, and even cost-per email subscriber.

Then you can go ahead and start advertising, just as long as the different media buys can hit your ROI-driven metrics.

But where do you start?

Start with paid search. There is almost no-upfront investment, and your campaign can be turned on and off as you please.

Then, you can try your luck with performance marketing, in which media partners or affiliates are willing to run your banner ads in exchange for a predetermined bounty for each lead or sale generate. Digital performance marketing is the service that we offer at Quillion. You’ll also need a couple of banner campaigns and a landing page. For that I recommend sites such as crowdspring.com, which offers high-quality, fast, and cost-effective creative.

Next, you might want to start playing around with targeted or very cost-effective online media buys on sites such as Facebook or remnant ad networks.

Once you have exploited all the easy online venues, it might be time to explore offline performance opportunities. For this, you might have to employ an agency who is used to negotiating for remnant TV, radio and print space.

They’ll also be able to supply you with creative for these channels, which will likely present a significant investment for you. But by that point, your other online advertising initiatives should have built a steady stream of positive cash flow.

You can invest that in your offline acquisitions. (In fact, my former employer, R2C Group, is one of the premier direct response ad agencies in the country and someone who I’d be happy to put you in touch with.)

So, advertising still has a place in the Scrappy Marketing portfolio. But it’s all about response, not emotion.

Because advertising is optional, but the ROI isn’t.

Before you leave - Want to learn more about real simple marketing? Download our free Scrappy Marketing Guide.

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