Today I will be going through the financial advantages of reviewing your company advertising/marketing budget, large or small, and to make it clear where online marketing comes into play.
When it comes to advertising in any form of the word, both online and offline, companies have to make sure they are making the most of every single last penny they are spending. Large or small you have to make sure your getting maximum return on investment.
Quite often we get asked to do a review for our clients to demonstrate how we can help to cut their costs. This involves looking through everything they do in order to attract new clients, or to increase brand exposure. Nine times out of Ten, we quickly find ineffective and insufficient avenues being taken. Take for example the online version of the big YELLow book we all have delivered each year. A lot of our clients used to spend hundreds if not thousands of pounds each year with next to nothing to show for their money. The reason so many people fall into this trap is the fact that they have so much trust and faith in “the book”, as that can be a very effective way to advertise, and works for a lot of people. They automatically assume, because the book has worked for them, the online equivalent will garnish similar results, and of course they are encouraged to make that assumption by their Regional Sales Manager.
This does not work! And has never worked. It is hugely expensive, and gives minimal results. It is practically impossible to see a decent return on investment for 99% of businesses. Admittedly if you have a highly profitable product, you may be one of the few disagreeing with this article. With the current financial climate very few people have a “highly profitable product”.
I will use one of our clients as an example, but for the sake of privacy I will call them “Company A”:
When we originally approached “Company A”, our “pitch” was that we could save them money, whilst increasing their client base. Intrigued, as anybody would be, they agreed for us to carry out a review. After investigating we found the following…
Spend on the YELLow website: £1400 p/a
Spend in the YELLOW book with PAGES: £2500 p/a
Newspaper advertising: £3000 p/a (£60 per week)
The great advantage we had going in, was “Company A” had done a very good job of keeping track of where their leads came from. Every single booking made reference to the source of the lead. Therefore we knew going in the effectiveness of their spend.
With some digging into the grossly over reporting statistics tool the YELLow website provides, and then having a look at the actual figures(server logs – these keep track on the actual amount of visitors that hit your website), we came to the conclusion that for the £1400 they had spent that year, they had had 67 unique visitors from the YELLow website. Thats £20.90 per unique visitor. We then went through their sales reports and found only 2 clients that had reported the YELLow website as being where they had found “Company A”. That’s a £700.00 cost per client.
Our proposal to the client was as follows:
New Search Engine Optimised website: £1200.00 (One off build charge)
Hosting cost: £60 p/a (to host 2 websites)
Money saved by eliminating the YELLow website spend: £1400 p/a
Saving £140.00 in the first year, £1340 per year after that, as building a website is a one off. Obviously people upgrade their website, but the beauty of this is you do not lose the product you already have if you decide not to, and you know you will only upgrade if it has worked!
The above does not take into consideration the overall results they are now getting through their website. They now get at least 30 leads per month (up to 60 in a good month), of which they are closing at least 75%. This is certainly far superior to 2 clients in the space of 12 months. Their website is also beating the YELLow book with PAGES hands down.
The bottom line is, having a website is the most effective form of advertising out there today. It also offers the best return on investment. Not only that but your company image is suffering if you do not have a site, or you have one that is of poor quality, which is something I will cover with another blog post sometime in the near future.
Until then…
