SMB Marketing – Do Advertisements Really Work?

SMB Marketing – Do Advertisements Really Work?

The other day I was working on the Marketing Plan of a client. Every ingredient for success is already present with the client. A unique product offering. Internationally reputed principals reaching out to India through an SPV which is a wholly owned subsidiary. Excellent third world pricing. Huge and growing oligopoly market. Enviable list of past customers. Great Patrons. Esteem value to customers. You name it, it is already present – except success commensurate with the standing of the parent company.

Their principal medium for reaching out is advertisements in broad sheets. It is hard to find fault there. It is a natural and logical choice for the product or service in question. Then, where exactly lays the problem for which I am supposed to find a solution? I had no clue.

Then it suddenly dawned on me. Subconscious mind was at work! When was the last time I bought anything because I saw an advertisement?  We live in a world of information over kill and every day we see 300-400 messages. Perhaps, it may be correct to say every day we don’t see 300-400 messages! Modern consciousness has become immune and numb towards these messages. That’s the ground reality. Media and Marketers profit and Marketing spend ROI travels south all the time! Is it really worth advertising, if you are a small company? Well….think!

We never buy an article because it is advertised. It is true even for targeted ads. Accounting software doesn’t get sold just because it is advertised in Chartered Accountant Magazine. We buy whatever we buy for a very simple reason. Because we need it. Need is the operative word. We start gathering information only when we need something. So, before spending the next rupee on advertisement, validate it by asking whether the advertisement will reach a prospect who needs your product or service. It is not sufficient if you think the prospect needs your product or service. Prospects have to think for themselves and decide that they need it.

John Jantsch’s definition of Marketing – Marketing is getting people who have specific need or problem to know, like and trust you – makes lot of sense.

Post Script: Speaking of definitions for the word marketing, I made this blog post a while ago here. It has various definitions for the mystique word. Possibly, we can put all the words from the definitions in a bag, choose twenty three words at random, write a grammatically correct sentence and it is sure to pass as a new definition. Wonderfully useless stuff from Pundits! Don’t miss it.

My intention was to write a series of Blog posts there on SMB marketing based on Duct Tape Marketing. There was no response and I lost interest. Perhaps, I’ll write the series here. Not that response is going to be any better. This is my blog, after all.

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