Cheap marketing ideas have a bad wrap but read this excerpt from an interview with an aussie businessman Trevor Crook and don’t get sucked in by advertising reps anymore…
“The first thing they need to look at is who they’re trying to target as a client or a prospect. As an example, I received an ad to critique for somebody a couple of weeks ago, who’s got an existing inkjet and cartridge business and starting up a new business in a different town. They’re going to spend about $4,000 on traditional marketing, putting a flyer insert into the newspaper and spread it all over town.
There’s a much better way for them to do that, from asking a few simple questions.
Like how much does it cost to produce or manufacture refilled toner cartridges and inkjet cartridges? They’re $2 or $3. But the perceived value can be anywhere up to $79!
So what I’ve actually got this person doing is giving away 97 free inkjet cartridges. His cost is really only a couple of dollars. But if he can give away 97 and we create a powerful headline and an advert to go with it, he’s going to get people coming to the door.
To do it his own way, the traditional way of just saying “Save 60% on their inkjet cartridge”, that’s a ‘so-what?’ statement. People don’t really give a stuff about that.
But he’s a new player in town and you can walk into his business and get a free cartridge, with absolutely no other strings attached, and walk back out the door.
He’s going to “buy” customers.
Now, he knows the repeat value of that customer, as well. In other words, how many times they come back, how much they spend. He can actually afford to give away 500 cartridges if he wanted to.
So if he knew that every time someone bought a cartridge for the first time, they would generally come back 7 times, then the mathematics is obvious there. He invests $2 to $3 in them upfront, and makes potentially $700, $800, maybe $1,000. That’s the calculation. And he was just blown away with the difference in the adverts, as well, (which is another topic).
But he’s gone from offering really nothing of value – because most people know you can save on remanufactured cartridges anyway – to a way of giving something away for free. All he’s going to do is capture their name and address, go in the database, and the rest is money for jam.
If the business owner was to go to an advertising agency, the first thing they’d tell him is to change their logo. Then they’d want to do some branding. They’d want to change their business cards. They wouldn’t have gone to putting it in the newspaper yet!
What I suggested to my client today instead of doing a flyer insert in the paper, was to actually check with the paper and probably get an ad for $300 tops offering a freebie and pick up the business that way.
So the campaign has gone from being a $4,000 outlay to about $300. If he gives away 97 cartridges at about $2 a pop, there’s his $500. And he’s got 97 new customers….”
Lill 
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