I spent half an hour on the phone last week explaining to a sales executive that I really didn’t want to invest 8,000 USD (50, 000 SEK) of a client’s money on an advert in a magazine.
To explain:
I handle the marketing and advertising for a couple of educational clients. For one in particular we’ve focused on social media channels and online marketing for the last couple of years and it’s been a success.
Every autumn ahead of the annual student recruitment drive I get bombarded by portals, sites, newspapers and advertising executives trying to persuade me to persuade my client to invest in their services.
Typically prices start out massively high but the minute I play hardball the price comes down. Last year many traditional print outlets were offering half their initial asking price the minute I declined their first offer.
The exec who called me last week didn’t try that. Instead, she tried to persuade me that a magazine sent home to every 15-16 year old in the Stockholm region was cutting edge marketing this year. Then she threw in the fear factor.
“All the big schools are going to be with,” she said. “They’ve chosen to go with us.”
I was immediately suspicious. She was trying to scare me into buying advertising space.I replied by giving her a rough outline of the data we’d gathered from our web campaigns and surveys over the last three years. To put it blunt print media was the least effective advertising medium.
“You have to give me something special to convince me that a magazine is going to work better than online marketing” I pushed, wanting to give them a chance. “Can you show me a mock up copy of the magazine? Give me an idea of what it will look like?”
The exec dodged the issue and started going on about how important it is for parents to read this kind of magazine too.
“My daughter also said she’d definitely read something like this,” the exec told me. “She thinks it’s a really cool idea.”
I asked for data.
“How many students can you guarantee will look at the magazine?” I wanted to know. “How many looked last year?”
Of course she couldn’t tell me this. She could only tell me how many copies had been distributed.
And there’s the rub. That’s why direct mail is dying.
Whether I’m commissioning an add on Spotify, Facebook or Google I can get data. Specific data. No one can give me quality data about the success of their direct mail campaigns.
If I put an advert on an educational portal site I can track whether the site is worth the investment because I can track how many click-thrus the site generates.
With direct mail it’s so much harder to get effective data. It’s so hard to make decisions about whether it’s worth it.
Perhaps this is why many of the sales execs from print media try to prey on the fear factor.
She wasn’t the first to try and tell me that “everyone else is doing it.”
Oh, Contraire
As it happens I intend to buy some traditional advertising space for the client this year. In fact I booked some advertising space today.
You see the thing is I think on some level newspaper ads can help with brand recognition. They can even get key information out – especially when Stockholmers read the free newspaper on the subway.
I’ve surveyed audiences and been told time and time again that digital was the only medium that counted other than word of mouth. But still I’ll go with a little traditional marketing – just in case.
About Jon
