“Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half” This is a famous quote made by store owner John Wanamaker in the 1800’s. John was seen as a proponent of advertising and a marketing pioneer believing strongly in the power of advertising. His words ring true with so many business owners today though and it is something that is quoted often.

Evaluate your company’s marketing strategy

Have you been throwing money at marketing or are you too confused to know where to start? It’s time to take stock and find the appropriate growth marketing strategy that is cost effective and not prohibitive. You need to consider the following first.

• Where do I advertise currently?
• How much do I currently spend on advertising?
• Why do I use that channel to market?
• Where do I get the best return?
• Where do my customers come from?
• How much am I prepared to pay for a customer?
• What is a customer worth to me?
• How far will my customers travel?
• Are my products available online?

Once you have the answers you can start to build up a picture and work out your strategy and budgets. It is said that you should do a little everywhere but is it worth advertising in the Post Office or the cinema when most of your traffic comes from Google? You need to analyse your online stats as well to see how many people visit your site and where they come from – this can be done via Google Analytics

Get help

Switching a computer on is enough of a struggle let alone working out how to access Google Analytics then maybe it is worth employing the services of someone who can spend a few hours evaluating everything for you. Better to invest a small amount of money for the greater good than keep throwing good money after bad on advertising. They will be able to advise you of all the options open to you as well. You may be lucky enough to know someone who can assist you with this.

Advertise when the audience is there

There are always quieter times in business when advertising is a waste of time. Take a garden centre for example. From March to September is the optimum time to be advertising and again around Christmas but who thinks about the garden in January? Know your marketplace and advertise accordingly. You can’t guarantee what will produce what results but you can guarantee that if you don’t market your business you won’t get any response.