One of the most difficult for people to get used to is the

fact that they do not get any return on their advertising

dollar.



When you start testing advertising and marketing done the

emotional response way, you'll have to decide whether

advertising and marketing campaigns you start and test are

working well enough to continue.



All the biggest myths about advertising and marketing that

are professed by all the so called "gurus" is that there is

a cumulative effect of marketing and advertising. That

"name recognition" builds from this cumulative effect and

eventually results in business.



Image marketing can and does work in very limited

circumstances. Those circumstances are strictly in

situations where someone has so much money and so much time

that they can afford to build name recognition that

eventually leads to a large and successful business.



For example, we all know McDonald's and Coca Cola, and

we've all seen the polar bears and the Golden Arches. We

know about those products as things implanted in our

brains. Keep in mind though, that Coke and McDonald's spend

literally millions and millions of dollars a year to get

and keep that kind of name recognition.'



In many businesses, while some large companies do have name

recognition, there isn't always a so-called "taste" as

there is with Coke or McDonald's. People go to buy those

products and eat or drink them because they like the way

they taste. They don't go just because they recognize the

name.



Now keep in mind a very, very important difference between

these types of products and many other kinds of services.

In services, nobody knows what you taste like, or whether

one office of "Great way Brokers" is better than "Smart

Financial Services".



Why? Because many services are highly personal. They

require making personal connections. "Name recognition"

won't help you a bit if your advertising isn't seen by

anybody because it's boring and uninteresting.



The cumulative effect and measuring the success of your

marketing clearly presents when you want to do any direct

marketing project, it either works well right away, or it

doesn't. Occasionally, you have a mediocre result that can

be tweaked and improved. Normally you know instantly

whether your advertising and marketing is working.



Let's say for example you were in sales and you decided to

run an ad in your local paper for $40. After two days you

receive eight leads who leave their name and address in

your Voice Mailbox. Now, using a ballpark of $10/lead as

the maximum acceptable cost for any type of marketing or

advertising campaign, you can get an idea of whether your

promotion is in the ballpark or not.



With this $40 ad divided into 8 leads, you're paying $5 a

lead. Which is certainly an acceptable cost per lead. This

sort of cost-per-lead range will end up being very

productive and successful for you as you move through the

testing and increase the frequency and size of your ads.



But, if you ran the same $40 ad and only got two responses,

you're at $20 a lead. That tells you that the ad probably

either A) has the wrong headline, B) is in the wrong place

in the paper, C) is in the wrong publication altogether, or

D) is in the wrong time of the week or month, or any

combination of the above variables.



This would work the same way if you were in the retail

business. Instead of getting leads you would get customers.

Wouldn't it be better to get 8 customers to respond to you

rather than 2 customers? The ad cost the same no matter

what your response is, however the bottom line on your

business makes it a huge difference.



To be honest with you, even though you can take educated

guesses and get pretty good at figuring things out over

time, as you get more experienced in response marketing,

you still never know exactly why a particular campaign does

or does not work. All you know is either A) it does, or B)

it doesn't.



By Abe Cherian

Copyright © 2005



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Abe Cherian's online automation system has helped thousands of marketers online build, manage and grow their business. Learn how it can benefit you too. http://www.imediatools.com