Business Adviser Magazine September 2013 | Page 11

How Much

Should You Spend On Advertising and Marketing?

W

hether you are an emerging company or you have been around for a while, if you want to survive you must master the market place. The name of the game is, “brand recognition.” Give your customers more opportunities to say “yes.” Winning customers… that’s it! Don’t just think that you have the best company in town and customers are going to run to you. You have to run to them first! If you are in a slow market and your company wants to grow, you need to get busy and get moving! Take advertising and marketing serious. It truly is an important component of success for your business.

representatives of the magazine and design highly targeted ads with key words that appeal to the interest of your audience. Newspaper and postal mail can also work but it can be quite expensive. Responses to a mailing can be as low as fractions of 1%. If you are not committed that can be discouraging. But, if you understand the science you can do well with it. Don’t just judge if you get a customer or a call from a single advertisement, sometimes it takes time for the customer to get around to contacting you. The rule is, “it takes a minimum of 3 viewings” for the message to be registered in the mind of the reader. If you advertise one time and pull the ad, you are not even giving your target market an opportunity to say yes.

Print Vs. Internet
Where should you focus your marketing effort to get the best bang for your buck? I find that people here in the Texas Rio Grande Valley have not moved swiftly toward using the web as their primary source of information. Unlike most major cities in the US, newspaper, magazines, faxes and postal mail seems to be the preferred medium for most here. However, internet usage is the future and is rising rapidly. Young people are most definitely on the web, with social media leading all media groups. Having a unified strategy makes sense in this market. Have a print strategy and a web strategy. Coordinate the message so that it is the same in every print publication and on the web. Choose magazine publications that are targeted toward your market. People here in the Valley really do read magazines. Work with the

About the Author
Bernard Beale is currently the editor of the GO Health Magazine and director of the Cooper Wellness and Disease Prevention Center. He holds a Master’s Degree in Business Management. He has many years of experience in finance, marketing and management. Mr. Beale is currently coordinating efforts to bring a major health summit to the Texas Rio Grande Valley in 2014. He can be contacted at 956-627-3106.

One Word Can Make The Difference
If you don’t get the desired response from an advertisement, try changing the words. You would be surprised how much one word can make a world of a difference. I track and graph responses to my advertisements, and it never ceases to amaze me how a little phrase or one small word connects and the graph jumps. Once I know what that word is I can repeat it over and over again and have multiplied success. My final advice to you is, invest in your marketing strategy. Decide if you want to grow steady, fast, or very fast. You are going to have to spend some money. Plan on it or don’t be in business! Master the market place and stick with it until you get it right.

BUSINESS ADVISER

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