The Tribune

MARKETING REVOLUTION

By D'ARCY RAHMING

I RECENTLY ran an ad for a client in three different newspapers. One ad yielded two new clients, another 10 and the third, 13. After further testing I will be able to analyse the results and develop a budget for the client based on some hardcore numbers, rather than just my or the client's feelings.

I have been in more than one executive level meeting where clients will put forth their opinions on an advertising campaign, and I will insist on testing various ideas first before committing. Most of the time they listen because they want the best results. Most of the time! Some decision makers are used to people jumping at their every command. There is often a look of shock and horror on their faces when I do not back down.

A lot of what passes for effective advertising and marketing is based on feelings. The person in the room with the most clout or expertise is the one whose idea gets adopted. I am often the guy who has to break the news to the Emperor that he has no clothes. One of the tenets of the marketing revolution is that you have to remove your ego from the game and do everything by numbers. It cuts both ways, for me and the client. Even though I am the expert in the room on marketing, I am rarely the expert on the product or the service, so I have to listen, then apply, the best marketing principals to the client's ideas.

My policy is to rarely work with any client who is not the decision maker, because marketing with folks lower down the food chain is rarely fruitful. Fearing for their jobs, persons without authority do what the decision maker says anyway. Or worse still, they let their egos get in the way and, in many cases, what I say is never transmitted to the decision maker if the middle level guy or gal disagrees. So I might as well deal with the decision maker one time.

Measurement is the heart of the Marketing Revolution. That is the only way to tell if one advertising piece is better than another. Find out who read it and, more importantly, who responded to it. So, in the example I gave above, with the three newspapers we could have cut our marketing budget each way by 33 per cent, and still have virtually the same result if we knew where to cut it. In my next article I will tell you the biggest mistake small businesses make in their advertising and marketing.

NB: D'Arcy Rahming holds a Masters of Management from the J. L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A lecturer at the College of the Bahamas, Mr Rahming has clients in the general insurance, retail, health and medical fields, sports federations and financial services. To receive his marketing newsletter FREE go to http://DArcyRahming.com or contact him directly at darcyrahmingsr@gmail.com