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How NOT to spend your marketing dollars

I am not an advertising expert. I say this with pride. Instead, I am a human behavior expert. If your business depends on human beings paying you money for your product or service, please consider what I am about to say. People controlling corporate advertising dollars need a complete paradigm shift. Traditional advertising dollar disbursement proportions are all out of whack. Please stop wasting your money on marketing efforts that deliver very little return. Think differently; spend differently.

  • Spend less money on tools & reports; spend more money on people to interpret the reports.
  • Spend less money on word of mouth marketing; spend more money creating something worth talking about.
  • Don’t create printed product brochures; create online case studies. 
  • Get over the power trip that compels you to control your message and manipulate your client; build a great product that compels your clients to become your evangelists.
  • Don’t buy TV spots on shows that get TiVo’d; spend your dollars building an online presence that will be found when your real prospects are actually looking for what you have to offer.
  • Don’t buy media; buy minds.
  • Don’t buy an advertising designer; buy a user-focused product designer.
  • Don’t waste your money on focus groups; talk to your real customers—better yet, spend the money to go visit them and watch them using your product for real.
  • Don’t place print ads; create training articles instead.
  • Don’t hire a PR firm; start blogging. Let your employees and client advocates blog for you. Don’t be afraid to deal with a little bit of negativity in blog comments—instead use it as an opportunity to show how you really listen to your clients and then make improvements based on their recommendations.
  • Spend less money telling your clients why they should love you; spend more money giving them a reason to love you--concentrate on building a great product with amazing customer support.
  • Don’t hire a branding expert; hire a user-happiness expert.
  • Don’t talk about how you are better than your competition; talk about what you’ve learned from your competition.
Posted on Wed, March 19, 2008 by Andrea Decker

5 comments (Add your own)

1. Advertiser wrote:
Of all these, your first statement was the true one.

Wed, March 19, 2008 @ 2:36 PM

2. Old Advertising Fart Curmudgeon wrote:
What a complete load of drivel. Why waste the bandwidth? Sounds like you're just whining because you don't feel that interactive media gets its deserved share of marketing dollars. I've worked in advertising agencies for more than 25 years, working with a range of clients -- from local retail stores, national fast food chains, multinational corporations, etc. I've been around from the birth of the Internet, suffered through the dotcom bust, and watched with amusement as Web gurus announced the next earth-shattering "paradigm" -- from blogs, social networking, Web 2.0, etc. The reality has yet to live up to the hype. Interactive, sorry to bust your bubble, is just one more tool in our toolbox of marketing widgets. I'm still mightily unimpressed with the measurable contribution all this stuff adds to our clients' share of market, share of mind, bottom line, etc. So much of this fluffy stuff comes to market with a huge hoopla, only to have minimal adoption by the masses. Interactivity capabilities WAY exceed people's ability to assimilate or adopt into their daily lives. And FYI, there are still many companies out here who want & need printed collateral materials. If you don't think so, then explain why people print out the PDF brochure that they just downloaded from a website?? "Don't buy media; buy minds." That's the typical vacuous thinking that I expect from most Interactive firms. And most of the rest of your comments are equally devoid of any understanding of the real world out here. You folks need to follow your own advice and get out of your little cubicles. Quit waaa-waaaing because the world doesn't understand the real potential of interactive media. We understand the potential alright. We also understand that for the most part, it still remains only potential.

Wed, March 19, 2008 @ 2:45 PM

3. Andrea Decker wrote:
Dear Old Advertising Fart Curmudgeon: Your comment seems infused with quite a bit of emotion! I hope you realize that I would NEVER tell any of my clients to drop all of their other marketing media for online efforts. But you are right, I DO BELIEVE that interactive media is currently underfunded in most marketing budgets. (I hope it didn't sound like "whining.") All I am suggesting is shifting a larger portion of the budget to interactive. Traditional advertising professionals seem to dislike hearing this and I wonder if it is because there is less profit to be made for the agency with such a shift. Interactive should be one tool in a toolbox of many marketing widgets. But there are many businesses who buy the line that simply having a website is enough. It is not. Your website is the point at which all of your advertising dollars meet with the real opportunity to buy your product or service. So, why not measure it? Why not do what you can to make sure it is found when people who need your product or service are searching online for it? One of the great things that online marketing offers is room for accountability--it is measurable. You can accurately predict and control where your marketing dollars are spent. You can measure your ROI with precision. We could debate for many days the merits of print vs. online materials. Obviously people need printed materials from time to time. I simply think you should make as much information available online as possible. That way you can change it and keep it always current. With ink on paper you are stuck with it for quite a while. Printable PDF's on a website are great. Your client can print it if they like and you don't have to pay for the ink. You say "So much of this fluffy stuff comes to market with a huge hoopla, only to have minimal adoption by the masses. Interactivity capabilities WAY exceed people's ability to assimilate or adopt into their daily lives." I believe you underestimate the ability of people to adapt and assimilate new technology. I agree with you that it is probably not wise to advertise power wheelchairs on SecondLife.com, but I know my 65 year old mother is going to search on Google before she makes such a purchase. Please don't think I'm out to put the advertising agency out of business. May it never be so. I merely want my clients to be aware that there is an amazing tool they can add to their marketing toolbox and they might want to think about allocating more dollars for such an accountable and measurable marketing tool.

Wed, March 19, 2008 @ 3:36 PM

4. Chris wrote:
"You folks need to follow your own advice and get out of your little cubicles" I don't work in a cubicle. I work in a big, open room with many people and many desks. Isn't that the free, open, creative form that advertisers aspire to? Maybe we could have a pow-wow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pow-wow) and sing Kumbaya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbaya) while listening to Enya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enya) and ideating (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziOG_GHNVq0). (wow, am I late on this one!)

Wed, March 26, 2008 @ 9:45 AM

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