What Does It Cost?

In our lives, we are embedded with the notion that when we want something, we should buy it. A pair of jeans, a dress, a new car, whatever it is, just buy it. If you can, charge it, if you can pay cash, go for it. Rarely do we sit down, analyze the long term costs of the purchases we so eagerly make.

The same scenario generally holds true in the costs involved in marketing. We look at a well designed publication, see the attractive graphics of an ad, or look at a flashing banner ad on a website. We immediately transpose our business presence to that ad, in that publication or on that website. We see great things happening by using wonderfully clever designs to attract attention. We will spend hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of dollars just to "put our name in lights."

What does it cost? I mean what does it really cost? If you are fortunate, you will get someone who will click on an internet ad and actually contact you. If you are really fortunate, the person will have more than a passing interest in your product and is not just "window shopping." On the publication side, the chances of a person or corporation actually running out to track down your product are fairly slim.

So why should you even bother to advertise in the mediums? The first thing that comes to my mind is brand recognition. It may not click today or tomorrow, but somewhere down the road, your logo or ad is going to surface when a prospective client is looking for a certain product or service. The more brand recognition you can achieve, the better your chances for pulling in future business.

The cost however, must not outweigh the benefit. You need to sit down and determine if a particular medium is going to give you a better return than another. You have to sit down and review not just the short term cash outlay, but the long term costs (i.e. hours put into the ad; initial and long term publishing cash outlays) verses the amount of actual net revenue the ad will generate.

I believe that ad costs should be directly in proportion with the amount of net revenue you need them to generate. I believe that ad costs can be supportive of long term income objectives but that real time income objectives will be better supported through an aggressive referral program. If you do good by your clients, they will do good by you - tenfold.

So don’t blindly sign up for ads in various publications or on any particular website. First sit down and internally debate the question: What does it cost?

Ken L. is Director of Business and Marketing at Design ForSite. He has over 3 decades of work experience in sales and management and has sold almost everything under the sun. He believes in putting the customer first (why do you think we hired him?) and loves to share his marketing expertise with others instead of selling it for a price.