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We have all heard it in the past, if at first you don’t succeed try, try again. Well we have also heard that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Sharon, an intelligent single mom, came rolling up to my Sacramento office in her beat up 1979 Toyota Corolla in 2006 after three years of barely making enough money in business to pay her home bills and nothing more to show for it. Before she came into my office I learned that her business was making power point presentations for businesses and had even won an award for her work. She sat down with every piece of paper she had that related to her business and in less than five minutes my office looked like someone opened a file cabinet and turned on a hurricane fan.

There were papers, folders, and receipts everywhere. She had even brought me her mileage log and CDs of different presentations she had done. I laughed as she told me that her rep told her to get everything together before she met with me. I guess some people have a very different definition of the word together.

One of the folders that caught my eye immediately was hand labeled “advertising” and was probably one of the thickest folders I had ever seen. I gravitated to it and made sure to lift with my knees not my back when picking it up. It was so thick that she had to industrial rubber bands on it holding the papers inside in.

Now one of the first things I do is a general overview of the company based on the advertising and marketing expenses and the annual sales of the company. In doing the math I saw that Sharon had pulled in slightly over 100k in sales on average in her past three years. Not bad for the type of company she had running out of her home. Then I painstakingly tallied everything she had spent on advertising throughout the life of her business, worked out to just over 250k in three years. That meant that Sharon was on average spending nearly 84% of everything that came in on just advertising and was living on just under 17k a year.

I pointed this out to Sharon and she threw back my first red flag. “You need to spend money to make money.” In addition she said that she knew if she didn’t spend the money advertising that her competition would.

Let me express to you why this is a warning sign for me. Statements such as those Sharon mentioned are often used by salespeople rather than marketers. Let’s be honest here; most advertising sales people know that statistics say you are going out of business within just a few years and their job is to get you to advertise with them as much as possible before your business flat lines and is declared dead by the county coroner. To this end, most sales people have their best interest mind, not yours.

Marketing, true marketing, knows that time is money and helps you to find the proper balance of the two to increase your likelihood of success. A proven marketer knows that it is their reputation that they are putting on the line when they help you market your company. To that end marketers may seem short, blunt, and sometimes downright rude, however their goal is to get the point across in any way that they can.

In looking at Sharon’s advertising versus monthly sales I found something very interesting. There was a year that she did not get her business in the yellow pages. “Yes, I missed the deadline because my graphic artist wasn’t able to finish my ad in time.” What caught my eye most about that was that it was also the year that she made more money than the other two. “Well since I didn’t have the ad I knew I had to go after more people myself and did a lot more door knocking and phone calls.” I showed Sharon that she hadn’t lost sales because of it but in all honesty, had the best performing year she had ever had. She just stared blankly and I sat in silence while the gears turned in her head. “So I saved twenty five thousand dollars a year by just not advertising in the yellow pages?” My nod was really just the assurance that her epiphany was correct.
Many people think that the yellow pages, print ads, and newspapers are the best returns for their advertising. I can’t tell you how many people I hear parroting back to me why they should be advertising on a specific radio station, or how they know the exact viewing audience of a certain television station. The truth is, unless you are carrying a huge profit margin and have more money than time, these forms of advertising just don’t work.
The yellow pages are a dying breed. You know that because most yellow page advertising employers are surprised if an employee lasts more than a year. Don’t get me wrong, yellow pages have their place. If you own a business that is emergency, situation, or impulse based, don’t turn a nose up to advertising in your local yellow pages. Locksmiths, electricians, and restaurants often still see a majority of their business coming in from their yellow page advertising. Mostly because in those situations it’s hard to check online for a locksmith when you can’t get in your house, so printed media is the way to go. However if you are running a business that doesn’t fall in that category, imagine the damage you could do putting that funding somewhere else.
First of all, mass media productions work on a dragnet principle. You throw a big enough net in the water and you are sure to eventually catch the kind of fish you are looking for. However, you don’t own the boat and you don’t reap the benefits from the other fish that are caught, only the fish that you are specifically looking for, then you have others who want the same fish as you.
I explained to Sharon that for her business, a solid web presence would be the better way to go and would not even cost one tenth of what she had spent. She took me to her website and it was a very basic website. Yes it was search engine friendly in the context that it was not a template website and contained some original text. What was surprising for me was that she had no samples, no testimonials, and no way for people to decide if her services were right for her. What wasn’t surprising was that she had done no business through her website.
Proper website optimization isn’t just about getting people to your site, but keeping them there as well. You have to juggle the balance of information and design to get people to come to your site and stay there. Yes you want people to call, but if your store, even your online one, doesn’t catch someone’s attention you are much less likely to generate a sale.
We sat down and drew up a new strategy for Sharon and her business which included a well designed site, pay per click campaign, and an aggressive search engine submission package. Within just a few months the calls started to trickle in and a few weeks she was so busy I didn’t hear from her.

The usual sad truth for me is that in my job I only see people when their business marriage is on the rocks. Once I get their relationship back on track with good principles and tools, I generally know little more about them than that their checks are still coming in or I see an order for them on it’s way past my office.

Sharon came to my office in her new Acura a couple of months ago to thank me for all of my help. She brought me a gift basket and a jeweled globe that proudly sits behind me in my office. I love marketing. I love it even more when someone listens and thanks me for the efforts I put in.

So if at first you don’t succeed try something different, it can’t be worse than the failure you just had.

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