Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Hi I am Henry Jakson from Australia and I am new to this forum. Hope I will learn many new thing by this.

I get the magazine and I save it until it expires. If there's a place I am going, I'll look in there for a coupon. But I've already made my decision...so it's just discounting what I would have already given the company.

Again, personal experience only.

Michael

I've used Clipper and several other direct mail options. Clipper works well for some, not so well for others.

It depends on the market, the product/service category, the offer and the copy. There is no single, definitive answer to your question.

Even within the same market, Clipper can work better in some neighborhoods than others.

Dear denmc60,

Great question ... to which the answer is: it depends (to both parts of your question). A lot print advertising is a waste of perfectly good trees.

Advertising that doesn't catch attention and illicit some form of action (or at the least, some form of reaction) on the part of the viewer is visual clutter: it's simply crap.

When ad agencies tell their clients that print advertising is all about "awareness raising", and "bringing in new customers", are those clients being misled? Possibly.

Here's why: the role of advertising is to sell goods and services.
To do this its marketing messages must TELEGRAPH a set of clearly defined benefits TO the prospect that in turn, COMPEL that prospect to find out more. At that point, the prospect becomes a qualified lead. Only when that qualified lead BUYS something does that person become a customer, and only when sales increase can the advertising be said to have been successful. All this talk about "That's a great ad, it won an award!" is nonsense.

Assume I'm your Clipper reader. Not your customer mind you.
No. No yet. Before we toddle off down that little boulevard you need to entice me with goodies.

Now then, assume I'm INTERESTED in your goodies (your offer
or service). And now, assume I'm willing to grab a pair of scissors and clip out your coupon.

Imagined all that? Good. Now what?

Do I stick your coupon on the fridge door and forget about it?

Or is your coupon, offer, deadline, and risk reversal compelling enough to make me pull on my coat and shoes, get in my car, drive across town, and enter your emporium?

Or, put another way: is your offer compelling enough for me to walk across my living room, sit down at my computer, type your domain name into Google, and navigate to the appropriate page on your website?

If your coupon and its myriad parts has caught my attention and got me off my backside, CONGRATULATIONS! Your ad is a screaming success. Why? Because it got me to TAKE ACTION.

If your ad didn't make me take action, ... roh-rogh, Scooby! ... your ad's a dud. It's really as simple as that.

The trick here is alignment of imagined outcome (the result of your offer) with felt need or projected desire (how badly your punter wants whatever you're offering).

Got that?

So, what are you offering in your Clipper ads? Is the view worth the climb? Is the value of your offer worth clipping? Is your offer, your discount, your ethical bribe WORTH THE WHILE, TIME, and EFFORT I'll expend in clipping it out and coming to your brick and mortar store, or to your website? What's in it for me?

Nail this and you're golden (or at least, each ad will have earned its keep). Muck it up and you've wasted money, time, and trees.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Wilmington, DE, USA