Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Dear D-Hutt,

It's easy here to confuse subscription numbers (or print runs) with actual readers.

Each copy of a magazine might be seen by four people. Perhaps more than that. I'm not sure. However, your publisher ought to be able to give you more information.

These points aside, there are other things to consider.

Here are just a few:

If the industry magazines are distributed free, and if multiple copies go to the same company, they might ALL wind up in the trash, or in the recycling bin before or shortly after the magazines hit the mail room?

I've seen this happen.

Subscribers (free or paid) are not always readers.

Readers do not always read. They may only glance, and even then, they might only glance at the editorial.

Editorial glancers "read" (or, more likely they scan) the pages they glance at in the following order:

headlines,
subheads,
photo captions,
photos,
call outs,
bylines,
editorial.

Between page turns, this whole exercise takes 5 to 15 seconds per double page spread.

Ads that interrupt this visual flow—particularly brand-based ads—receive scant attention, or they are ignored

If you are placing ads "merely for brand awareness", and if these ads are in industry related publications (in which one industry person looks at news of another industry person), the odds are high that by designing, placing, and running these ads you are wasting money and perfectly good trees.

Any ad that has no measurable call to action is not an ad, it's visual clutter.

The presence of that ad on that page might make your chairman feel all warm and fuzzy, but if it's not making the phone ring, or if it's not generating an online enquiry, why is it costing your company money that could be better spent elsewhere?

Unless there is a way to measure people's response to an ad it might well be impossible to state with any degree of accuracy that X percentage of the people leafing through the magazine saw the ad.

And even then, X number of people saw the ad.

This point raises two questions:

"And?"

and

"So what?"

If X number of people receive the magazine, if Y number of people then leaf through the magazine, and if Z number of people then saw the ad and if those people that DID see the ad then DID NOTHING, the ad has failed and it has also succeeded.

It failed to produce a result because in truth, the ad
had no function to begin with.

But it's been a rip-roaring success in costing your money.

And the perception or awareness of your brand? Alas, it's likely that this has not budged, nor, in reality can its effect be measured one bit.

Before you post another ad in any industry rag (I mean, mag), please, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is this ad for?
2. Who is this ad aimed at?
3. What do the people this ad is aimed at currently think about our company, products, services?
4. What dow we WANT these people to think about our company, products, services?
5. How long will it take to change people's minds and opinions to reflect our newer, preferred message?
6. How will we go about changing people's minds and what stories will we tell to bring about this change in thinking, perception, conditioning, and positioning?
7. How much is it going to cost us to create this change and how long will it take?
8. Once their minds have been changed and based on past buying habits, what is the life time value of this ad viewer to our company?
9. Once their minds have been changed and based on predicted increases in buying habits of (X%), what is the life time value of this ad viewer to our company likely to increase to?
10. Given the cost of advertising and the profit/loss potential of changing our messages or not, how cost effective is it (given the cost of advertising) to advertise, or to not advertise with our existing, brand-based message, versus the costs of any call to action based messaging?
11. If we fail to change people's minds, how long will existing perceptions continue to undermine our potential for future profits?
12. If this ad runs, what will its impact be?
13. What will every dollar we spend on this ad bring us in return over the course of the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months, year?
14. How will we measure the effectiveness of future brand-based ads?
15. If we are not measuring the effectiveness of our brand based ads, why are we placing them?

I hope this helps. And if your marketing department INSISTS on placing ads ANYWAY, regardless of the things you've just read, ask yourself why. To what end? To what gain?

Every dollar you spend on advertising needs to bring in three to four times its value in sales. Or at the very least, it ought to break even, just to keep your name out there.

If your ad dollars are not bringing in a return, you're wasting them. You might just as well take a big fistful of cash out into the parking lot, drench it in gasoline, and drop a lit match on it. Either way, you'd be burning money. If you were to do this for real, people would say you were insane.

The sad truth is that this is how far too many businesses approach their spending on advertising and marketing. Then, when the burning of the cash bears no fruit, the try to put out the fire with MORE gasoline.

Ever tried to put out a fire with gasoline? My point exactly. If I can offer further insight, let me know.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA