nothing we do works

[zanygame]

We have tried everything. Newspapers, leaflets, mags and now even TV.
Nothing makes any difference to our sales.

Don't get me wrong we do very well, sales are good and we make profit, we are expanding with new branches opening every few months, but any advertising we do makes no difference to our numbers. Should we just keep our money and except the mixture of organic growth and adwords we use as background noise.

 

[Alan]

I assume you have decent metrics to measure the ROI?

 

[cjd]

Breath an enormous sigh of relief, sack your marketing people and spend the money you save on in house SEO, customer service and improved products.

Then think of ways to accelerate word of mouth and recommendation.

 

[Mystro]

We have tried everything. Newspapers, leaflets, mags and now even TV.
Nothing makes any difference to our sales.

Don't get me wrong we do very well, sales are good and we make profit, we are expanding with new branches opening every few months, but any advertising we do makes no difference to our numbers. Should we just keep our money and except the mixture of organic growth and adwords we use as background noise.

Sounds like it is working but your not measuring the correct metrics .

Have you ever stopped marketing and see if sales drop as the marketing you are currently doing could be better than you think

If sales are good and you can open new shops during these bad times then something is working for you.

Sounds like you need to know what works best and stick with that

 

[Ashley_Price]

This reminds me of the quote attributed to Sam Wannamaker: "I know 50% of my marketing budget doesn't work. The problem is I don't know which 50%."

Do you record where your sales came from? How did people hear about you? Do you get many repeat sales? Without knowing this how can you say whether your marketing is working or not? It could be that, if you don't get that many repeat sales, and your sales aren't increasing, your marketing is working but only at replacing the old customers with new ones.

Without knowing a little more about what you actually do, it's going to be difficult to suggest what may or may not work, but whoever has been doing your marketing up until know doesn't know what they're doing.

 

[Deleted member 138423]

As Ashley mentioned, marketing can be fully responsible for maintaining sales as opposed to increasing them, so, you may find that sales decrease if you stop the methods employed presently.

But, you do need to find out where people saw your details and what made them come to you. This is imperative as has been mentioned!

 

[Ashley_Price]

Again, we don't know what you do, but it is usually much easier (and cheaper) to re-sell to a previous customer than to get a new one, but this does depend on your product.

 

[Mystro]

Nothing makes any difference to our sales.

Don't get me wrong we do very well, sales are good and we make profit

Reading your post again Is this a wind up,

Nothing we do makes a difference to our sales and then sales are good and we make a profit.

Kind of contradicts what you are asking,

Opening a new shop costs a fortune and your doing it every few months, your advertising on TV, again costs a fortune.

You sound like Tesco's If they stopped advertising would it make a difference to their sales? I doubt it, its brand awareness.

What do you sell and how did you get so many sales previous. as something you tried obviously worked for you otherwise no one would know you exist and thus no one would buy whatever it is your selling

I think it points back to you don't know, which makes your success a lucky strike,

You say nothing worked but obviously something did otherwise you would not be in a position you are now, you need to sit back and see exactly what it was you have done previously and do more the same.

 

[seoswat]

Sounds like your marketing efforts are the reason why sales are still good, (whilst not improving)

Like others have said, until you can fully (well almost fully) track your marketing expenditure in its isolated pots i.e £400 for a certain magazine feature, £300 for another - £2000 on a tv ad - until you have it set up to track which ones of those brought in what exactly then no one on here is going to be able to advise you better.

I suggest before you make any changes to your expenditure and allocation of resources - to get this tracking all set up

 

[garyk]

What is your product/service?

The one key thing at the moment is you are competing with alot of noise and people are online using twitter and facebook so you aren't just competing with other businesses you are competing with their social circle too for a prospects attention.

Advertising has to be more compelling and emotive than ever. You literally need to push someones buttons so that it invokes love/anger/happiness whatever and gets them to take action.

I met the MD of a local radio station a couple of months back who does something really really clever in one of his programmes, I'm sworn to secrecy on it but it gets people almost shouting at the radio in disbelief/anger and you can bet it compels them to take action.

Gary

 

[PIngels]

What is your product/service?

The one key thing at the moment is you are competing with alot of noise and people are online using twitter and facebook so you aren't just competing with other businesses you are competing with their social circle too for a prospects attention.
Gary

I agree with Gary and here's a presentation that kind of sums it up: World War M: http://www.slideshare.net/WAKSTER_Ltd/world-warm

 

[BelindaChong]

I agree with Gary and here's a presentation that kind of sums it up: World War M: http://www.slideshare.net/WAKSTER_Ltd/world-warm

I enjoyed that.

 

[The Byre]

To answer the OP - it is always so specific to what marketing and advertising you are doing, how you are measuring it and how you guide/steer your ad effort, combined with what you are selling and which type of business you are in, that an answer here without specifics is probably meaningless.

Though I will say that random acts of advertising that are not incorporated in a planned marketing campaign are nearly always fairly or totally pointless.

 

[garyk]

I agree with Gary and here's a presentation that kind of sums it up: World War M: http://www.slideshare.net/WAKSTER_Ltd/world-warm

Thats superb Pingels, its yours?

I keep telling people you 'have to light a fire under someone's backside' to get them to take action these days.

Gary

 

[PIngels]

That's superb Pingels, its yours?
I keep telling people you 'have to light a fire under someone's backside' to get them to take action these days.
Gary

Yes, mine Gary.

You are right about how difficult it is to get people to take action. We have to do so much more in terms of effective headlines, convincing messages, structure, CTO and presentation and even then it is often a case that it's not the one, well crafted message, that gets the response but a consistent stream of high quality content. It's as if people want to get use to the idea that you can solve their problem before entrusting you with the task. it's a good thing the technology allows us to reach so many people at the same time.

 

[burn1972]

The marketing tool also has to fit the product. Some businesses are ill-suited to be peddled on social networks, especially non-established brands, as their very presence on Twitter or Facebook can be perceived as a hard sell by the consumer.

 

[garyk]

I'm reading something at the moment called 'youtility' http://www.youtilitybook.com/ where the idea is you give help so that at some later stage that prospect will turn to you. The key thing that help is really with no sales message, kind of like your string on your balloon. *No* sales message at all.

Its a complete mindset change.

Gary

 

[zanygame]

So sorry not to come back to you guys, been very busy.
To answer some questions.
Yes we do monitor how our customers found us and ROI as much as is possible. New customers= Google 64% WOM 32% Other 4%
We have tried stopping advertising altogether (for 8 months) and it made NO difference to sales, we then thought a TV ad might be worth a go, but so far (3 months in) Nada.
We have questionnaires and scoring.
We have good repeat trade with each customer coming back an average of 4 times, but this tends to be annually for obvious reasons (Birthdays)
Our feedback on Face book, Youtube, Trip advisor, Qype ETc is all 4.5 to 5 stars
We do our own marketing, but we have tried various marketing companies to no avail.
Hence the question, why does nothing work?
We are a set of activity centres, based on a spying theme.
Our primary audience is childrens parties aged 6 to 12 years.
Numbers are good and we are expanding the concept across the country, but as in any business we would like to do more.

 

[cjd]

What's our website?

 

[cucumber]

... we then thought a TV ad might be worth a go...

You need a marketing plan. Develop that first, before doing anything like a TV ad. Spend time on developing a marketing plan, on the various things that requires.

 

[The Byre]

You need a marketing plan. Develop that first, before doing anything like a TV ad. Spend time on developing a marketing plan, on the various things that requires.

Exactly that!

Random acts of advertising is what you seem to have been up to and random acts of advertising NEVER work.

I suggest you read 'Oglevy on Advertising' and other similar books that tell you how to structure a marketing campaign.

You could start here http://blog.subscribermail.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ogilvy-advertising-that-sells.pdf

I would suggest that you create more than just a set of party accessories, you need a party scheme, a party plan. Don't try to sell paper hats and whoopee cushions, but a better birthday party! Then you could say something like

"The new way to give kids the best party ever!"

 

[Mystro]

Seems like Organic SEO is you main thing then from those stats

Do more of the same i would say..

Did you do the SEO yourself if so good Job, if not whoever did it up the spend and get them to do more of the same, 64% is great numbers, especially if those do not fluctuate whilst you have TV ads and other things going on

 

[VishalBhatt123]

According to my point of view, If your sales is stable than it is average result of your advertising. You can do affiliate marketing with your niche business sire's. From that you can generate many traffic to your site and also get revenue form that.

 

[WebWorks]

So I take it the organic Google traffic is not from brand searches - otherwise you'd have to say you marketing works well.

Firstly, who is your customer? I'd say that the vast majority of kids birthday parties are organised by a mum - where do mums hangout? what do mums read? who do mums listen to?

When you did TV, what channels and what shows were you targeting?
When you did magazines - which ones?

IMO newspapers are too broad a medium for what you are reading. Same goes for leaflets.

I'd say you've got to focus on more specific things - approach dance schools, kids football leagues, guide and scout groups, etc and joint venture with them - they have direct access to parents.

 

[j600com]

Have you tried an affiliate program?

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Your situation sounds perfect for a new type of service I've launched. I'm working with a number of clients where I take a small percentage of sales in exchange for handling all of their marketing and conversion rate optimisation to increase their sales as high as possible. It obviously makes it more performance-based and means that I do thousands of pounds worth of work with no big lump payment required.

That being said, it's very difficult to do for offline businesses where sales have to be tracked and transparent.

Anyway, you need to look down two routes. You need to get your business in front of people who are looking for activity centres, and also conduct marketing to make new people aware of your centres and then persuade them to visit where they otherwise may not have.

This is a very important distinction to make as they're two different types of marketing which need different types of copy and different pipelines.

For people who are looking for activity centres, your main areas will be search engines, so organic results and Adwords. If you already have these, then it's simply a case of improving them as opposed to introducing new forms of marketing. I've worked on a number of Adwords campaigns where both the CTR (number of clicks) and conversion rate (the amount of clicks which turn into sales) are increased simply by improving the campaign with new keywords and adverts. It can be done and make quite a dramatic difference.

Secondly, when it comes to getting your business in front of new people who may not be looking for activity centres at the time, I would say that leaflets could be a great method for you to try. You don't necessarily have to blanket distribute them as that would be too broad, but you could place them in key areas where mothers and children congregate. Just make sure that these leaflets sell the idea and THEN sell your activity centre.

Just keep it simple, find the methods which work and then look to continually refine and improve these methods.

 

[zanygame]

First, thanks everyone.
Our website is spymissions.co.uk

We do our own seo and pay someone to do our adwords.

I would suggest that you create more than just a set of party accessories, you need a party scheme, a party plan. Don't try to sell paper hats and whoopee cushions, but a better birthday party! Then you could say something like

"The new way to give kids the best party ever!"

Didn't understand this, sorry.

What we do is difficult to explain, so this has been our prime objective and problem.

So I take it the organic Google traffic is not from brand searches - otherwise you'd have to say you marketing works well.

I think our google does a brilliant job, so the question was should we just let google do its thing and forget the rest. Yet whilst busy, we are not fully booked.

Firstly, who is your customer? I'd say that the vast majority of kids birthday parties are organised by a mum - where do mums hangout? what do mums read? who do mums listen to?

When you did TV, what channels and what shows were you targeting?
When you did magazines - which ones?

We are on Anglia TV micro region and aim at early evening family shows and kids films.
Here's a link to the TV ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA9Cft3OnCM

Scott. I will talk to my business partner, then I might PM you if that's OK.

The Byre. Thanks for the link I will read with interest!

Cucumber. Yes a marketing plan, we spend hours discussing this, but frankly what is that.

 

[The Byre]

That is a good ad and I now 'get' what you guys are doing!

I would swap the end statement about, to run "The best birthday party in the World (2 sec. pause) SI5 Spymissions!" That will increase brand retention.

The tension build was good, the problem solved situation (i.e. 'What are you going to do for your birthday . . . ' ) was good and the ad pulled the viewer through the 40 seconds and made the point.

I think your problem is not one of gaining new trade in your area, but that there just are only so many kids who want that kind of party and only so many parents who are prepared to go for such a birthday party, rather than a traditional party at home with pass-the-parcel and musical chairs!

Three things stand out to me (as a casual observer who thinks that you have a great business going for you there!) -

1. Any real expansion will take place by expanding your area and setting up new branches - perhaps creating a franchise would be the answer here. But the chances are, you have got everybody that you are going to get and new trade will have to come from new market segments and/or geographic areas.

2. You are still getting some negative feed-back and you need to clamp down on staff who skimp on preparation and generally tighten up some aspects to stop getting some of that negative feed-back. Yes, I do know that your feed-back is overwhelmingly positive, but people zero in on the negative (just think how you look at ebay feed back - if you are anything like me, you will always look at the one-in-a-hundred negative moaners!) so every time you do get negative feed-back, you need to go through this with staff and iron out the reasons for that negative. (I am sure that you are doing this anyway BTW!)

3. You could possibly differentiate the party and possibly even the food for different age groups and parental preferences. This will take some thought of course, but would serve to give kids and parents a better experience. This could tie-in with no.1, i.e. a different type of party for a different type of customer.

But over and above that, you have a great business and with loads of room for expansion, one way or another!

 

[Textlocal]

Hi,

You have provided a run through of your current channels, but are you using mobile messaging to communicate to your current customers?

97.5% of mobile messages are read within 5 seconds of being received, which is a phenomenal rate of customer reach in comparison to email or direct mail.

Also, you can build up a relationship with your customers via SMS; offering exclusives, discounts, and updates at your customer's convenience.

Mobile messaging is dramatically lower in price than TV and direct mail too!

Hope this helps!
Jemma, Textlocal

 

[Alan]

97.5% of mobile messages are read within 5 seconds of being received, which is a phenomenal rate of customer reach in comparison to email or direct mail.

Personally I have never asked to subscribe to marketing messages on SMS, so when I do get any (normally apparently I had an accident I didn't know about, and I can make a claim), they may get read in 5 seconds, but they get deleted in 5.5 seconds.

(I just want to add I am a customer of TXTLOCAL and their service is great, but I use their text service to notify myself of server status)

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Scott. I will talk to my business partner, then I might PM you if that's OK.

No problem. I only operate a handful of these deals as only certain types of businesses are right for it, but if there's a good way for us to work together then I'm certainly open to it! I've had a look through your website and I can already spot a few things which could be worked on, so if your site has a similar style and message to the rest of your marketing, then it seems likely that some powerful improvements could be made.

I'm reading something at the moment called 'youtility' http://www.youtilitybook.com/ where the idea is you give help so that at some later stage that prospect will turn to you. The key thing that help is really with no sales message, kind of like your string on your balloon. *No* sales message at all.

Its a complete mindset change.

Gary

I'm not sure why the author claims that it's a new type of marketing. A lot of good marketing has used this method for decades. The key is that no one notices because that's the inherent nature of that type of marketing. Businesses come across as non-commercial with the hidden aim of a commercial result.

That being said, it's still well worth learning, so if that book is a good source for it then all the better.

 

[Murray Cowell]

You said "newspapers, leaflets, mags and now even TV".
Have you ever tried going online with this as well? I mean, you could very well start an email marketing campaign, provided you already have an email client list to begin with. Also, social media is really helping businesses expand and grow because they show customers their "human" side, so I think it's be a good idea no matter what business you have. And since your sales are going good, you probably have the resources to invest in this.

All the best!

 

[zanygame]

You said "newspapers, leaflets, mags and now even TV".
Have you ever tried going online with this as well? I mean, you could very well start an email marketing campaign, provided you already have an email client list to begin with. Also, social media is really helping businesses expand and grow because they show customers their "human" side, so I think it's be a good idea no matter what business you have. And since your sales are going good, you probably have the resources to invest in this.

All the best!

Thanks for your support Murray. Yes we do send emails to existing customers, but as we are mainly a birthday experience, you can see the limitations of this?
We are building our facebook and twitter presence, this has come as we have expanded and we can afford someone to pay attention to this area, which is very time consuming if done properly.

 

[Mystro]

Facebook should be a good market for you, as you can target such specifics I think you can even target up and coming Birthdays . this could be the best medium to target

 

[zanygame]

Facebook should be a good market for you, as you can target such specifics I think you can even target up and coming Birthdays . this could be the best medium to target

I've been arguing this for some time, now we are starting to work on it. Problem is, there is no easy route. You need to respond to peoples posts and look at their updated status, then respond appropriately.
If you keep it interesting then you remain on their news feed and you can pop in the occasional promotion.
This is almost a full time job and can only exist when you are either a one man band or big enough to employ a person just for this purpose.

 

[Mystro]

And.....

Make time if it works, find time to respond, many pages do well by not actually selling anything with just a post or 2 per day.

Dont make the page into a sales page as your right people will leave as fast as they join plus its not a sales medium, just make sure people know how to contact you if they are interested, if people start asking questions thats great but if they try to book polity send them to the normal booking process of the web.

Facebook promotions can target your audience for around £30 per go so its not a massive expense but it is really good for awareness, my page is only full of videos and pictures and at times from uploading a single picture have got 250 likes.

I don't post everyday I post whenever i find something i want to share, i don't post sales stuff as people dont like it too often, i don't feel obliged to answer every question personally as it encourages interaction, not everything is on topic

 

[cucumber]

I think the biggest problem is that we don't know the right direction for the right advertising. I don't know too. So we have to waste lot of time to try every method. People get too much information from the outside now, this is the market of buyers.

That's the whole point of a marketing plan. So that you're heading, basically, fundamentally, in the right direction.

 

[zanygame]

That's the whole point of a marketing plan. So that you're heading, basically, fundamentally, in the right direction

So easily said, not so easily done!

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

I've been arguing this for some time, now we are starting to work on it. Problem is, there is no easy route. You need to respond to peoples posts and look at their updated status, then respond appropriately.
If you keep it interesting then you remain on their news feed and you can pop in the occasional promotion.
This is almost a full time job and can only exist when you are either a one man band or big enough to employ a person just for this purpose.

An external marketing specialist can usually handle this sort of stuff for you. Facebook does take a fair few hours of total time per week, but it can be used very successfully without making it a full time role for someone.

You're spot on when you say "keep it interesting". Remember that no one wants to voluntarily keep reading commercial message after commercial message. Keep the content on your page valuable and interesting so you attract people to 'like' it, and then conduct 'soft selling' to subtly nudge people towards your business with special offers and so forth.