AdWords-Articles.com

Ever have a conversation with someone in the advertisement industry who does not understand Internet Marketing? Well I thought I’d write about a recent experience that I had with one of these traditional advertisers. I place an emphasis on traditional because this ad man spoke very highly of the importance of Print advertisement, Graphic Design, and Direct Mail in particular. He had gotten my contact information from one of my clients that we had done some web development work for.
Read more about print advertisers lies
You see, he was the owner of an advertisement company seeking a web development company to do some work for him and after we discussed his development needs, he decided to sell me some advertisement for my business.

The first problem I had with this guy was that he didn’t even ask me if I was currently advertising before he started with his pitch and how great it would work for me. He was so sure of himself and his product that he did not even mention that fact that he was doing business with my company because of a word of mouth referral which had not costed me a dime.

He went on to mention how important logo design and branding were a company. I agreed but that was probably the last thing we agreed on during the conversation. After he told me that Direct Mail and Print Ads were the best and only ways to advertise, I asked him what he knew about advertising on the Internet.

He told me that pop-up ads were not effective because of pop-up blockers and that no one paid attention to banner ads any more, therefore the Internet was not an effective place to advertise, period. Now, there was some truth to what he was saying but pop-up ads and banners are not the only way to advertise on the Internet.

The fact is, he was uninformed about his own industry. He sounded as if he had been spoon feed what information he had and turns out he had never even tried these techniques, although he told me that they were ineffective. I have a great dislike for people that want to sell me anything based on their words. No results, no proof, just take my word for it cause Im a good talker. Yeah right.

At this point I had heard enough of the conversation, I’d allowed him to speak his mind, although I disagreed. Ive learned in business that listening can be one of your most valuable tools, especially when you don’t agree with the someone. They’ll usually give you all of the information you need to make your point strong.

I asked him about cost of these methods, although I already knew the cost, since I had literally thrown money out of the window for print advertising in the past but thats another story. My next question was tracking, Id like to know how effective my ads are or whether there working at all. Also, I asked, whats the ROI (Return on Investment) of these forms of advertisement. Any business owner, especially a small business with a limited budget, should know what is being returned for the dollars being spent on advertising.

His answers were “well its pretty hard to track the print ads but you will be getting your name out there”. HUH? The response to the ROI question was and I quote “Well theres really no way to track that but I can tell you how much you spent” WHAT!? Those answers were completely and totally laughable and unacceptable.

Needless to say my company never did any advertising with this guys company and the development work we did further informed me of the mans shady character and lack of knowledge of his industry. I’m certainly not going to pay someone for a service if there not aware of changes and innovations in their own industry. The fact is I knew more about advertising from previous bad experiences and self teaching via the Internet than he did with his 15 years in the industry.

I beleive print advertising and Direct Mail will always have a place. Every scenario will be different and some forms of advertising may work better than others. However, the Internet provides new more effective medium to advertise for your small business. Pay Per Click advertising, blogging newsletter campaigns are just a few of the biggest forms of advertising on the Internet. Every one of these are cost effective, provides trackable results, and trackable and often predictable ROI.