Make your marketing sweat

Every cent has to work for you

You're probably sick to death of the word 'recession'. And the euphemisms 'tough economic climate' and 'credit crunch' aren't much better, but whatever you want to call it, the reality is that, today, every single cent you spend on marketing your product, service, brand or message has to work for you.

The margin for spraying-and-praying - for sending the marketing message out into the ether and hoping that it generates profits somehow, somewhere along the line - has been gobbled up.

It's time to make your marketing media sweat; to be 100% sure that every single communication channel you're using is working for you; and to determine which ones are generating the best returns for your adspend: radio, TV, print, web, billboard, roadside, vehicles, in-store promos, packaging?

Monitor marketing yield yourself

The best part is that you don't have to retain a costly media monitoring agency or a telephone survey company to annoy your prospects (and sometimes even do damage to your precious brand). Nope - you can do it yourself, using the cheap, cheerful marketing miracle that is short-code SMS.

It's all very well to say, '50% of our advertising works; we're just not sure which 50%.' That kind of uncertainty is expensive. The time's come to see which of your ads are performing by measuring consumers' responses to them. Keyword activations, using short-code SMS, are the perfect measure.

The red ad or the blue ad?

Let's say you have two ads, a red one and a blue one, and you want to know which consumers prefer. Place them in different editions of the same magazine and have each feature the call-to-action, 'SMS SALE to 34007 and we'll call you back'.

Not only are you taking responsibility for making contact with that lead, saving them the hassle of calling you, you're getting the opportunity to measure which colour ad generates the most replies. All you have to do is monitor the dates of the SMS activations to see how consumers respond.

Or, to make the test really relevant, place the ads in the same edition of the magazine with the keywords 'SALE' on the red and 'DEAL' on the blue. By the same process of monitoring your activations, you'll easily see which ad is more effective.

Who's bringing home the bacon?

You can also monitor different media. Are your flyers generating more replies than your magazine ads? Which publication provides the most leads? Are radio or TV slots working for you, or are billboards more effective? Short-code SMS can show you which media aren't bringing home the bacon for your brand.

How this actually works in practice:

SA Tattoo: SA Tattoo is a fiesta of military marching bands and highland dancers. They used short-code SMS twice in their 2008 show as a way to sell show DVDs: in the programme and in an ad on SABC2. They also encouraged contact via e-mail, but SA Tattoo's ad agency, TTW, reported that a whopping 1306 DVD orders came via SMS and only 151 via e-mail! Clearly, people prefer texting to e-mailing. Good to know.

Moscow Circus: When the Moscow Circus was last in South Africa, they paid a fortune for two prime-time TV ads: one flighted during Oprah and one flighted during The Bold & the Beautiful. When the Oprah-time ad generated only seven text messages after being flighted twice, it was cut from the schedule in favour of The Bold & the Beautiful ad, which generated a whopping 62 replies from only two flightings!

Shelf installer: The owner of the keyword SHELF advertises his business by standing a board on the back of his bakkie and parking it at a busy intersection at 7am. He has coffee, reads the paper and keeps detailed notes of the responses he receives. Then he uses these responses to fine-tune his advertising. He's determined, for example, that his blue board works better than his red one and that the replies he receives typically relate to the topic placed highest on the board (either 'Garage Shelving' or 'Business Shelving').

There's no money to waste

It just makes sense: if you're going to spend some of your valuable profits on marketing, you should be able to tell exactly how many people saw it and liked it enough to reply. Otherwise, what's the point?