Last week I was working with a new client. It’s a family owned business, and they have two locations about 50 miles apart. Together the two stores do about 20K per week. With all the employees (many of whom are family members), there isn’t much at the end of the month.
When it comes to advertising they’re spending about 7% of sales. The trouble is that they spend it in the same three areas week after week, month after month.
I made a couple suggestions on where we would be better off spending some of those advertising funds– in other words breaking free of the “Big 3”.
The owner seemed aghast that I would suggest such a thing.
And it’s not like he’s happy with the results he’s getting. He’s sees the numbers, he knows he’s not getting rich selling furniture. But he also has the desire to do better. I’ve studied his market. Heck, he could probably double his monthly sales within a couple years if he was willing to expand his advertising-reach.
But I see this all the time. It’s the fear of change. It’s like being stuck in a bad marriage. It’s not so much the other person that is going to be missed, but the familiar routine and the fear of the unknown.
Today there are 28 different places to spend advertising dollars between “old school” and “new school” methods. And no, you do not have to hit all 28, but you better be doing more than 3.
Yes, can I improve the results he’s getting with the 3 advertising tools that he’s currently using? You bet!
But there’s only so much efficiency that you’re going to squeeze out of them. At some point, if you’re not happy with current sales, you have to consider other advertising options. Running the same old ads in the same old places is just going to get you the same old results.