If you haven't realized it by now Traditional Advertising is Dead.


Traditional Advertising is based upon the theory of blasting out information in hopes some of it will stick. Talk to any agency and when it's not working their answer is always the same, "You need More."

But the mobile device has changed the rules and with customers realizing they can now control not only What they see, but When and Where they see it, if you are stuck in the traditional advertising outlets you are doomed to fail.

So what's a better way?

TouchlessMarketing™

  • Join the 21st Century
  • Market to customers On Their Terms.
  • When and Where THEY want.
  • Give them the control because if you don't, they always find a way to block you.

Traditional Advertising is not only EXPENSIVE, it's Less Effective by the day.
There are Many drawbacks to Traditional Advertising, and the high cost would be tolerable if only it worked!

Some Facts

Depending upon the media chosen, it gets Very Expensive rather Quickly.

How do you know it reached the intended audience? It's a total Shotgun, blast out approach that usually doesn't reach those you need.

8 of the top 10 newspapers in the country are in Serious Financial Trouble.

Even the big 4 networks are in trouble because Cable is doing the same thing to them.

There is NO Customer Engagement Function in any traditional media. It's just Blast out and hope some of it sticks.
Today's savy shopper is looking to engage and if not with you, with your competitor.

Why Advertising Doesn't work for most Small Businesses.

Business owners throughout the country are in serious trouble with an alarming and GROWING failure rate, and this study was BEFORE COVID. One of the biggest reasons is they simply don't know how to advertise.

Let me Explain. Pick up a newspaper, magazine or advertising circular and look at the ads. What do you see? A whole bunch of the same thing: a list of services; a company name; a tagline; a pretty graphic; and maybe an offer.
Most businesses think of advertising in one of two ways:

1. Put your company name in front of enough people enough times so they’ll remember you when it’s time to buy. The "Top of Mind" approach.

2. Put an “amazing” offer out there and people will be compelled to respond (whether they’ve made the decision to buy or not). The "Compelling Offer" approach.

In the Top of Mind advertising approach, unless you have a multi-million-dollar marketing budget it’s very difficult to buy top of mind brand awareness. In the second example, advertising sales people want their advertisers to see results (because results sell more advertising), so they recommend you put an offer in your ad: Get 10% off service, $5.00 off a product, buy one get one free, etc. And sure, that works – sometimes.

Let’s Analyze the second one, the “Compelling Offer” Approach:
Does putting an amazing offer in front of people influence them to buy even if they don’t have an immediate or compelling want or need? No.
Does an amazing offer force someone to buy if they don’t have a budget? No, it doesn’t.
So your ad gets completely ignored and you don’t get any response. (Ok to be fair – best case scenario – someone may clip it, stick it to the fridge where it will hang for a month or two before it ends up in a drawer or in the trash).

How an Ad Gets Seen….or Not.
Consider this scenario: I’m looking at an ad in the free local magazine that comes in the mail every month; it’s an ad for a $75 carpet, tile or grout cleaning. Well, my tile and grout happen to be pretty clean, well clean enough for me right now so I’m not interested in spending $75 to get it cleaned, even if it is a great deal. I ignore the ad and move on.
Now let’s think about this… I am a tile owner. At some point in my life I may need tile cleaning services. However, did I notice the name of the business offering the deal? NO.
Do I know how they are different from every other steam cleaning company out there? NO.
Has this ad given me a reason to remember them when I am ready to get my tile and grout clean? NO.
Has this ad engaged me in any way? NO.

Old School Advertising Doesn’t Work!
And what’s the traditional reaction when advertising doesn’t work? Ask any advertising rep. and their answer is the same – you need to advertise MORE (i.e.: spend MORE money), so that when your prospect is ready to buy they will see or remember your ad and call you. But how much are you willing to spend to make a sale?
So let’s say you spend $175 / month on the ad and it takes me 6 months to decide I need to clean my tile. Let’s say I happen to choose you because I remembered seeing your ad in the magazine for the past six months and because your offer is better than the other guy who is doing it for $100. You’ve just paid $1,050 to get my $75 sale. Sure, you may up-sell me, I may become a regular customer and my life time value may be in the thousands, but those are big “ifs”. Think about that: you are spending hundreds. or even thousands of dollars, hoping to reach a prospect at exactly the right time in their buying process. Doesn’t that seem like a pretty large gamble to you? No wonder businesses think advertising doesn’t work!

The Return on Investment
Ok, so you may be thinking, “Well I’m running my ads to reach more than just you.” Let’s analyze that. If you are like most businesses you operate on a 20% margin. Going much over that makes you less and less competitive, but on the compelling offer you are close to a 10% margin and usually less, much less. You can’t afford to lose money but you need it to be a good enough deal to attract new customers.
That $75 compelling offer you sold me just made you a little over $6. This means you would need to pick up 175 new customers in this 6 month period just to pay for the 6 months of ads you ran in order to merely Break Even!

A New Way to Advertise.
What if, instead of advertising with the hope of making your phone ring or to not make any profit in the hopes of getting new customers (which usually doesn't work anyway,) you take a different approach!
What if instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on print ads trying to find that needle in a haystack – that rare person who is ready to buy what you are offering the second they see your ad – you find potential prospects and get their permission to market to them on a more consistent basis and with more targeted offers while spending less money?

Enter 2-Step Advertising:
Step 1: Join us and get your system. If you haven’t checked out the power of this system now is the time.
Now this one step alone may be enough to get you on the right track, but since you will be getting new prospects to see your ad and check you out, why not take it a step further?
Step 2: Create an ad offering a free report: “5 Easy Things You Can do to Keep Your Tile and Grout Clean”. or better yet, “How to Remove Tile and Grout Stains Yourself”. OK, I know what you’re thinking… you’re thinking this is crazy and it’s going to cost you business, right? Well, you’re wrong. It won’t cost you business, in fact this approach will accomplish four things. It will:
1. Get people to your website where they can learn more about you.
2. Attract people who actually own tile and who will give you permission to market to them on a regular basis.
3. Prove that you care more about helping people than making a sale (prospects love that).
4. Because the prospect likes what they see and it's different, they end up referring you to others.  

The goal of marketing is to get people who have a need to know, LIKE and TRUST you so when they are ready to buy, they buy from you. Offering helpful and useful information helps build your KNOW, LIKE and TRUST factors and yes, increases sales.

The goal of 2-Step Advertising is to get prospects to your site and get their permission to engage them by collecting their email addresses and the best way to do that is with TouchlessLoyalty™ or your own ScanOfTheDay™ system that allows them to stay in the loop with your tips and tricks. Then, once you have their permission, you can email surveys, newsletters (even video newsletters,) tips and offers geared specifically to their needs on a monthly or bi-monthly basis for about a penny an email.
And even if they haven't been in your location for some time, we have a Retargeting system in TouchlessLoyalty™ that you can enable to reach out and bring them back. This can be done on auto-pilot.

Think about how powerful all this is is: You get to communicate with a prospect who has given you permission to market to them for one penny! That’s HUGE!

Your New Advertising Strategy
How many more responses do you think you can get when you stop selling in your advertising and start offering helpful information? People hate to be sold and that’s what traditional advertising is all about. What if you can get 10 new people on your email list from each ad?
Or what if you could get 10 new folks in the door and several of them joined your Loyalty Club and what if they were happy and brought a new friend with them? 
What if 1 of those new people eventually buys from you at full price – or close to it? What is the cost of that one customer compared to the one you got by practicing traditional advertising?
I guarantee that if you implement this approach as part of your marketing strategy you will get results and begin to see your business grow.

It's time to Market Smarter, not more expensively.
It’s time not only go get new customers in the door, regularly and consistently, but market to those you already have by treating them special.

Dr. Rick Mayer

More issues with Traditional Advertising

You must choose when your ad runs or plays.
Cannot know if your audience sees it or not.
When that day passes it's done.
Prospect cannot go back for one they missed.
Your only option is to resubscribe and pay again. 

Uneffective

Nearly ALL advertising delivered by mail and over 98% electronically goes into the trash can or deleted file.

Up-Sell

When you complain that it's not working, their canned answer is "You haven't run it enough times."

OK, so I'm doing something that isn't working and your solution is to do MORE? Ever heard of the Definition of Insanity? Doing the same ineffective thing over and over again, yet somehow expecting a different result?

Scheduling

Whether you are looking at Broadcast media or Newsprint, there is always a trade off in reference to Scheduling, Timing and Frequency.
A Sunday ad is always more expensive than one on Wednesday, no matter where placed, and even then you don't know if it will be seen.

IN ADDITION...

Cannot Target a Market Segment.
No Interaction with Prospects or Customers.
Limited by the Subscription Base.
What if your target audience missed the issue?
Cannot Appeal to Different Groups.
It's an instance in TIME, not a Function of Location, Preferences, Needs or anything else.
You pay for Each Instance, whether the prospect sees it or not.
The majority of the circulation base isn't who you want.
The Shotgun approach NEVER works.