My $200,000 Ad In My Former Offline Business
This one, singular ad pulled month after month for me for around 1.5 to 2 years, of which I can account probably 70% to 80% of my personal fitness training business's sales to, clocking in about $200,000 in sales over that period of time.
Here's why I think it worked:
1) I had the PERFECT list. A small community of high-income earners in a local newspaper (which they still get read religiously, kinda like a social thing to see if you made the newspaper). **Interesting note. I placed the exact SAME ad in DIFFERENT mediums and got SOME response, but not nearly the same UBER level that I did in my primary newspaper source.
2) Advertorial-style ads. If I ever advertise in a paper or magazine again, I will ONLY use an advertorial. An advertorial is an ad written to look like a news story. More readership/traffic = higher response = higher ROI. I had tested maybe DOZENS of non-advertorial ads and NONE came even CLOSE to what this one did.
3) Proof and Guarantee. Good before and after pictures. Testimony from the actual end user. A person from the local community.
I know most of us don't sell anything but offline, but there's always something to swipe across from all industries to improve your approach.
With all of that said, this awesome ad eventually did die like they all do, and I was never able to replicate its awesomeness.
ANOTHER THING. I would probably estimate 70% of my advertising resulted in losses or close to breakevens. The good ol' Paretta Principle in action. However, 20% of ads pulled a good solid number, and the remaining 10% were the "whales" that literally make up for the slack.
My one weakness in employing advertising was knowing when to fold them. Sometimes you'd come up with an AWESOME new ad or marketing idea, dump a good click of money into it, and watch it FLOP, or WORSE... breakeven or get a little win.
Why is that worse? Because... it's not clear if it's really a loser or a winner! You have to roll the dice again and change up a certain element of the ad and see what happens. For me, a lot of the time, I'd take several small losses which resulted in a larger loss, which ultimately could have been prevented if I was objective (hard to do when you're in business alone).
What if they're not stars? What if they are holes poked in the top of a container so we can breath?
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The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.....
What if they're not stars? What if they are holes poked in the top of a container so we can breath?
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What if they're not stars? What if they are holes poked in the top of a container so we can breath?