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Why ad budgets should be spent on the handmade

September 5, 2011 By 3 Comments

For centuries mankind have struggled to make their work more effective and less costly. We have built machines which can handle the work of 10 to 100, 000 employees and then improved them to produce for less cost. We are so good at this that we sometimes forget the value of something that is handmade.

The same things goes for media. We have bought ad placements to spread the message of our brand instead of hiring staff out on the streets talking about it. Lately we have even begun moving our budgets from TV and print to online to reach larger audiences to less cost. Again like improving production.

But this time we are really failing.

We know that we scan webpages without seeing the ads. And most of us rarely or never click on an add, regardless of how interesting they seem. If we do actually see them and their message, fact is we are more likely to google the message than click on the banner.

Meanwhile – many of us seek information about your companies products. We want to read about how to set up a kitchen, or what is in style this fall. Information that your company have, but is not sharing. Because it is less expensive to make an ad about your product, providing no additional value at all, than it is to start a blog about your field. Pr, blogs, video, podcast and social media is often considered to time consuming and to risky of an investment. But, they could provide value which no ad will never come close to they might be both more cost efficient and productive in the long run.  Still, few are willing to take the risk, the risk to invest in something handmade.

If we would forget about cost and effiecency for once and focus on what will increase sales the most in a year. Do you honestly believe that ads are the solution?

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  • Mostofa Azad

    Hi,

    I understand where you are coming from and I do think that companies are now trying to reach out more through to their users using social media. 

    Note the number of Facebook pages Twitter accounts LinkedIn company profiles and so on which are now in use where the companies are trying to get in touch with their consumers. I do not know if you know but Nordea Sverige have their own page on facebook and they have people come up and ask for help on the wall and there are always people out there to help. The same goes for Interrail where a lot of really great help is given out on facebook. 

    But this in my opinion will not replace online advertisement but will complement it. The purpose of the online ads is to get your eyes on the company . Then once you are hooked use the facebook pages and so on to make sure that you are satisfied with the product and that you return again to purchase more products or services. 

    So really the handmade blogs and so on will only help to complement the original online ads and so on.

    /mostofa 

  • http://www.annelienaes.com Annelie Näs

    Thanks for your comments! I agree that companies are getting much
    better at social media interaction. But most of the them they are just pushing
    things through the channels, some (like perhaps Nordea) are answering and
    opening up to those who contact them. Which of course is much better then doing
    all that. But all is more centric around customer support and marketing. I want
    to see sales in social channels and via blogs, by providing content and context
    to the user. Sure I believe in ads for brands awareness, but too much of sales
    budget are spent on ads, and I have not seen much creative usage of
    that. (Have you seen Gary Vaynerchuk? He has great examples on how to do
    this, my explanation might not be as clear) I want brands to create ads in
    a context, lead to content and eventually a purchase, which is something I
    rarely stumble upon. Do you have other experiences? /Annelie 

  • Mostofa Azad

    Hi again,

    I am just wondering would you trust someone who had written a blog endorsing a product ? Does it not seem like an infomercial ? If the person writing the blog says that X is the best product would you really trust the person ? Sometimes I feel that people endorsing some products in their blogs is sometimes not right and cheapens the author’s integrity ..

    but then again lets say that an online company has gotten some positive reviews…then yes I guess that the users who have given the positive reviews could be interviewed and their positive experiences with the product could be put up on the company blogs and so on and I am sure it would drive sales .

    you know that there are some articles on PC world where they have this editor or someone say 30 days with google docs..then they run it for 30 days and share their experiences daily.. are you talking about this type of blogs ?

    Have you seen this : http://moneyland.time.com/2011/08/10/jonathans-card-the-starbucks-get-a-coffee-give-a-coffee-social-experiment/

    Then came the conspiracy theories : http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks-conspiracy-jonathans-card-wasnt-faked/

    :)

    BTW … this is the second time I am rewriting this post !! :D