Part Four In A Five-Part Series. See Part One, Part Two and Part Three.
Remember back in the day when you were not always connected? Remember when you used to talk to other people face to face and on the phone? Remember when your phone was just a phone?
We’ve gone well beyond change and into a new realm of transformation. We live in a 24/7/365, always-on world. We speak to each other in instant messages, on social media and by email, and consumers of all ages typically have at least one of their digital devices with them at all times.
Advertisers who want to reach us know that. Their ads can feed us messages based on where we are, what we’re doing and who we’re doing it with. Sometimes we appreciate the relevance and other times we resent the intrusion. Even so, in 2012 internet advertising grew 15 percent and mobile advertising grew an astounding 111 percent, taking a bigger and bigger slice of the advertising pie.
While internet and mobile advertising are the shiny new objects in advertisers’ toolboxes, sales of our experience-tested and proven medium, born more than a century ago, continue to rise. Why? It’s the high-touch exclamation point in this high-tech world.
How Digital Media Is Priced And Sold
When internet advertising was just starting out, it was priced using the standard cost per thousand (CPM) model used for print advertising. For example, if a web page would be seen 250,000 times—250,000 impressions—and the CPM was $20, the cost for the ad would be $20 x 250 or $5,000. Soon, advertisers realized the impact of a web ad was different than print ad because technology allowed them to know how many people clicked on their ad and the model shifted to cost per click (CPC). Cost-per-click rates went up and CPM impressions went down.
The universe of internet advertising media has progressed greatly since the early days and the measured media includes banner ads, sponsorships, classified ads, email, search, affiliate and pay per click.
The advantages of internet advertising include:
Wide Reach. On the internet, your advertising reach has just gone global. You can reach people in any country or any small town and everywhere in between.
Targeted. You will find websites that target by interests, ages, genders and religions. One can advertise on all kinds of websites: sports, medical, technology, travel, young people, pet lovers and nearly any type of interest.
Quick Conversion. Most ads on the internet link directly to a sales page with checkout allowing customers to buy right then and there.
Highly Informative. Online, customers can read about a product, look at it from all sides, watch a video about how to use it, compare reviews of the product from other customers and have all the tools they need to make an informed buying decision.
Cost Effective. With pay-per-click advertising, a marketer is only paying when the potential customer visits his website or looks through the product offering.
Easy to Use. It’s very user friendly and easy for a business owner to create an offer without high production costs.
Mobile On The Move
While closely related to online or internet advertising, mobile advertising generally refers to ads directed to individuals through their mobile phones or wi-fi-enabled tablet devices such as iPad and Kindle. The ads can take several forms: mobile web banner (top of the page), mobile web poster (bottom of the page banner), SMS advertising (text messaging), advertising within mobile games and mobile videos, and audio advertising played while a caller interacts with telephone-based services such as directory assistance.
Like internet advertising, measurements, effectiveness and costs are based on cost per impression, or cost per click. Application downloads often use a pricing model called cost per install based on the number of users installing an app on their device.
Marketers are excited about the possibilities that mobile brings as a two-way media offering immediate responsiveness. They like the possibilities that fast delivery of messages to a widely used technology create for time- and location-sensitive advertising. This makes it ideal for customer loyalty offers or SMS promotions of events.
Because of its interactive nature, mobile also offers possibilities for messages to spread quickly through what’s termed “viral marketing” as users share offers that excite them.
The advantages of mobile advertising include:
Accessibility. Most people keep their mobile devices handy all day long. Advertisers can reach potential customers wherever they are and not wait for them to tune in, log in or pick up the other forms of advertising. This provides round-the-clock access to customers.
Size. As previously mentioned, the incredible rate of adaptation has made SMS the most widely used form of communication and this year more people will access the internet from their smartphones than from their computers.
Time Relevance. Many mobile customers even take their phones to bed with them leaving the devices on through the night. Thus, time-sensitive messages can reach customers with little or no delay.
Cost. Mobile advertising is less expensive than television or radio. This gives advertisers great bang for their advertising buck.
Intimacy. People use their devices for personal messages and conversations. This lends a level of interaction and engagement on a very personal, relationship-building basis. Typically, mobile ad pitches are kept friendly and low pressure.
Position Promotional Products To Make The Sale
If your prospects are buying internet or mobile advertising they are already sold on the attributes you have to offer. Here’s how promotional products help build on what they are already buying:
Relevance. Emphasize how highly relevant promotional products are to the lifestyle and personality of the target audience. Can you think of any other medium that people buy at retail? Probably not.
Highly Targeted. Talk about the targetability of promotional products. The wide diversity of products available can be targeted to appeal to any demographic and interest group.
Endorsement. Point out that people interact with promotional products. They eagerly wear logoed t-shirts, caps and jackets and carry logoed bags based on their personal connection with the advertiser. This provides the advertiser with a strong endorsement as the message is extended to the user’s circles of influence.
Low Cost Per Impression. Reiterate the low-cost impressions that promotional products offer. A recent PPAI study reported that 60 percent of recipients keep promotional products for up to two years. Promotional products have staying power within a user’s home or office; 53 percent of recipients use promotional products once a week or more often; the message is seen hundreds of times by the recipient and others; and, promotional products have one of the lowest costs per impression of any media.
Complementary To Other Media. Like internet advertising, promotional products advertising is easy to use, cost-effective and highly targeted. Like mobile advertising, it is also accessible and intimate, and provides a highly effective, yet low-cost value on a cost-per-impression basis.
It’s Up To You To Make It New
Those who sell internet and mobile advertising are in an enviable position because they are selling the “shiny new object” of the advertising world. It’s up to you, the promotional consultant, to make promotional products shiny and new, too. You can compete and collaborate if you learn to sell like a media pro.
Ask the right questions. Remember the phrase: “Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.” This means you must find out what your client or prospect needs to achieve before you make any recommendations. Ask who the advertiser wants to reach, and when and where they want to reach them. Ask how they want to make prospects feel and what action they want them to take after receiving the advertising message.
Prepare a presentation. Don’t assume the buyer knows about cost per impression. Don’t assume the buyer has thought about how long recipients keep promotional products they receive. Hit all of the advantages of promotional products in a visual and/or verbal presentation. Sell your prospects on the attributes of promotional products and you’ll create a long-term client.
Present a story. Remind prospects that they are seeking a solution to a problem. Reiterate what they want to accomplish and then sell promotional products as the hero on the white horse riding in to save the day. Include specifics on how the product will be distributed, how recipients will react when they receive it and how the buyer will be a hero at their company.
Recommend the right product solutions. Make sure that your product recommendations are relevant to the client’s brand, their messaging, their image and their total marketing efforts.
Three Ways To Bring Promotional Products To Life
You can breathe new life into a promotional product-based pitch by linking to digital offers. Here’s how.
Point out to your clients that you can help them measure their new digital media buys by offering rewards (promotional products) to their customers for interacting with their internet or mobile offers. For example, a coffee shop could offer a free travel mug to those responding to a mobile SMS coupon. They could offer a free cap, pen or thousands of other relevant promotional products to those who opt-in to the company’s blog feed or enter an online sweepstakes.
Look at the internet or mobile advertising your prospect is currently buying and recommend a product that can extend that advertising message from the digital world by using incorporating a high-touch, high-engagement product the end user will use, love, keep and remember.
Recommend promotional products as an effective vehicle to advertise links or QR codes to drive traffic to your prospects’ online assets. A QR code on a calendar can create a whole year of specials and coupons that can be delivered right to the users’ devices.
Remember, your clients are buying digital media for all of the same reasons that they should be buying promotional products. Make the case for promotional products and grow your sales.
Paul Kiewiet, MAS, CIP, CPC, founder of distributor Promotion Concepts, Inc. and winner of numerous PPAI Pyramid Awards, is now executive director at Michigan Promotional Professionals Association. He is also a popular speaker and writer within the promotional products and incentive industries, and former chair of the PPAI Board of Directors. Connect with him on Twitter @paulkiewiet.
>>Where the Eyeballs Are, The Dollars Follow
Digital media is the new kid on the block. If it were a person, it would be of the millennial generation.
The internet was born in 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. (No, it wasn’t invented by Al Gore; it wasn’t even invented in the U.S. It came to being at a European particle physics laboratory.) The internet really had no practical use for the public, although it was of great interest to university researchers and the Department of Defense. That is, until 1994 when NetScape, launched in April of that year, became the first internet “browser.”
Advertisements from AT&T, Sprint, MCI, Volvo and others first appeared just six months later. WebConnect created the first internet advertising media kit and placed it on the web the following month. By April 1995, AT&T and Saturn were already spending $30,000 per quarter on internet advertising, and ESPN was aggressively pitching advertisers for a $1 million charter sponsorship of its future website and online properties. By September of that year more than 24 million adults in the U.S. and Canada were surfing the internet.
Juno and Hotmail began offering free email addresses and services as early as April 1996 and personal use of email and the internet exploded—the dot-com frenzy was on. In 1997 online advertising sales were just under a billion dollars, but they nearly doubled to $1.9 billion the following year and then soared to $7.6 billion in 1999. By 2012, this number had grown to $36.5 billion, a 15-percent increase over 2011, making it the fourth largest medium behind direct mail ($51.1 billion), TV ($49.6 billion) and print newspaper ($18.9 billion).
Can You Hear Me Now?
In 1973, Motorola introduced the first portable phone handset. The inventor said he was inspired by watching “Star Trek” and seeing Commander Kirk’s communicator device. Something seemed to get lost between inspiration and reality since we now lovingly refer to this as the “brick” phone that weighed a whopping 2.5 pounds.
It took another 21 years before IBM introduced Simon, the first smartphone that could send faxes, emails and web pages—it even featured calendars and games. The first text message (Short Message Service or SMS) was sent in 1994 in Finland and grew to become the most widely used form of communication in the world today. The first advertising appeared six years later in 2000 when a Finnish news provider offered free news headlines via SMS, sponsored by advertising.
That year brought the first mobile advertising conference in London, and marketers were excited about the potential of two-way mobile medium in which users could actually respond in real time to ads. In 2002 the first BlackBerry device was introduced. In 2007 Apple introduced the iPhone, creating a completely new web browsing experience on phones and dominating the market. Later that year, Google jumped into the fray with the Android phone featuring open-source software to become a popular and viable competitor to Apple.
In 2011 more than eight trillion text messages were sent worldwide, and by 2012 smartphones became one of the fastest-spreading technologies in history with more than 50 percent of U.S. mobile phone users and more than 40 percent of the U.S. population owning one or more smartphones. By the end of 2011, Apple had sold 55 million iPads and more than 150 million iPhones. In other words, in less than four years, Apple sold a greater number of mobile devices than all the Mac desktop computers it sold in 28 years. Last year, Facebook launched mobile ads on its Facebook mobile app used by more than half of its 1.11 billion users.
As mobile technology devices evolve from being considered expensive business gadgets to being everyday consumer items, the advertising industry is taking note. Mobile advertising is finding new ways to reach people with relevant offers based on interests and location, making for an efficient and effective marketing tool.
Mobile advertising in the U.S. is still in its infancy but is experiencing explosive growth. Sales reached $3.4 billion in 2012, a gigantic leap of 111 percent over 2010. Consider this: Mobile phones outnumber TVs by three to one, and outnumber desktop and laptop computers by nearly five to one. If this trend follows the growth curve of internet advertising, continued growth may come at the expense of other media. —P.K.
>>Leading Industries Using Internet Advertising
Financial Services $8.9 billion
Web Media $5.7 billion
Retail Goods And Services $3.8 billion
Telecommunications $3.4 billion
Entertainment $2.9 billion
Consumer Goods $2.7 billion
Public Services $1.7 billion
Travel $1.6 billion
Automotive $1.4 billion
Health $1.3 billion
Source: Nielsen Net Ratings June 2009
>>Co-op Dollars: Like Finding Extra Advertising Money
Your clients may have money, lots of money, to spend on promotional products advertising and may not even know it. Every year billions and billions of advertising dollars available through co-op programs go unspent. Here’s how to find it and help clients spend it.
If your clients are reselling products, the manufacturers and suppliers of those products may have money available for them to spend on advertising through co-op programs. Co-op is a cost-sharing arrangement in which manufacturers and suppliers provide financial assistance for their customers’ (your clients) advertising programs. It can work in a number of ways. One example is your client can buy goods from a manufacturer and accrue co-op funds based on the amount of purchase. Those funds can be returned to your client in the form of a cash rebate, a credit to their account or in product inventory.
You may have seen local companies advertise featuring national products. These were very likely co-op ads paid for by the national product’s manufacturer. The manufacturer can provide a co-op guide outlining their rules and conditions. Generally, promotional products are a recognized advertising medium and most apparel items and writing instruments are approved for use in co-op programs. Unusual items or potentially controversial items will probably require prior approval.
Your local library reference room may have a copy of the Co-op Advertising Source Book®, which lists 4,000 available co-op programs in 52 different product classifications. You can also order a copy of the reference book for $695 at www.co-opsourcebook.com or subscribe to the online version at www.co-opadvertisingprograms.com.
Your client should also be able to provide you with information about which companies have a co-op program for them. —P.K.
Live Wire Paul Kiewiet continues his series of live webinars where he teaches strategies, approaches and the do’s and don’ts of selling against other media. Two webinars remain in this popular series sponsored by PPAI.
Selling Against Digital Media, August 15 at 10:30 am CDT (Early-bird deadline: August 8, coupon code EBIRD15)
Selling Against Non-Traditional Media (outdoor advertising, events and product placement),
September 17 at 10:30 am CDT (Early-bird deadline: September 10, coupon code EBIRD17)
Premium Education Fee: $15 for PPAI members; $30 for nonmembers. Early-bird discount saves $5 off the regular price. Register at www.ppai.org/education/e-learning/five-webinars.