Dear Traditional Advertising Agency:

Reference: See my previous post about the three key elements of a brand.

Leaving your client’s web site URL off of their print advertising does the following harm to your client and it wastes all of their money:

1. This mistake gives you nor your client any way to measure the value of the print advertising by tracking incoming traffic to the web site.

2. This mistake leaves the reader (and potential business prospect) with no real actionable place to go to learn more without making a phone call. (In 2010, we just need a URL. Period.)

3. Worst of all, this mistake leaves the impression that your client is behind the times and isn’t worth considering for important business.

Instead of allowing this sort of image torture to happen for your client, I would recommend that if you insist on pushing print advertising into your client’s budget that you at least implement the following strategies to give the ad spending the best shot at giving a return on investment:

1. Build a vanity URL (www.clientname.com/magazinename).

2. On this specific web page (within your main web site), put valuable, advertisement specific copy, images and links to a wealth of business information, testimonials, and include another call to action to the prospect into your sales funnel deeper. (How about asking them some information about them or providing them with a valuable tool for free to grow their loyalty towards your client’s business?)

3. Put a call to action in the print ad that answers the “What’s in it for me?” question for the prospect and lures them to the vanity URL you created earlier.

4. Collect the data about who visits the page including geography, what else they look at on the site, what information is working and not working and conversion to next step or other actions within your sales funnel.

5. Help your client make adjustments in their process based on this new business intelligence.

Sound simple? Well, it really is pretty simple. No matter how complex the business model, a simple strategy like this followed through to the end (with measurement and continuous improvement) will show your value to your customer as an advertising professional.

There are a million ways to kick that idea up another notch, but for now, let’s start with getting that URL onto the advertisement in the first place and having a web site that’s ready to accept traffic. That’s the first step to building credibility and brand legitimacy in 2010.

Thanks for listening.

Sincerely,
Marianna

Thanks to Suzanne Barlyn for a great interview and including my comment in her recent article entitled "Get Ya Noo Yawk Ice Cream Here" on TheStreet.com.

Check it out for a great profile on New York City’s 5 Boroughs Ice Cream, a stand out small business model that shows us all how to make some money by tying a great story to a great product.

Not included in the article – our small business marketing tip. We think 5 Boroughs Ice Cream should ride the wave of public attention by adopting a strong cause related marketing program to help eliminate litter from the sidewalks in Long Island or other related causes that match the flavor names of their ice cream. This is a company with a huge opportunity to create customer evangelists for life, instill long term loyalty instead of short term intrigue, and do some good along the way.