One of the most difficult for people to get used to is the fact that they do not get any return on their advertising dollar.
When you start testing advertising and marketing done the emotional response way, you'll have to decide whether advertising and marketing campaigns you start and test are working well enough to continue.
All the biggest myths about advertising and marketing that are professed by all the so called "gurus" is that there is a cumulative effect of marketing and advertising. That "name recognition" builds from this cumulative effect and eventually results in business.
Image marketing can and does work in very limited circumstances. Those circumstances are strictly in situations where someone has so much money and so much time that they can afford to build name recognition that eventually leads to a large and successful business.
For example, we all know McDonald's and Coca Cola, and we've all seen the polar bears and the Golden Arches. We know about those products as things implanted in our brains. Keep in mind though, that Coke and McDonald's spend literally millions and millions of dollars a year to get and keep that kind of name recognition.'
In many businesses, while some large companies do have name recognition, there isn't always a so-called "taste" as there is with Coke or McDonald's. People go to buy those products and eat or drink them because they like the way they taste. They don't go just because they recognize the name.
Now keep in mind a very, very important difference between these types of products and many other kinds of services. In services, nobody knows what you taste like, or whether one office of "Great way Brokers" is better than "Smart Financial Services".
Why? Because many services are highly personal. They require making personal connections. "Name recognition" won't help you a bit if your advertising isn't seen by anybody because it's boring and uninteresting.
The cumulative effect and measuring the success of your marketing clearly presents when you want to do any direct marketing project, it either works well right away, or it doesn't. Occasionally, you have a mediocre result that can be tweaked and improved. Normally you know instantly whether your advertising and marketing is working.
Let's say for example you were in sales and you decided to run an ad in your local paper for $40. After two days you receive eight leads who leave their name and address in your Voice Mailbox. Now, using a ballpark of $10/lead as the maximum acceptable cost for any type of marketing or advertising campaign, you can get an idea of whether your promotion is in the ballpark or not.
With this $40 ad divided into 8 leads, you're paying $5 a lead. Which is certainly an acceptable cost per lead. This sort of cost-per-lead range will end up being very productive and successful for you as you move through the testing and increase the frequency and size of your ads.
But, if you ran the same $40 ad and only got two responses, you're at $20 a lead. That tells you that the ad probably either A) has the wrong headline, B) is in the wrong place in the paper, C) is in the wrong publication altogether, or D) is in the wrong time of the week or month, or any combination of the above variables.
This would work the same way if you were in the retail business. Instead of getting leads you would get customers. Wouldn't it be better to get 8 customers to respond to you rather than 2 customers? The ad cost the same no matter what your response is, however the bottom line on your business makes it a huge difference.
To be honest with you, even though you can take educated guesses and get pretty good at figuring things out over time, as you get more experienced in response marketing, you still never know exactly why a particular campaign does or does not work. All you know is either A) it does, or B) it doesn't.
By Abe Cherian
Copyright © 2005
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About The Author

Abe Cherian's online automation system has helped thousands of marketers online build, manage and grow their business. Learn how it can benefit you too. http://www.imediatools.com