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timeforcake: How are you spending your advertising dollars?

Erin Pheil
special to the daily

Whether online banner ads, radio ads, TV ads, or ads in print publications, using a portion of your marketing budget to place ads sending people to your company’s site can be a smart way to gain new customers and generate additional sales.

Unfortunately, it’s extraordinarily easy to (very) quickly blow through your advertising budget while minimizing your potential ROI.

Fortunately, once you understand why it’s so easy to toss your ad dollars right out the window, you’ll be able to immediately assess your current ad campaigns with a more critical eye – and fix any costly mistakes you’ve been making.



Here’s a simple way to think about an ad directing people to your site that you’ve placed on website XYZ:

1. Out of all your potential customers in the world, only a certain percentage will visit website XYZ.



2. Out of all your potential customers that do visit website XYZ, only a percentage will actually see your ad.

3. Out of all your potential customers do see that ad, only a percentage will have the time, interest at that moment, and willingness to leave website XYZ that motivate them to click on your ad.

This is how almost all your advertising works – you spending a portion of your marketing budget grabbing the interest of potential customers and getting them to visit your website.

This is where it’s so easy to go wrong.

And this is where companies dust off their hands and walk the other way, giving little thought to the importance of connecting what their ads say to what their potential customers see when they visit the website address they’re told to visit (or arrive at after clicking an online ad).

Getting potential customers to your site via your ads does not necessarily mean you’ve spent your marketing dollars wisely!

In next week’s article we’ll review real-life, local examples that illustrate the various ways company’s slash the ROI they could be receiving from their ads. Once each of these simple examples points out a substantial weakness in an ad, you’ll immediately be able to critically review your company’s ads.

1. http://tinyurl.com/3scrsyv – Watch this one-and-a-half-minute video clip. Please. Let the message sink in; it has meaning that extends far beyond the text you choose to place in your website. If you’re the emotional type there’s a small chance you might get teary eyed for just a moment. But no matter what type of person you are, I sincerely hope it makes you stop and think, if only for a moment.

2. http://tinyurl.com/3l7w5bu – A great iPad wallpaper collection. Theme: The Great Outdoors.

3. http://tinyurl.com/3u5sg9z – Fifteen fun stickers for your Macbook. (Many of the stickers also come in sizes that fit seamlessly on the back of your iPhone or iPad.) Options range from classic to humorous to scary and include Banksy, zombie princesses, Simpsons, and Magritte.

4. http://tinyurl.com/3dv848q – A short, thought-provoking article asking the question “Is the Internet making us stupid?” Hopefully it won’t be too challenging for you to get through.

5. http://fb.me/sQ5PwIN5 – An all-around very fun, very cool, one-minute video clip that surely took many, many minutes to create. You should watch this.

erin pheil is the owner of timeforcake creative media – the Web Design company voted #1 in Best of Summit. Visit the timeforcake website at http://www.timeforcake.com or email Erin at erin@timeforcake.com.


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