You only truly see one out of three ads put in front of you. And you only take action after seeing a brand marketed to you one out of nine times. So, it takes something like 27 hits from a brand for a prospect to even respond. Think about that for a second. Are your prospective customers getting all 27 hits?
Twenty years ago, I was recruiting franchisees at Queens University for College Pro Painters, and we decided to hammer the students on campus with 27 hits in 48 hours to really drive as much awareness and potential candidates in the door as possible.
So, five of us College Pro people hit campus like a tidal wave, parking our College Pro van on campus. We placed 100 lawn signs around campus, handed out flyers at meal lines on campus, put the same flyers under doors in dorms. Sometimes we were asked to leave, which to us meant, “leave this floor and go to the next one.” While we did this, all of us walked around campus wearing huge College Pro logos on our winter coats. We went into classrooms and put flyers on desks and chairs and ran tables in the main buildings where we’d hand out flyers to students. We even called each student who lived on campus who had a home address in cities we needed franchisees.
At the end of two days, there wasn’t anyone we cared about who didn’t know we wanted franchisees. We easily hit our marketing goals with these guerilla marketing efforts. What did our competitors do? They ran an ad in the paper.
The reason why College Pro was successful—whether it was recruiting for franchisees or marketing our services to customers—was because we were focused on our target market at all times. The reason our competitors failed was because they put an ad in the paper for new employees! Sure, there’s a chance they knew their prospective leads might come from the local paper, but it was a shot in the dark. Placing an ad in the paper meant fighting to get your message out there to every single type of reader and hoping the right set of eyes landed on your specific entry.
Why market to a wide group of people, with maybe only twenty percent who might be listening, when you can market to an audience that is completely tuned in to what you have to say?
In EVERY economy, including this one, some companies kick the ass of their competitors. If you want to be the one kicking it, start pushing 27 hits. If you used to do it and stopped. Perhaps that’s why your revenues have dropped as well.
Some companies I have coached on creating a Vivid Vision (formerly Painted Picture) have done an amazing job.
