Advertising - The Power of the Written Word over the Spoken Word

There are some things which, on account .of the delicacy of treatment, the accuracy, etc, required, cannot be trusted to the most sensitive piece of machinery, but must be finished by the hand of a skilled craftsman. There are many things in the world of selling which are too delicate for the mass treatment accorded them by the advertising man, and which require the touch of the salesman to bring to the desired conclusion.

Advertising is limited by its own advantages to definite functions in certain fields. Its usefulness varies with the character of the product, the customer, or the purchase unit. It varies with distribution, the character of the buying habit, and the extent of the territory. Above all, it varies with the attitude of mind of the consumer toward the products' associations.

No two cases will be exactly alike, but all will come under some one or two general classes which define the status of the advertising in relation to the personal selling. There are some cases where machine work is of so little value that it could be dispensed with almost without a ripple. There are similar cases in selling where the personal selling represents such an important factor in relation to the total operation that advertising can be dispensed with, and the difference hardly noted; there are other cases where advertising does all or most of the work, so that the personal selling effort is of minor importance in comparison with the whole merchandising requirement. In other words, sometimes the product sells itself, other times a simple ad will suffice, and other times will take a salesperson talking to the potential customer.

To know which one is needed, you must monitor the efficiency of your different methods. The fact of the matter is that advertising is a very low-efficiency proposition, and succeeds not because of its efficiency, but because of the minute unit cost compared with any other method of sales work yet discovered. Consider the case of a website with 100,000 visitors producing 3,000 replies and 300 sales. Such a result is a remarkable one viewed from the general averages of practice, and yet it represents only three-tenths per cent efficiency of orders. The revenue efficiency might be less than the amount mentioned if the website advertisement in question was low priced and the orders represented small amounts.

Advertising, in common with all selling work, lacks efficiency. Its value is undoubted, because of its small cost, but it is as yet very low in actual amount of work accomplished in comparison with the potentiality. There are excellent reasons for this low efficiency. Advertising has been the subject of much suspicion on account of the numerous scams that have perpetuated, it has been used without regard to its applicability, and it has scarcely been analyzed. This means, of course, that the examination of advertising, and indeed all measures looking to its analysis, are of the utmost importance, and will repay the researcher many times over. So do your homework and watch items such as Click-Thru-Rate and cost per sale very closely. Be ready to close down poorly performing ad campaigns to prevent massive losses that offset your income.

About the Author:
Donald "DonOmite" Hammond has been a freelance webdesigner and programmer for over 10 years. He has done marketing of himself and his products as well as customers' products on their websites.
Article Submitted On: November 23, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/