Re:GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account
by lsc on Wednesday May 16, 2012 @06:00PM
(#3984267)
>I'm not sure general brand awareness efforts are as financially valuable as interactions with customers that are in "I'm about to buy something" mode.
Maybe? Personally, I spend all my advertising dollars/effort (and good brand building requires far more effort than dollars.) on brand building, and as little as possible on per-customer sales (except as it relates to the 'brand building' - support is part of that.)
I mean, it's like commission. For co-location, it's traditional to give the referring party 10% of what the customer pays you for the life of their contract. (sometimes it's for the life of the customer, and through any upgrades, too.) - every customer pays a different price for the same product, and you are expected to spend hours selling to the customer.
My approach is to put the price and information on the website, and then advertise that. Spend little effort on each individual sale.
The advantage of per-customer effort is that you can specially craft your offering to charge as much as that particular customer can pay.
The disadvantage, of course, is that is a lot of work, and it doesn't help your reputation any. This is a big reason why IAAS is crushing co-location; It literally takes months to get the real price out of a co-location provider, while amazon has the prices right there on the website. (I mean, the off the bat price is about twice as high as the "real price" after negotiating and looking around in co-location. Cogent quoted me $3/Mbps six months ago. I signed papers at $0.65/Mbps. There isn't as much room when it comes to power? but my highest quote is easily twice the price of the lowest quote.)
I don't know about you, but as a customer? I will pay more to know the price up front (and to be reasonably sure that I will pay a similar price if I need more later) - I mean, I won't pay 400% more, but I would pay 30% more, that negotiation isn't free on either side.
So yeah, I think brand building is the better advertising value in the long term. It is more effort, though; writing articles probably has a better return than buying ads for brand building. (buying ads has a place, too.)
Maybe? Personally, I spend all my advertising dollars/effort (and good brand building requires far more effort than dollars.) on brand building, and as little as possible on per-customer sales (except as it relates to the 'brand building' - support is part of that.)
I mean, it's like commission. For co-location, it's traditional to give the referring party 10% of what the customer pays you for the life of their contract. (sometimes it's for the life of the customer, and through any upgrades, too.) - every customer pays a different price for the same product, and you are expected to spend hours selling to the customer.
My approach is to put the price and information on the website, and then advertise that. Spend little effort on each individual sale.
The advantage of per-customer effort is that you can specially craft your offering to charge as much as that particular customer can pay.
The disadvantage, of course, is that is a lot of work, and it doesn't help your reputation any. This is a big reason why IAAS is crushing co-location; It literally takes months to get the real price out of a co-location provider, while amazon has the prices right there on the website. (I mean, the off the bat price is about twice as high as the "real price" after negotiating and looking around in co-location. Cogent quoted me $3/Mbps six months ago. I signed papers at $0.65/Mbps. There isn't as much room when it comes to power? but my highest quote is easily twice the price of the lowest quote.)
I don't know about you, but as a customer? I will pay more to know the price up front (and to be reasonably sure that I will pay a similar price if I need more later) - I mean, I won't pay 400% more, but I would pay 30% more, that negotiation isn't free on either side.
So yeah, I think brand building is the better advertising value in the long term. It is more effort, though; writing articles probably has a better return than buying ads for brand building. (buying ads has a place, too.)