What’s the betting that this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this question? “Is traditional advertising dead?”.

What about a better question?

How can I tell if my newspaper advertising is effective, once-and-for-all?

Quite simply, the point of advertising, is to do your best to put your adverts in the places where the most buyers will see them – but we won’t get any prizes for telling you that one, eh?

But here’s the belter – “advertising is just advertising, unless it adds value to a users life“. That’s a Dave Trott quote though, so still no smarty points for us.

If it’s adding value, then it’s driving a clear and defined response. So if that’s not what’s happening at your end – then it’s not. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer.

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It’s not about how we all ‘feel’ about it, it’s not relevant that we’ve ‘always done it’ – because last time we checked, how our employees feel about the company’s advertising isn’t the reason for this years revenue.

If you want to know if your advertising is effective you need to match it to a return on investment (ROI).

You need to match your effort metrics, or there’s absolutely no point in doing it.

It’s not a case of “is it dead?” or not – it’s more like “is it working, or not?”.

A simple way of looking at it is like this: traditional media advertising sellers talk about the ‘if’s, ‘but’s and the ‘maybe’s.

Digital talks in facts.

It’s quite easy to justify more marketing investment when there are many facts supporting the advantage, and quite difficult to get buy in when you’re talking about the thoughts and the feelings.

If you’re still interested in a traditional means of advertising, like newspaper or radio advertising, then here’s a couple of tips for doing your best to bring a sense of order to it:

  • Create an offer with a unique code so you can track responses & find out your ROI. Easiest action on your list today.
  • 90% of customer journeys begin online* now (*Google, Comscore & Yahoo), so a good way of checking is to call to action your audience to ‘go online’ and see if it makes any difference to your visitor stats – like it should do according to Google, Comscore & Yahoo.

Now listen up, if it’s dead for you, then it’s dead. There’s no use at all in trying to give it the kiss of life.

It’s 2019 – the age of digital. The age of proof and reason. Cold hard facts.

You no longer need to ‘kiss a lot of frogs to get a prince’.

Money in – performance-metrics-defined out, please. Don’t be tempted. Softwares like Leebot (shameless sales plug), make it crystal clear what happens when you put money in – what exactly you’re going to get out, before you buy.

Google & Facebook tell you exactly what you got for your spend. The list goes on.

There’s also a completely free ROI prediction tool that our boffins in the dark room created for our customers to better figure out what they should be spending and what they should be getting back in return.

But life is short – so if you love traditional advertising, because it makes your heart sing, and you don’t want to let the facts get in the way of a good story – then go for it! We love ya! We’re rooting for ya! #YOLO.

Here’s one for the rebels!

So you better fight, for your right, to paaaaaaa… (opens in new window and it’s noisy).

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We’ve all been there…