ReveNews
-
NAVIGATION
-
TOPICS
-
THE REVENEWS BLOGGERS
-
QUICK CONTACT
Who wants 1 Million Dollars for free? Really, no joke…
Yes, the headline is a play on Jim’s recent post on attention grabbing headlines, but the offer is real (the details of which you can find below). I spontaneously decided to create this offer to illustrate an important point about offline affiliate marketing: the offline world is so segregated from online marketing, that they won’t even see a legitimate offer to receive $1,000,000 for free let alone take advantage of it.
I had a friend who was once so depressed he was incapable of seeing his condition. I and others would suggest ways to correct negative behaviors he had developed that were clearly fueling his depression, but our efforts did little good because he did not think he had a problem. He also had “friends” who were telling him he was fine, despite the fact that he had not worked in over 5 years, never left the house, and was quickly losing everything he worked so hard to acquire.
The offline marketing world has a form of depression. Offline marketers for major retail corporations are addicted to ever more costly and fragmented offline advertising options that are proving to be increasingly less productive. The standard position for many is, “if our ad spending is producing less each year, we have to spend more in the same way to compensate. We have no other choice.” And to make matters worse the afflicted surround themselves with “doctors” (a.k.a. as ad agencies) that reinforce their perspective and prescribe medications to treat the symptoms rather than deal with the real problem.
The “problem” is simple and somewhat common for 80% of all retail businesses: how do you spend ad dollars more efficiently year after year to produce greater sales and profits. The answer is equally simple: use the Internet dramatically more in your general advertising and marketing mix.
Why is such a simple fix seemingly impossible for the offline marketing world to embrace?
The primary reason has to do with corporate structure and how the creation of online business units literally made the Internet “off limits” to most offline marketers.
Most offline marketers do not realize that their very corporate structure prohibits them from utilizing the web to their benefit. One of the biggest mistakes retail businesses made during the online boom was perceiving the Internet as a separate “place” to do business rather than a new marketing medium. The effects of this faulty presumption cost companies billions and are still being felt today. In most cases retailers created entirely separate business units whose sole goal was to use the Internet strictly for stimulating online sales - actually creating competitive businesses. They went so far as to give these units (that even today produce less than 5% of their companies’ total revenues) authority over 100% of their company’s online spending. To make matters worse, it was common place to tie huge portions of the online executives salaries and bonuses to online sales growth. This ensured only one thing: every dime they had at their disposal was going to stimulate online sales even if that effort may not be the best use of those funds.
Today, we are still experiencing the fallout of this tragic business strategy. Many companies still maintain a structure that pits online vs. offline business units. Nearly all retail companies separate offline and online ad budgets giving the vast majority of the ad budget pie to offline spending while giving them absolutely no ability to use any offline funds for online campaigns.
Collectively, online marketers can show the offline marketing world online advertising and marketing models that provide huge impacts with far better cost efficiencies, sales growth, new customer acquisition, even better branding results than what retailers are currently paying for today through traditional media - but most of the executives in charge of offline marketing and advertising don’t even read blogs like this yet. That is another big problem. How do you help these companies if they don’t even realize they have a problem. How do you shock companies into seeing that change is needed before their condition gets worse?
I’ll take it upon myself to begin the intervention.
Here it goes, gulp…
I will give up to 3 separate retail companies that operate at least 250 physical stores in the U.S., $1,000,000 each in free net in-store sales as long as they provide an offer that can be tracked and allow me to publicize the results of the marketing campaign to include conversion rates, number of new customers acquired, and total cost analysis on Revenews.com.
If nobody takes me up on my offer, it will just prove my point. If someone does, we should have some fresh data to discuss and debate the potential of offline marketing for many months to come.
Any takers?
4 Comments
Leave a comment
-
We Support New York Affiliates
-
Subscribe to ReveNews
“If nobody takes me up on my offer, it will just prove my point.”
Are you talking about this point?
“the offline world is so segregated from online marketing, that they won’t even see a legitimate offer to receive $1,000,000 for free let alone take advantage of it.”
If so, I disagree. If so, I’ll explain in my next post.
Jonathan - thanks for commenting.
Yes. Please infer that my point is this: the structural separation of offline and online marketing objectives within most retail companies prevents them from utilizing the Internet to the greater benefit of the company as a whole.
Though I realize that there might be many reasons why a company may or may not be able to take advantage of my specific offer, the point I was trying to make was that most offline marketing execs don’t read valuable online marketing resources like Revenews yet.
If you disagree, I welcome an explanation of your position.
I agree with you on your points, that there is still that separation, some are better than others in closing that gap. You touched on what I was thinking about. That they might not read Revenews to see the offer, some may. So it might not necessarily prove the point. It could be just a matter of getting the offer out there in front of the right people. Besides Revenews, places like Internet Retailer? Might get the word out.
I want a Million bucks!