Here is a starting point of  20 questions you should be answering. Some of these may seem simple and obvious. But, seeing the answers written down in context with other information provides clarity that can reveal relationships you haven’t noticed before. Likewise, as simple as these look, you’ll be surprised at how difficult it is to answer some of them.

1. How long have you been in business?   
2. What does your annual sales curve look like and how has it been trending over the past three or four years?
3. How many competitors do you have? (list them)
4. How big is your business compared to theirs?
5. What are their hours? What are yours?
6. How do your competitors attempt to differentiate themselves? What is their primary image? (quality, price, exclusive lines, service, etc.)
7. Are they fulfilling their claims?  
8. What unique benefit do you provide that competitors don’t?
9. Where is your business located in relationship to customers and competitors? 
10. What does the customer landscape look like? (growing, diminishing, why?)
11. Describe your best customer.
12. What does the broad cross-section of your customers look like? (demographic, psychographic, social, income, geographic)
13. Are there enough customers to go around? 
14. What have you been doing to market yourself? 
15. How has it been working? (quantify as much as possible)
16. What are your competitors doing to market themselves? 
17. How much are your competitors spending on advertising annually?
18. How are they presenting their strengths?
19. Does your business have a weakness or bad public perception in any area that must be overcome? (ie: poor quality or service from previous owner, old facility, etc.)
20. How has your industry changed over the past few years, and how is it expected to change in the future?

All of the 20 questions listed above may not apply to your particular business. But, for those that do, be sure to explore the answers thoroughly. Some of the questions may at first sound simple, but when you really get into it, can be quite complex. The more detailed and honest you are in defining exactly where you stand in terms of competition, market size, industry trends, past marketing results, and anything else you can learn, the better equipped you will be to determine your strategy.  

Rob Charlton

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The Dot Study is a simple and inexpensive marketing research tool you can use to gather this information.

Go to your nearest map store and buy two fairly good sized maps of the area around your store. The maps should be big enough so they include the areas around your store outside of where you think your customers are coming from.

Mount each map on a piece of foam core or some other rigid backing. Mark one AM and one PM and then switch from the AM to the PM map at the same time (of your choosing) every day. The reason for this is to distinguish your source of sales during the day from those during the evening. Often, people will shop from work or some other place during the day. But, will shop from home in the evening. This is important to know, especially if you have a business such as a restaurant where you need to target lunch versus dinner messages. 

Instruct your sales staff to ask each person they wait on where their shopping trip originated from. In the evening it is a little more important to establish that the originating point is their home. They don’t have to give you an address or anything specific. All they have to do is point to an area on the map. Your staff will then place a colored dot on the map with a felt pen where the customer has indicated.

It is important to do this consistently and long enough to get a distinct visual representation of where the dots begin forming clusters. After a week or two, you will begin to see patterns emerging that will provide a great tool for future marketing.

How would you change your marketing if you could see on a map exactly where your customers were coming from?

Rob Charlton

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One of the most common mistakes made by advertisers is coming up with some clever headline that leaves the reader clueless as to what is being advertised. With business owners and copywriters alike, there is this nagging need, born of some unwritten expectation, to create something clever and glib when writing a headline. Sometimes it works, but unless you’re an experienced copywriter who understands the difference between clever and clear communication, just state your message. Sure, it might be boring. But at least the readers will know what you’re about and you’ll have a chance to engage them if your product solves a problem they have.

Most business owners are uniquely unqualified to write their own copy. This is because they know themselves too well. Information that is of interest to their prospective customers is so much a part of their lives that they assume everyone already knows it. So, a headline that makes some obscure reference to their product or service makes perfect sense to them. I’ve seen this time and time again. And, when the ad doesn’t work, it’s always blamed on the medium.

While writing this blog, I randomly picked up a couple industry magazines and looked at some headlines. Here are some that I found.

“We do the Impossible. Immediately.”
I had to read half way into the body copy before I learned that it was for a company that makes molds.

“Experience and Knowledge”
Even after reading the body copy I’m not sure what they do. At the very bottom it reads: Atlas Copco Rock Drills AB. So, maybe they make rock drills. I’m not sure.

“We love commercial breaks.”
Never did figure out what this company does.

On the other hand, here are some headlines that were perfectly clear.

“Abrasion-Resistant Pipe Systems for reduced downtime and lifecycle savings.”
PLain, but crystal clear.

“Cost Efficient Solutions for Air Filtration.”
Not hard to figure this one out.

“Simple, Economical Torque Wrench Testing.”
Straight to the point and quickly understood.

Lack of clarity costs companies untold dollars every year. If you must write your own headline, give it this test before you publish it. Cover your logo and body copy, leaving just the illustration and headline. Then put it in front of three or four people outside your company and ask if they know what the message is. If they stumble around with guesses, go back to the drawing board and start over.

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Here are the variables you need to consider when calculating an expected response from a newspaper ad.

1. YOUR TARGET
Every product has a demographic that represents its prime target. Let’s say, for the sake of this example, that your target demographic is adults, 25 – 54

2. MARKET SIZE
If you are located in a city of 1.5 million people and the 25 – 54 demographic represents 40%, then your target population is 600,000.

3. DURATION BETWEEN PURCHASES
Since people don’t buy every product they use every day of the year, the duration between purchases is important to consider. Let’s say people buy your product one time per year on average. Then, your available market in any month is 1/12 of 600,000, or 50,000. Of course, you’ll have to take into account the seasonal fluctuations for your product and apply the same logic.

4. NEWSPAPER CIRCULATION
If your local daily newspaper has a 40% penetration in your market, calculate that against your available 50,000 market to reach 20,000 possible qualified exposures to your message.

5. READERSHIP
Not every subscriber reads every page every day. Studies have shown that if you get 10% of the subscribers to read your ad, that is a very generous number. Applying that calculation to our example reduced the number of targeted customers to 2,000.

6. YOUR MARKET SHARE
Unless you have an exclusive monopoly in your market, you have competition with some customers who are loyal to them. If your overall market share is 10%, you can apply that to the remaining targeted customers, leaving 200 as your reasonable expectation.

7. RESPONSE RATE
Assume a 2% response rate from your ad.

8. RESPONSE
Your expected response (customers making a transaction) will be 4.

These numbers can vary wildly. However, the chain of logic remains constant. The offer, size of ad, weather, lack of or heavy competition, time of year and numerous other influences can have a bearing on final results. But, this model is useful to illustrate the realities of advertising response.

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