The Irresistible Bargain

<p>I woke up to a text from a client the other morning that said mate I need your help. </p> <p>I love my clients and this client in particular has done just about everything I’ve asked. But, at the end of the day you can’t take the trader out of a businessman.  </p> <p>I got myself a bargain., he said. They started asking for $6000 for that newspaper ad, but I negotiated them down to $2000, mate it’s a bargain…..But! There’s only one problem I need the artwork by lunchtime today. Mate, can you get it done? </p> <p>In truth there was probably more than one problem. Like do you really need to spend $2000. Is it really a bargain? Why do you think they offering discounts? </p> <p>As it turned out the same day that the half page colour advertisement ran in the daily newspaper, was the same day that we had started a Facebook campaign to generate clients for this client’s loyalty list. </p> <p>Now, just two weeks later let me compare and contrast the results. </p> <p>I chose to wait two weeks before doing the comparison because the Facebook campaign ran for 14 days and has only ended this morning.  I imagine other than my client who has the newspaper from 14 days ago on his desk, the bulk of the print copies of that newspaper would now be in landfill! </p> <p>The half page colour print advertisement looked great, sadly it was on the left-hand page, but it was early in a special supplement.</p> <p>All of my clients competitors had also been coerced to advertise and as such my client felt he was at least in there with the rest of his industry.</p> <p> With regards results, well honestly how do you know? Without a coupon (which is a bit old fashioned, nowadays) there is no real way to tell in this client’s business whether they entered his retail outlets because of the advertisement or not. </p> <p>So, to be fair, the newspaper advertisement did a reasonable job of positioning my client alongside his competitors in a special supplement which he was probably expected to be in. But this privilege came at a cost (albeit disc