Why 99.5% of e-marketiing is a waste of time and effort - and why that's a good thing for your busin
Unilever founder Lord Leverhulme's timelesS statement; "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is, I don't know which half", is one of the landmarks of sales promotion.
The crafty old devil wasn't being strictly truthful of course. The 50% figure was probaly designed to impress his manufacturer contemporaries with the degree of apparent wastage involved - a proportion that would never be tolerated in a manufacturing process, but one which he was happy to bear. Especially if competitors decided that promotion was a mug's game.
And it worked, his brands dominated and yet it's still quoted daily by business people as a stick to beat the ad brigade with. But in fact, if you ask any agency what they think of a 50% response to an offer and they'll tell you they'd be turning cartwheels, and so would their client.
Nowadays most e-marketing material finds its way unerringly into the trash or spam bin - where it quite honestly deserves to be. And that's good news for people who want to get smart about selling. The more dross there is out there, the more the original approach will stand out.
There's more about this in the BUSINESS SECTION .
If you''re not too busy to find out more about marketing your product more effectively, take a look.
