Wasting Money Advertising in the Virginian-Pilot

Many years ago when Erik and his wife owned a bakery, they were pretty unsure of how to go about advertising. They tried different things: coupons, running ads in the paper, he even applied for co-op dollars to offset advertising. Facebook advertising was really successful because it was highly targeted and he was able to target brides with wedding cakes, just for one example. He thought one time that they could run a print article in a local newspaper because it would cover an entire area. In this area, there’s a regional newspaper and one specifically for each city in the region. For Chesapeake, it’s called The Clipper and it’s an insert in the regional paper. So Erik ran ads in The Clipper which was focused on the geographical area where the bakery was. And it was pretty successful so he thought if he could advertise to the whole region, that would really improve their business. So one Sunday, the most popular day for the newspaper, he ran an ad that went to the entire region: 1.7 million people. He prepped the staff saying they were going to get slammed. So, the ad ran and...nobody called. And it wasn’t cheap: about $300. And nothing came out of it, not a single phone call, email, or new customer. Fast forward when he was in business for himself, Erik decided to run print ads in the same newspapers but in the business section which is called Inside Business. He ran print ads for a year at a cost of $10,000 and once again, it resulted in no calls or new customers. Lesson learned? Won’t be doing that again... — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!