Thursday, August 13. 2009Advertising, Promotion, Marketing - What Is Becoming Of Us?John Linton Two phone calls yesterday gave me pause for thought which I duly did over the remainder of the day and again over the first waking hours of this morning. They were both related to promoting Exetel's services via 'dual marketing' with other companies. Exetel has never had such approaches before and to get two within a few hours was an odd co-incidence. I suppose our TV advertising in various regional areas has, as usual, drawn the attention of non-intended 'viewers' and maybe makes us look as though we are a spender of money on these sorts of exercises. That's certainly true in one case as they specifically mentioned how much they 'admired' our short ad. The other one was similar in that it referenced our web site's content that deals with our small contributions to fauna and flora protection. Since our beginnings in January 2004, Exetel has done no promotion, advertising or marketing and until February of this year has had no 'sales force'. Since that time we have been adding sales trainees at a rate of around 2 per month, have agreed a regional country television advertising program and have designed and distributed an increasing number of 'posters' and brochures' - we even sent someone on a brief 'promotional trip' to Central Victoria! All this from a company that for five years had strictly adhered to its base m.o. of only using a web site to 'sell' its products and services. We have even been discussing with more than one of our suppliers how we could be involved in 'joint promotion' of some of the services we buy from them. FCS pretty soon we will be hiring a "Marketing Manager" if this trend continues! Perhaps it's just a phase we had to go through or just an indication of how tired my mind has become to allow my total aversion to all advertising and promotion to be overcome by the steadily increasing 'pressures' exerted by people in and outside the company to involve ourselves in these, to me, always pointless and money wasting processes (not the hiring of sales people which is the one essential change we had to make to Exetel to accomplish a move to a much higher percentage of revenue from non-residential services). It seems to me that, in a very short time, we have moved from our previous position of "no marketing/advertising/promotion whatsoever" to doing all of those things simultaneously. I fully realise that I agreed with each of these initiatives and am neither ascribing 'blame' nor distancing myself from the decisions to do any of these processes - I'm just expressing a belated surprise at how much time and money we are now committing to things that I have regarded so negatively for the whole of my business life. No fool like an old fool springs to mind. It's not that I don't agree with all of the various things in terms of promotion/marketing individually, we are doing it's just that I really don't see an overall benefit to Exetel's long term's objectives. If we are to spend money 'selling' our services then I think I am not the right person to direct those activities....it goes against the very essence of the reasons I was involved in setting up Exetel in the first place and means, to me at least, that there is no real reason for Exetel to exist. Any way, getting back to the joint promotion 'opportunities' we were offered yesterday. Having mulled them over for some hours I have come to the conclusion that Exetel would have to give away too much of our 'intellectual property' in terms of our knowledge of how to approach the target marketplaces involved and while we are very much a 'no secrets/open book' company it did force me to realise that we do a number of things better than any of our competitors and we would be foolish to spell out those few 'secret' advantages that we do have. That could be pure self delusion/foolish pride but it seems to be true in a number of ways and as one of our suppliers remarked recently "you guys sell far more of 'product X' than our really biggest wholesale customers like Macquarie Telecom" - so we must have some 'hidden advantages/capabilities'....perhaps just our very low prices? Then again perhaps it is just our being foolish and our false self aggrandisement? Quite possibly - but I think we have 'opened the kimono' (to go back to marketing speak of the 1970s) quite far enough in terms of making our knowledge and research available as widely as we have already done - filling in the few remaining blanks for our few real competitors would not be in our interests. So I emailed the two enquirers from yesterday a few minutes ago and thanked them for their interest but said we had "too much on our plate" to consider anything else for the rest of 2009 which apart from being totally true is probably an understatement. In fact it wasn't until I reached this precise moment in summarising the issues we are currently dealing with vis a vis "promotional activities" that I realised how very over committed we actually are in terms of time, personnel and money to doing things we have absolutely no knowledge or experience of. I wish it were possible to go back to our web site only marketing approach - it took a lot less time, cost a lot less money and worked quite well. Trackbacks
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Is there somewhere on the web I can view said advertisements?
Comment (1)
It's on Youtube. Just search for Exetel once on youtube.com
Comments (2)
Just take a measured approach to it all John. Your business will quickly begin to learn what kind of works and what kind of doesn't. Measuring things is important (and that is what is good about the web). Your call centre can also measure things by asking a simple question to a sample of callers each day. How did you hear about us etc. Your agents on the ground will also be great feedback about how effective campaigns are in delivering business.
Comment (1)
"I wish it were possible to go back to our web site only marketing approach"
Nothing I know of is stopping you waving a magic want to make it happen. Comment (1)
I am glad that Exetel is now increasing their reach through advertising. HOWEVER, I hope that the advertising campaigns do not become a major contributor to increasing prices/falling service.
I am thrilled about Exetel being the "underdog" and not dedicating themselves to becoming an annoyance on tv/radio. Word of mouth will spread the message far and wide and is much more reliable an advertising medium than any tv or radio commercial could be. Comment (1)
Interesting...I wonder if it was I who was the person contacting Exetel regarding promotion through the fauna and flora issues? It was at about that time. I'm a conservationist, regularly bemused by the amount of money spent on conservation research but so little ends up in the public domain. Hugely valuable insights into our endangered biodiversity that most of the public don't find out about.
I've been with Exetel from as long as I can remember (I remember when I could phone up and speak to a person directly whenever I had any problems). I routinely mention the great work you are doing for the environment but so far, I have not spoken to anyone who has heard of you. Exetel aside, does this also mean that few will have heard about the work being done on Gouldian Finch etc? Almost definitely. Surely the best thing about getting sponsored to do wildlife work is to be able to tell the world, thus raising appreciation of nature...something for which we Australians have a poor track record. Telecomms companies are maybe the perfect partner for conservationists but we do like to keep these things to ourselves, then moan when we can't get any public support. Maybe I'll try approaching you again...the problem with selling conservation-related things...you either over-sell the business benefits and undersell the conservation end, or over-sell the conservation benefits and under-sell the business end. I've enjoyed reading your posts...I will be a little wiser now Regards, Comments (2)
Our small contributions to the preservation of Australian species are miniscule in the scheme of things and we have never had any intention of using them to 'promote' Exetel - that would be crass in my opinion.
You can talk to support at any time but now you need to log a fault first. Comments (3)
I don't see anything crass about sustaining an enterprise that invests in conservation. It would seem ultimately far more beneficial. But the point is not about promoting a sponsor, it is about promoting wildlife experiences. We're losing biodiversity rapidly because we can't connect Australians with nature. Perhaps if we sought to promote biodiversity more widely, then people would value it more and we'd have more resources to do better. I see promotion of sponsors as part of that equation...there is nothing crass about making money out of nature...all the best conservation schemes are self-sustaining because they are ambitious businesses. And I don't believe for a moment that Exetel's contributions are miniscule, for the same reason that I don't believe my water conservation, installation of solar on my house etc is miniscule. It all adds up.
Keep up the good work! Simon. Comments (2)
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