I was reading a story about RedEnvelope (I’m not affiliated with them) today. It started out as a typical marketing case study – with the usual woes of what was going on before massive change and an insertion of marketing talent, followed by the high success of the marketing efforts of those same people.

It is a positive story, overall, and granted, the story was written in 2002, so it is a little old, and I have no idea how well RedEnvelope is doing now. There website is still online, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are doing well. That is not the point I’m trying to get at though.

The thing I found interesting about the story, was actually the comment made at the end of the story. After all the build-up of a huge marketing success, the story is slammed down by stating coldly that the company spent $4 in marketing for every $1 in gross sales.

That’s four times the amount of gross sales in marketing. To me, there is no reason this story should have been considered a success at all – of course, that is not taking into perspective what happened after that initial investment in marketing. The point remains, however; without a clear and guaranteed return on that investment, spending four times the amount of sales on marketing is not acceptable by my standards – regardless of the amount of sales generated.

Marketing efforts must be able to demonstrate a clear, measurable path to a return (and hopefully a large one) on investment. Even social media, for example, has the ability to be measured, and it most certainly should be.

Blindly spending vast amounts of money on marketing is not a sure solution to success, especially in today’s society of advertising and marketing bombardment on consumers. People are increasingly turned off by traditional marketing efforts, and are leery of the new marketing efforts being employed. Spending money without a strong indication of the return on investment is just plain stupid.

I don’t mean to pick on RedEnvelope, especially because I don’t know what the overall success of that initial marketing effort was, they may now spend $1 in marketing for every $4 in gross sales – and that very likely could be the case because of that initial effort. But on the surface, the story does not yield itself to a positive light for RedEnvelope’s initial thinking.

Before spending 30%-50% of your startup capital on marketing, make sure that you spend that money in a way that is 1) trackable, 2) measurable, and 3) as close to guaranteed to give you a return as is possible.

Congratulations, through some source or search I’ve conducted, I’ve landed on your website. I like what you have to say about the particular topic I’m currently reading. I want to hear more from you in the future, but I’m lazy, I like to have content force-fed to me, so, since you don’t seem to believe in RSS and its magical wonders, I won’t be back (most likely).

The number of news and information resource sites on the web that still don’t use RSS technology overwhelms me. It’s such a simple thing to implement, and it is such a great way to encourage that oh-so-sought-after returning visitor. Sure, there are some sites that people will naturally return to because of their very nature, i.e their local news site. Before lubbockonline.com had RSS, I did return to the site, but not nearly as often as I do now that they have RSS enabled.

Just Enabling RSS Isn’t The Answer

Okay, so you’ve realized that RSS is important, and you’ve enabled it. However, you’re stingy with your content. You’re afraid that if you put all of your post/article into the feed, then I won’t actually visit your site any more. So instead, you decide to just allow the headlines and a brief (and undoubtedly) vague summary of the post/article. Or worse, you just put the headlines in to the feed. WRONG.

Let me read what you have to say. I subscribed for that very reason. Don’t annoy me (and potentially cause me to unsubscribe) because you are stingy. “But, my advertisers want traffic to the website” you might be saying. True, advertisers are focused on maximizing their exposure, and for good reason. The way I see it, there are three ways to look at this:

1. Pretend you’ll get more website traffic by not encouraging RSS subscriptions (wrong).
2. Realize that more RSS readers equals more return visitors (and therefore more engaged and qualified visitors). Advertisers don’t just want traffic, they want traffic that is the right kind – return visitors offer them much better touch-point abilities.
3. Use RSS as an opportunity to get MORE advertising revenue by selling advertising inside your RSS feeds. There are multiple companies that provide this service. Google AdSense, Pheedo, and I’m sure there are others.

I usually read the articles in my Google Reader every morning (even on the weekends). If you don’t offer an RSS feed subscription when I get to your website, you are missing an opportunity to put your website, your brand, and your advertisers in front of me on a daily basis.

Did I miss something, though? Do you have a good reason for not including an RSS feed on your website? I’d love to hear what it is; maybe you can open my eyes to something I didn’t think of before. Let me hear about it in the comments below.

When Al Gore invented the Internet the Internet was new, few people expected it to become as commonplace as it is today. Now that it is, many traditional media outlets are suffering the wrath of innovation. I don’t know who first said, “Change or die!” but the message can be applied to all facets of life, especially newspapers in this critical transitional period. The cliché’s undeniable truth is clearly illustrated with the current ill-fated demise that newspapers across the country are experiencing on a daily basis; including Lubbock’s own Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. The A-J recently put the sticker you see in the above picture on a distribution of papers.

The picture is a little fuzzy, the phrase is:

Attention Lubbock Businesses!
-FRONT PAGE ADVERTISING-
Reach 1,000s of Households for Less Than the Price of Postage!
Call to hear a
FREE
24HR RECORDED
*Exclusive” Message
800-530-4585 / EXT 55

I am confident that the saving grace of our written news will soon reveal itself in the form of ereaders or similar devices. Many predicted the new Apple iPad would be the magic solution prior to its release. Now that’s it’s here, I think people are far less convinced. I personally don’t think printed newspaper readers will make the jump on a wide scale for at least 5 more years. I still like to touch the paper; I like being able to cut out the comics that made me laugh and put them on the refrigerator. I know I’m not the only one that feels this way.

The inherent problem with change isn’t the predecessor or the successor; rather it is the intersection of the two. Right now is that unbearable time where people give up on the old, yet haven’t adopted the new. This is the true killer of newspapers. In 5 years, the newspapers that survive this transition period will be the ones that we’ll all be reading on our tablets, our phones, our laptops, our netbooks (heh, that’s funny, my computer thinks netbooks is misspelled), and even our TVs.

The newspapers that find a way to monetize their online versions (something none of them have found a way to master yet) before they lose the majority of their old-style print-version subscribers will be the success stories we’ll be getting our information from (as we’re reading about the good ol’ days and being nostalgic about our old newspapers that we used to read and clip articles and comics out of). Those that fail to keep their revenues up while in this transition period will undoubtedly fail or be forced into a less-than perfect circumstance.

Opportunity in the Wake

Many advertisers have seen this as their queue to run for the digital hills, and in many cases, rightfully so. However, as the above image illustrates, the drastic decline in printed newspaper advertisers provides tremendous leverage for those businesses that can still gain from advertising in the newspaper. Print newspaper advertising is more affordable than ever. If it makes sense for your business to advertise in the newspaper, take advantage of the fact that so many businesses have pulled out of newspapers.