Gold was first discovered at California’s Sutters Mill on January 24th, 1848.  The next year (1849), well over 300,000 fortune seekers (the ‘49ers) made their way to California, creating one of the largest mass migrations in U.S. History.  Note that it took over a year from the time gold was discovered until the masses arrived.  And by the time the crowds did show up, the easy gold was claimed…and most people never made a dime.

The above scenario describes advertising on Facebook in 2010.  It’s just like 1848, and you are ahead of the rest of the ‘49ers just by reading this post.  The masses will be on board soon, but you can make your fortune before they arrive.

Where do I get the nerve to make such a bold prediction?  By hitting the road and opening my ears…

Last week I was a speaker at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas.   Since I’m a long way from knowing everything there is to know, I always try to attend other educational sessions when I’m a speaker at a conference. One particular session at this show blew me away.  It was called “Killer Facebook Advertising Tactics”, and the information I picked up there is worth at least a couple of million bucks for me, my clients, and hopefully you!

Panelists included:
Jim Kukral, CEO, JimKukral.com (Twitter @jimkukral) (Moderator)
Mark Colacioppo, President, Globalizer, LLC (Twitter @globalizermark)
Markus Frind, CEO, Plentyoffish
Dr. David Klein (dk), CEO, Purpose inc (Twitter @purposeinc)
Jeremy Schoemaker, President, ShoeMoney Media Group, INC (Twitter @shoemoney)
Alex Schultz, Manager, Internet Marketing, Facebook (Twitter @alexschultz)

The Facebook Advertising panel at Affiliate Summit

The opportunity

• According to the panel, 2010  is the last year to take advantage of inefficiencies and lack of competition for advertising space on Facebook. Facebook today is as ripe for opportunity as Google was 6 or 7 years ago.  In another year, more big brands (with big budgets) will move in, and it will be one hundred times more competitive, thus one hundred times more difficult to develop profitable advertising campaigns.
• There are a lot of tools “missing” from the Facebook advertising process, which means it’s not as easy to operate there as other places.  Things like bulk uploading, split testing and full-scale reporting capabilities are coming, but are not there yet.
• This is why Facebook is such a ripe opportunity right now.  It actually takes WORK to be successful there…but the ones who are there now and willing to work hard (and smart) are seeing huge successes to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in profits.

Here are some valuable nuggets to get you started:

Making your ads more effective

Test, test, test – David Klein showed a PowerPoint of a round of ad testing he did for a client.  It took over 100 different variations of testing, but he finally found the ad with the right mix of headline, body copy, image, and image color that reduced his cost per lead from over $10 with the first ad to only $1.14 by the time they had tested everything!   You need to be willing to test dozens or even hundreds of ads to find the one that works.  And right now, all that testing is manual.

URL - Across the board, everyone agreed that putting the destination URL in the ad increases click through, and may of course increase branding and type-in traffic opportunities as well.

Landing pages – The more simple the landing page, the better it will perform.  Remove any extra navigation or clutter from the page.  A clear, simple offer works best.  And remember the CALL TO ACTION!  Make it very clear to the visitor what you want them to do next.

Types of offers – Lead generation campaigns work best.  According to the panel, Facebook is great at the “top of the funnel” when it comes to marketing campaigns.  It’s great for lead generation or list-building, but don’t expect someone to click on your Facebook ad and instantly buy something.

Keep your offers “On-site” – If you can run an ad for a destination inside Facebook such as a Fan Page, Group or Event, you’ll have much more success.  Why?  Because if you have the customer click to an “Off-site” page, they may get the dreaded “You are leaving Facebook” warning…which will kill your conversions.  It doesn’t always pop up, but don’t take the risk if you don’t have to.

CPM vs. CPC? – Instinctively, most new advertisers on Facebook start with the Cost Per Click (CPC) model, thinking it will reduce their risk.  However according to the panel, starting with the Cost Per Thousand (CPM) may actually be better for you, since it will reduce the risk of the ad getting pulled for lack of performance.   Once can still reduce risk by using the budget cap setting for the campaign.

Think local – Shoemoney said “Making money running local ads on Facebook is so easy, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel”.  He mentioned one client, a dental practice that Shoemoney did a local Facebook campaign for.  In less than two weeks, and for a media budget of around $500, the dentist filled up every single appointment they had for the next six months.   Try doing that with the yellow pages!

Think international – For even more virgin territory, focus your Facebook advertising efforts outside the borders of the U.S.  There is even less competition in these areas. In fact, it was mentioned that in some Eastern European countries, there are almost ZERO competitors for ad placement right now.  It can all be yours.

Warnings

Approval of ads – All ads submitted to Facebook must be manually approved.  Most of you knew that.  What you may NOT have known is that it’s the staff in the Facebook Ireland office that actually does the approval.  According to Schultz, one common reason for being rejected…the website you are linking to cannot be accessed outside North America!  Make sure your site can be accessed from anywhere in the world before submitting an ad.

Getting booted – Facebook publishes advertiser Suggested Best Practices and Common Reasons for Rejection. Read them and understand them.  From Alex, we learned that Facebook has a “Three strikes and you are out” rule, and will ban you from advertising on Facebook forever if you hit their limit.

Customer service

• Advertising on Facebook is “self serve” until you hit a budget of about $30,000 per month.  At that point you will be assigned an account manager, and get access to some extra tools that will make your life easier.
• However, if you are in the affiliate marketing space, Facebook has set up a dedicated email just for you (affiliates@facebook.com) and assures that we’ll get a prompt response from a real human being!
• Facebook cares more about the “user experience” than it does the money from your ad. This means they tend to lean on the side of being very conservative what they allow.  It also means that you aren’t likely to win too many arguments if the cause of a declined or pulled ad happens to be complaints or “dislikes” from the users.

So there you go.  A little motivation and a little information to get you going advertising on Facebook.  If you move forward, please check back with me and let me know how it goes.  You can connect with me at any of the following:

Tweets: http://www.twitter.com/Fawnkey
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/martyfahncke
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/martyf

Questions or comments?  Post them here!

Earlier today, I was working on a speaker bio/questionnaire that had been sent to me by the event organizer for a speaking engagement I have coming up.

One of the questions was “If you were a super hero, what would be your super power?”

I honestly had no idea what to put, so I posted the question to all the great people I’m connected with on Facebook and Twitter.  I figured a few of them would have some ideas…and I was right.

Lots of fun ideas ranging from the ability to fly to mind-reading to Batman’s utility belt were submitted.

But one thing took me by surprise.  Several people gave me ideas that were very heart-felt and personal, stemming from their knowledge of sme and our mutual relationship.  I was very humbled to read some of the responses, and they really made my day.

I’m posting some of them here for two reasons:
#1  As a “thank you” to each of the awesome people who lifted me up today
#2  So I will have all of these encouraging statements in one place, and the next time I’m feeling a bit low I can come back and read them for a personal pick-me-up.

From my Twitter friends:

@SophiaGracia - The power to help people smile or see the best in them.

@MichelleGillies - The power of “healing” hearts, minds & bodies

@Route53 - If you decide to speak in rhymes you could be Underdog! Remember Underdog was “Humble and Lovable”. Never Fear Marty is here

@KellieDiersman - You are able to laugh at yourself

From my Facebook friends:

Cherie Lynn Spehar – You know I am going to say ‘intuition’

Julie Mattock Degnan – Reading minds would mean you always knew exactly what your customers wanted

Lonnie Hampton – Photographic memory – You could be “Trivia Man!”

Via text and email:

Brandie Fahncke (My oldest daughter) – The ability to teleport, so you could bring your family with you to places, and have them home in time for school.

Michael Walshe – Captain Contact: So many of your posts contact people with knowledge on a variety of subjects.  While at the same time you create the means to contact the people providing that knowledge.

Thank you ALL for your kind words…you have no idea how much they have helped me today!  Also, a big thank you to Herb Sih, organizer for the Think Big Kansas City conference, who sparked this interaction by asking the question in the first place.  (If you are in KC, click HERE to learn more about this great event!)

Marty

I’m sitting down to update my travel and speaking calendar for the first few months of 2010, and thought you might be interested in seeing where I will be. If one of these events fit your schedule and location, I would love to connect with you!

Date: January 17th
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Event:  Affiliate Summit
Presentation: “Start Monetizing Your Blog Today”
More info: http://www.snipurl.com/affsummit

Date: January 20th
Location: Fresno, CA
Event:  Fresno Ad Federation
Presentation: “Increasing Your Profitability and Market Share in Today’s Economy”
More info: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=224879934775&index=1

Date: January 26th
Location: Kansas City, MO
Event: Ansafon National Executive Meeting
Presentation: Lead generation with social media
More info: <Private Event>

Date: February 11th
Location: Palm Desert, CA
Event:  Womens Leadership Forum of Coachella Valley
Presentation: “Hands-on internet marketing tactics”
More info: http://www.wlfdesert.org/article.html?aid=229

Date: March 3rd
Location: Kansas City, MO
Event: Think Big!
Presentation:  “Getting Your Product on TV – the ins and outs of infomercials and home
shopping”
More info: http://thinkbigkansascity.com

Date: March 3rd
Location: Overland Park, KS
Event: Johnson County Sertoma Open House and Awards
Presentation: Emcee
More info: http://www.johnsoncountysertoma.com

Date: May 18th
Location: Kansas City, MO
Event: Inventors Club of Kansas City
Presentation: “Inventors, Infomercials and the Internet – How to get your idea to market”
More info: http://www.inventorsclubofkc.org

Speaker Marty M. Fahncke at the podium moderating a panel during Affiliate Summit

What’s that?  You don’t see your event or organization on this list?  Well if you have an event coming up, and need a great speaker, please fee free to contact me! (Use the **Contact me** link directly to your right —>)

…or perhaps it’s just me who needs a math lesson?

I know this is a bit of a long post, but if you have 2-3 minutes, I would really appreciate if you would please read on, then post your comments and let me know if I’m crazy…or if Verizon is. (Don’t worry, I’ve done all the math for you, I just need you to help me understand what Verizon Wireless is thinking!)

I tend to be a very loyal customer when I get service I like.  A couple of examples:

• Until she retired, I used the same hair stylist for over 20 years.
• I’ve been eating at my favorite Chinese restaurant every chance I get since 1987.
• I’ve been a loyal Verizon Wireless customer since the day Verizon opened its doors for business in 2000, and was a loyal customer of their previous incarnation before that.

The only time I wasn’t a Verizon customer is when I moved to a rural Kansas location where they had zero service.  So for two  years I was a (not very impressed) T-Mobile customer.  However, as soon as I found out Verizon finally had service in my area, I switched back immediately.

My average bill for the eight years I was on Verizon Wireless was around $100/month.  So let’s start with the math:

$100 per month X 12 months X 8 years = $9,600 I gave to Verizon in the past.

In the many years I was a Verizon customer, I was a big evangelist for the brand.  Their unlimited mobile to mobile plan prompted me to recommend Verizon to many of my clients, customers, and even family members.  In fact, I particularly remember my dad being SOOO excited because switching his phone and his (then) girlfriends phone to Verizon saved him about $400/month in wireless costs.  (They really liked each other…they wound up getting married!)

All told, I estimate I’ve brought Verizon a minimum of 25 new customers since I’ve been their customer.  That’s a conservative estimate, but we’ll use it for now.  Continuing to be conservative, let’s say those customers averaged $50/month in billing.  More math:

25 customers X $50 per month X 12 months X 8 years = $120,000 in referred revenue I’ve brought to Verizon.  WOW!

So that’s the past.  Now let’s talk about the future.

I’ve continued to be happy with ALMOST every aspect of Verizon service.  I now maintain two Blackberry data plans, so my monthly bill is about $160.  Barring any drastic changes or moves, I had no plans to drop the service.  So let’s say I would have been with Verizon another 10 years and do some more math:

$160 per month X 12 months X 10 years =  $19,200

Finally, let’s assume I have the same influence in bringing them additional customers in the future.

That’s another $120,000 in future revenue.

So, here I am, a customer who is worth $28,800 in direct revenue, and $240,000 in referral revenue for a total of $268,800 lifetime value (LTV).

Here is where the confusion comes in…

Recently, the Verizon Wireless service levels (signal) at my house have deteriorated to the point that I cannot use my phone at home.  It worked fine for the first 8-9 months I was back on Verizon, but now is virtually unusable.  This is a BIG problem for a guy who works from his house.

In talking with Verizon Wireless, the said they are having “tower problems” due to their acquisition of Alltell earlier this year, and the drop in service coverage is “known” and “entirely their issue”.

Their solution?  They want to sell me a $250 device that is basically a mini cell tower that plugs into my home internet access.  Pretty cool device, and it would totally solve my problem.  “But,” I asked, “why should I have to pay for this device when the problem is admittedly yours? My service worked fine before you screwed up something in your tower.  Don’t you think you should just give me the device to fix your own problem”.

Their answer: “Nope, we don’t just give these away under any circumstance.  If you don’t want to pay for it, then we recommend you drop our service”.  WHAT??

By the way, I got this answer from both a customer service rep, AND the “Office of the President”.  So that’s their final answer…“Buh bye” to me.

So here I am, planning to drop my Verizon service as they recommended.  I’m currently researching T-Mobile and Sprint, getting ready to take my $268,800 in lifetime customer value to one of Verizon’s competitors.

But as a business person and marketing consultant, I’m completely baffled as to why a company would make a decision like this.  So this is where you come in dear reader:  Can YOU give me any logical scenario where a business would sacrifice $269,800 in revenue rather than simply take care of the customers’ needs for a measly 250 bucks?

Let me start by telling you that I am a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan.  I consider “Blink” and “The Tipping Point” to be required reading for any serious business person or marketer.

What the Dog Saw isn’t quite to that level.  But it’s still a great read.

Unlike his previous books, Gladwell didn’t write this one to explore a specific marketing trend or social behavior.  Instead, it’s a collection of his New Yorker magazine essays on a wide variety of topics, from homelessness to the CIA, and from Ketchup to The Art of Failure.

If you are in need of a boost to your creative juices, What the Dog Saw might be just the ticket.  When I read the point/counterpoint of Gladwells essays, coupled with the interesting assortment of topics that are outside the realm of the areas I normally ponder all day, I found myself being a bit more creative, a lot more objective, and saying “hmm” to myself after just about every chapter.

If you are held at gunpoint and can only read one Gladwell book in your life, this probably shouldn’t be the one you read.   (Blink would get that vote)

But if you’ve read all the others and you want to actually benefit from your reading in a number of ways, then grab What the Dog Saw and get to reading!

(FTC Disclosure: All links in this post connect to Amazon, where I’ve found the best prices on the various books mentioned.  Yes, I earn like 1% commission if you actually buy one.  Believe me, that’s not my motivation for writing a positive review!)

Late last night I posted the following to Twitter:

@FawnKey 10pm and I just got off the phone booking another speaking gig. You just never know when & where the next client is going to come from

Immediately thereafter, I received this post from one of my connections:

@thriftster teach me the secret to public speaking. I’ve got some good stories that I could use to illustrate a larger idea but I get nervous.

This really got me thinking… What IS the secret to public speaking?

All night I thought about it, until I realized…@thrifster already KNEW the secret!

The #1 most important element to being successful in public speaking is having a great story!  It only takes one good story and you are on your way.  Think about the speeches that have made an impact on you.  Throw out the PowerPoint presentations, the rehearsed verbal pauses, the scripted jokes, and the sales pitches and you’ll find all good speeches are really just stories.  And the best speeches are true stories about the speakers themselves.

So @thrifster, you are more than halfway to becoming a public speaker…you have good stories!

Now you need to learn to tell those stories without being nervous.  The secret for that is just as simple.  Don’t worry about it.   You need to realize that everyone loves a good story.  When someone buys a book, they want to read a story.  When someone goes to the movies, they want to watch and experience a story.  Humans have loved and craved stories since the beginning of time.

Right now, there is someone out there waiting to hear YOUR stories.  So don’t be nervous.  Be excited that you are giving someone what they want!

This is me earlier this year delivering a Keynote speech at a University. It ended with a very happy audience, a very happy client. And all I really did was tell my stories.

One other secret I’ll share.  Well it really isn’t a secret since over 250,000 people around the world are current members, but for some reason many people still don’t know they should do this…

Join Toastmasters.

Toastmasters will provide you a step-by-step process to learn how to tell your story in the most effective and compelling manner.  Even better, Toastmasters will give you a nurturing and empathetic environment in which to learn.  Bar none, the two Toastmasters clubs I’ve belonged to in my career have been filled with the most caring, supportive people I’ve ever met.  Every member is there to help the other members SUCCEED.  Yes, you’ll be nervous the first time you speak. In fact, you probably be nervous the first several times.  But you will learn to control it, and you WILL learn to share your stories.

Click HERE to access a database of all Toastmasters clubs in the country so you can search for a club near you.  Because each club has a different “personality”, I recommend you visit more than one club to find the one that fits your needs.  So choose at least 2 or 3 different clubs to visit.  Once you find the club that feels right, join it.

That’s it.  Two simple secrets to being successful as a public speaker.

One final thought:  Far too many people die with their story still inside them.  Please don’t let it happen to you.

As a professional speaker, I present at about 8 or 10 business and marketing conferences around the country every year.

That's me on the right moderating a panel at a conference in Las Vegas

In late 2007, I started noticing a number of people “tweeting” during my speaking gigs.  Believe me, there is nothing so difficult for a speaker as an audience that won’t pay attention.  Having 30% of your audience staring at their laptops, BlackBerry’s and iPhone’s while you are presenting is a tough challenge.

I was using every strategy in the book to keep the audience engaged in what I was saying.  But then I realized they WERE engaged.  They were SO engaged they were repeating my words to the rest of the world via Twitter.  Wow, talk about viral!

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” I said, so I signed up for Twitter myself.  (Yes, I’m now addicted!  Follow me here)

By late 2008, a few of the conferences I spoke at actually had screens behind the speaker displaying everything the audience was tweeting in real time!  At one conference, I moderated a panel discussion where most of the questions came from the audience via Twitter and the panel itself was video broadcast via USTREAM.  We had about 100 people in the room, and another 200 watching virtually.

Most speakers aren’t even ready for the “Twitter change” that is happening today, so when I read this week about how Google Wave is now starting to be used at conferences for instant audience collaboration, I was blown away.

Imagine…while you are presenting, the audience is taking notes, sharing them with each other and with the world, editing them, debating them, and adding their own comments.  Then before you are finished saying “Thank you very much” and sitting down, an entire document based on your speech exists which was developed in real time by the crowdsourcing methodology.

Whew!  The business of Speaking sure is changing fast!  Are you ready?

Read the article here, then be sure and come back to comment with your thoughts on this subject.

I’ve been up since 4am.  Why?  Because my local Twitter contacts were abuzz about the new Dunkin Donuts grand opening happening at 5am this morning.  Since I wasn’t doing anything else at 5am, I decided to head on over and check it out, dragging my 17 year old daughter in tow.

What I encountered was a dramatic contrast to what I was expecting, and it gave me a lot of ideas about the right way and the wrong way to host a retail location grand opening.  If you are opening a new brick and mortar business in the future, I believe there are some lessons to be learned.  Here is my story…

About two years ago, Chick-fil-A announced a grand opening of a new store near my home.   Part of the grand opening celebration was that the first 50 people would get gift certificates for 50 free combo meals, and everyone else who showed up would get prizes as well.

This was enough to convince my daughter and her friends to camp out the night before to ensure their place in line.  I stopped by there late in the evening to check on them and hang out for a while, and here is what I saw:

• Hundreds of people camped out in the parking lot, some in tents, many in just sleeping bags and blankets
• Dozens of people playing Frisbee, tossing footballs, playing board games, socializing, and having a great time
• The owner of the new franchise (His name is Randy.  I still remember after a few years) walking around, shaking hands and thanking everyone for coming out
• Workers from Chick-fil-A handing out food, drinks, and ice cream, making sure everyone had a good time
• Everyone having such a good time that nobody cared that the wait was 12 hours or more before the doors opened

At 6am the next day, Randy gave a quick welcome and thank you speech, opened the doors, and fed everyone in line a free breakfast.

Yes, the first 50 people did indeed get 50 combo meal vouchers.

By a quirk of fate, one of my daughters’ friends went off to serve his country in Iraq shortly after this event, so he gave me his 50 coupons.  Then my daughter moved to a different state, so she gave me what was left of hers.  Here I sat with nearly $500 worth of free food vouchers for a great place to eat. So what did I do?

I spread the word!

“Oh, you’ve never had Chick-fil-A, the best chicken sandwich in the world?”  “Well, let me buy you lunch!”

I know I converted at least a dozen people or more to the taste-bud-delight that is a Chick-fil-A sandwich.

On future visits, the owner remembered me, and always came to say “Thanks for coming in” and “Thanks for your support”

That’s how to do a Grand Opening right.  Fun.  Memorable. Established the brand in the neighborhood.  Brought more people in after the fact who became paying customers.  That’s good marketing.

Now let’s fast-forward to today:

I heard about the Dunkin Donuts grand opening on Twitter.  The owner had wisely recruited a local Twitter maven to host a “Practice run” a few days before the grand opening, announced only to people following @DDinKC on Twitter.  This bit of innovative thinking had me excited to see how the grand opening would be handled.

Here is the timeline:

• 9:00pm the night before – Watching all the tweets about the opening, I saw “There will be 100 little @DunkinDonuts reasons to be among the first 100 thirsty customers ”  Hmm, maybe we should spend the night? That might be fun!
  Posted that question back to @DDinKC on Twitter, and got this response.  “being 1st 100 NOT worth spending nite-it’s a “little” special-so sleep!”  My first thought…thanks for making sure I didn’t waste my time, but telling customers NOT to come have a good time…Not a good sign.
• 4:45am – Arrived for the 5am opening to see only a handful of people in line.  My daughter and I were #8 and #9 in line.
• 4:50am – Entertained by watching through the front window as the “Cup” and “Donut” mascots get their costumes.  Neither looked very happy to be there.
• 5:05am – Doors still not open.  Outside temp is 40 degrees.  Hot coffee would be nice about now.  Maybe they could bring some out to the shivering masses?  Nope.
• 5:08am – Doors open.  We are each given a plastic Dunkin Donuts travel cup.
• 5:10am – At the counter.  Guy in line in front of me “Do we get free coffee for our new cups?”  Girl at counter, “No, you have to buy a coffee”.  Woman in line in front of me “Do we get free donuts?” Girl at counter “No, sorry”
  Me “Wha?”

So I BOUGHT some coffee and some donuts, said hi to a few Tweeple I was meeting for the first time IRL and went home.

A plastic cup - My reward for getting up at 4am and driving 20 miles for Dunkin Donuts

No, the owners didn’t make a speech thanking everyone for coming.  No, they didn’t say “hello” to the customers as we were waiting, or walking in, or eating the food we had purchased.  I know there are two owners of this new store from reading the press releases, but have no idea who they are.

To be fair, it seems there were additional festivities happening later at the grand opening including an appearance by baseball star George Brett, and some TV and radio media.  However, that didn’t take place until 7am…two hours after the doors first opened.  By then, responsible citizens like myself were back in the trenches at work.  (Yes, blogging is work for me!)

Bottom line

The Chick-fil-A opening was a real “event”.  It was fun, exciting, the owner really engaged with the customers, and the freebies were leveraged to bring new customers into the business long after the big event.

The Dunkin Donuts grand opening felt more like; “We’re open, now buy some donuts”.

 

UPDATE:

After posting this blog, a few people picked it up on Twitter, including the owners of the Dunkin Donuts in question.  (@DDinKC)

This is a classy way to handle less than desirable press, so I wanted to share it as part of this post:

@DDinKC:  hey thanks for the feedback! Sorry to disappoint you, we did try to please today and last week too.

@FawnKey:  Didn’t mean to burst your bubble on an exciting day. Just writing what I see for my readers. I wish you the best of luck!

@DDinKC: oh it’s all good! Appreciate your thoughtfulness! Maybe we’ll get another chance with you Marty

This 4 minute, 22 second video pretty much sums up my thoughts on Social Media and the impact it has on your business…whether you know it or not. (And whether you like it or not)

Wondering what to do next?

Email me at marty at fawnkey . com for a complimentary brainstorming session how you can leverage this powerful new medium to grow your business.

(Notice:  If you are an entrepreneurial inventor, software engineer, media analyst, a person in the DRTV industry or otherwise looking for an interesting new business idea, keep reading.  If not, you might be bored with this one. Don’t say I didn’t warn you)

A decade ago, I pioneered bringing the DRTV (Infomercial) industry online.  Under my watch, the company I ran was among the first in the world to conduct E-commerce transactions driven by television infomercials.  We were the first in our industry to use video on a website (this was YEARS before YouTube!), and we were the first to integrate analytics to understand what our customers were and weren’t doing on our site. 

Yes, times were good, and we were generating millions of dollars in revenue online while many of our competitors were still trying to figure out “this newfangled interweb thing”. 

The one big problem we had…how could we effectively track and attribute orders generated by offline media to online transactions?

You see, back when DRTV transactions were done only by “800 number”, it was easy.  You simply assigned a different 800 number to each TV station or network, tracked all orders by 800 number, and PRESTO, you knew exactly how much money you made on each and every TV station and media buy.   Instant trackability and accountability…the lifeblood of direct marketing. 

Now, throw a website URL into the mix, and that all goes out the window.  Thousands of orders flooded our website, but we had no way of telling our media department which media buys brought the customers and which didn’t. 

My colleagues and I tried every solution we could think of, including:

• Different URL’s for every station – A big campaign could use hundreds of different TV stations.  There was no effective way to secure enough “easy to remember” URL’s to make this effective.
• URL slashes (www.TVproduct.com/tvstation) – That didn’t work because most people don’t remember or even write down what is “after the slash”
• Asking the customer – That didn’t work.  All the customer knows is that they saw it on TV.  No way do they know what TV station they saw it on
• Offer codes – Even making it a “discount code” and essentially paying to get the data from the customer proved less than 50% effective
• Geo-targeting with time allocation – We were able to identify some of the orders based on time and zip code for local broadcast stations airing a commercial, but this method did not work for cable ad buys

These are just a few of the long list of solutions we tried.   But we never have found the magic bullet.

For the past ten years, this situation has been a dilemma.  Hundreds of millions of dollars in media spending budgets are at stake, and an entire industry is playing a guessing game. 

While thumbing through my DRTV/Infomercial industry magazines this weekend, I noticed articles in each competing magazine which essentially said the same thing…the multi-billion dollar DRTV industry needs a “Offline to online” tracking solution desperately.  Quotes and links from each article are below:

“If the leaders of this industry band together to figure out a new paradigm for direct-to-consumer advertising, the reward may be the entire universe of marketing and advertising itself.”
Finding a Solution to Eroding Attribution
Author:  Rick Petry
Pub: Electronic Retailer magazine – July 2009

and

“Imagine how much further we could take our campaigns if we were able to accurately track online response back to originating TV media.”
Media Zone: Measuring Online Response — We Can Do Better
Author:  Dick Wechsler
Pub:  Response Magazine – July 2009

There is a famous quote in business that goes something like this; “Find a need, then fill it”.  Well, I’ve found a need.  But I don’t have the time or expertise to fill it. 

Therefore, I’m posting this as a free gift to all entrepreneurial inventors, software engineers, media analysts, or anyone else who might want to solve a huge problem plaguing an entire multi-billion dollar industry.  And you’ll probably make a ton of money in the process. 

Good luck.

Oh, and please remember me when you hit it big with this idea!