Let's say you run a 'Pizza' place, and like other good fast food companies you need to get people through the door and order what it is you sell.

Today you have lots of options to get your message across to encourage people to come and shop with you instead of a competitor who might be over the road, or just further up the street. More on this later......

Before we go any further let me try and help out your very tight family Xmas budget with a few ideas;

Do you subscribe to a mobile, digital TV package, or shop with eCommerce/Mail order retailers, if the answer is yes read on.

  • Do you know how to get 3 months viewing for free from Sky?
  • Do you know how to get a lower contract from your mobile operator?
  • Do you know how to get a bigger discount from your online/mail order company?

The answer is to cancel them, then wait for the renewal department to call or send you a message offering an incentive to either remain with them, or if you have already left induce you to return - Bingo, you just saved quite a lot of cash. 

My wife worked out many years ago that if she put the items she liked when shopping online into a holding basket, very quickly afterwards she got a message offering a discount to complete the order, and the longer she resisted the greater the incentive grew.  

We both worked out that as we used to go on annual holiday each year for at least two weeks we should cancel our subscription to 'Sky' the week before we left. 

Within a matter of weeks following our return we were offered '3 months free' to rejoin. Same thing with our mobile contracts.

This is what I call 'rewarding disaffection' and today's bright digitally savvy consumers know how to play this game.

Yet brand's don't seem to have learnt  anything when it comes to paid media.

 Back to our 'Pizza' shop analogy;

Let's say you have opted to get 3 students to hand out flyers for you in different parts of town, these flyers offer a discount of some kind in order to induce people to come into your shop and buy something. 

Each of the these flyers has a unique code that relates to the student who hands it out. Obviously this is done to enable you to see who's doing the best job with those expensive leaflets.

As the day goes by students one and two have handed out all their flyers, but very few are redeemed at the shop?

Student number 3 has also handed out all his/her flyers, however he/she has an almost 100% redemption rate - AWESOME RESULT!!

The other 2 students, and you are clearly very keen to find out the secret to student number 3's amazing success.

He/she then says they stood 20 feet from the shop door and handed out the leaflets to everyone who was about to go into your 'Pizza' shop.

And that my friends, is just one part of the failure of digital advertising.

To find out more, grab a coffee, take time out to read the article in the link below, and like my earlier example it might just help to save you, and your company a small fortune in wasted paid media spend.