Marketing money lost is wasted? Not at all

Steven Silvers posts that marketing campaigns that don’t deliver immediate returns are a waste of cash:

Research firm Blackfriars Communications estimates that U.S. business will spend around $615 billion on marketing this year.

That’s more than two thousand bucks per every living man, woman and child in the U.S. going toward online and offline advertising, direct mail, telemarketing, spam, promotional events, Web sites, brochures and collateral, giveaways, tchotchkes, marketing PR and everything else.

Blackfriars points out that marketing could be considered the country’s ninth-largest industry – bigger than even the nation’s entire information and media business.

Wow. Given the inherent hit-and-miss nature of marketing communications, it’s staggering to think about how much money American companies spend to create absolutely nothing in return. Every one percent of the “marketing industry” that is ineffective represents more than six billion dollars poured down the drain.

Even if you were to assume that two-thirds of all marketing was successful – and that’s very generous – then you’re talking about $203 billion being wasted on useless overhead and clutter this year alone. That’s more than the combined annual revenues of the lighting equipment, household appliance and dairy products industries.

So - marketing is a risk business. Sometimes you have to make mistakes to build a stronger campaign.

Not sure why the comments above have been posted, but it seems inherently ignorant to think that money that doesn’t achieve it’s primary marketing objective is wasted - simply on the principle of failing to deliver immediate results.

Ideally, all marketing spend = immediate returns. But sometimes you have to find your way to success by daring to chance different strategies.

Anyone who thinks failure is nothing more than that has no place in business. Failure is simply a part of the learning process you got wrong.

Anyone here made a million on their first venture? Anyone here learned real lessons from earlier mistakes, and built a better company for it?

Anyone here dared to try new and different strategies, despite the risks, because corporate dinosaurs wouldn’t dare try anything that had already been trailblazed? Anyone here trailblazed because of it?

As the British SAS say: Who dares wins. If you don’t dare, you don’t win. If you don’t succeed at first, you learn and retry.

Perhaps there is a real wastage at corporate level. Heck, New Marketing has the need for re-evaluation of changing markets at its core.

But for the entrepreneurs - by daring, there are gains to be made.