Team Building|An Exercise in People Management

One thing you need to have any business “go” is people. Customers, and employees alike are people, and both are necessary for any business transactions to happen. Duh. We know.

The hard part about this is defining both styles and sets of people. Is my customer someone who is going to be buying a lot of what I have or only a few things? Do I want to target someone who is going to be a repeat customer, or is possibly going to draw in their friends and hopefully increase my market share? Do I need a large or small market share, and which groups can I gear my ads and product appeals to for this?

There are millions of questions we need to ask ourselves before we do anything regarding our product outside of understanding what it is.

We need to understand our product before we can sell it. If you don’t believe in it, or understand it, you are only setting yourself up for future failure. (It may work in the beginning not knowing everything about your product, but in the end get ready to grab your ankles, because it’s going to be a rough ride, with you in the gunners seat.)

Not only do we need to understand our consumers though you need to understand and trust your employees (if any besides yourself) and you need to make sure they will come through in the clutch of things.

Right now, I’m building my database of possibly employees for my Advertising business.

Current Assets and Employees; My Laptop. Me.

Start your engines.

Things to Measure - Defining the Stick

Today I dedicated to mostly figuring out things to actually measure to get a sense of ad effectiveness.

Now I am sure every company has it’s on measures, but I am curious what would work best for any situation. I know there is definitely not one universal one size fits all measure, and if you try and make it cookie cutter, or one size fits all, I think you have another thing coming. Here are the measures I came up with today, and some possible applications;

Attendance - An annual function measures attendance and reports a significant (i.e. noticeable) spike in their yearly attendance the year after the ad campaign is instated (or rather the year the ad campaign is targeted for).

Sales  of Services - A service sales company sees a spike in the amount of sales they have of their services.

Sales of Goods - A goods company sees a spike in the amount of sales they have of their product

Revenue Increase (NET) - After the growth of sales, that growth is not only measured in quantity of the sales but in the economic quality and benefit for your client.

Public Opinion Polls - A positive increase (better than a previous poll which needs to be taken) in the overall emotional appeal/idea that someone gets in their head when they see or recognize your brand.

There are more to come, but It’s 11:37 pm, and it’s time for me to close up the books and get into the sack. Until the sun rises again… in 8 hours.

Introduction to Need

Something interesting about me is that I like to work alone. This weekend I was thrown into a situation where it was made excruciatingly clear that flying solo wasn’t going to work.

Going against my personal grain is something that will most likely haunt and plague me during this daunting task to starting up my own Advertising Giant, but it is something that I must overcome. I need to work better in an environment where everyone involved is capable of aiding in the creation process of whatever it is we are doing.

Advertising is not just ads and ad campaigns. It is relationships. It is numbers.

Advertising doesn’t just mean, you make someone a pretty “screen-pleasing” video with some who-ha big named actor, or some cool effects. Advertising is about measuring how well that ad with the who-ha or that radio sound-byte effected your clients income, and revenues, how well it increased their market shares and sales, how well or poorly it affected their business.

This concept is one I am very new to personally but will keep you posted on my progress in understanding of such. Here is the skinny so far;

Accounts (Clients/Consumers of your Ads–call them what you want) have a basic need when it comes to advertising, and you need to figure out what that need is before you can go anywhere or do anything. Whether that need is more exposure in a given market, or increased sales revenue, you need to have something to measure so you can see whether or not your client is gaining something from your company as a whole, your advertising as a product. Ads that sell, are good ads. Ads that look pretty and do nothing are just that, ads that aren’t worth anything.

SKINNY: Good ads are those that have a purpose and fulfill that purpose. ex. Purpose is to increase sales for Client A. Ad runs. Client A sees increase in sales after Ad runs. Good Ad.

Now that we have Ad purpose out of the way, stay tuned tomorrow for - the measurements.

Research 101

This Blog is going to be an experiment in personal exploration. I plan to start advertising in a small town and this blog will be a testament to my experience. The tremors that make me fall, and the struggles I go through to pick myself back up. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I have a drive to better understand how advertising works. Not just the creative process, but also the research it  requires to measure the effectiveness of ads and ad campaigns, what it takes to make an ad campain “go”.

All of the stops are being pulled–everything and anything I get tossed at me, from the flops to the ad chart toppers.

This is square one.

Go.