[9598] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Is advertising relevant?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Thu Jan 13 15:56:09 1994
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 15:54:44 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: nelson@crynwr.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: "Russell Nelson"'s message of Thu, 13 Jan 1994 11:40:15 EST <2d357970.crynwr@crynwr.com>
>From: "Russell Nelson" <nelson@crynwr.com>
>Is unsolicited advertising sensible in an environment when I can do a
>WAIS search? Unsolicited advertisements are not only rude, they are
>inefficient. For example, a good direct mail campaign will generate a
>5% response rate.
It really depends on how you define "inefficient", obviously a whole
lot of fairly sane people find it quite efficient, and the response
rate is only one piece of the picture. For example, there's also
product identification, a lot of unsolicited mail doesn't even ask for
a response, right? Does that make it 0% efficient?
But even at 5% if I'm selling the right product that can be quite
profitable. If it costs around $1/mailing and I send out 100,000 thus
$100K sunk and get back 5,000 responses all I need is to net on
average $20/response to break even on the mailing, not a huge
challenge, many such come-ons will be worth much more than $20/per
response.
I don't mean to defend it exactly, but let's at least start out with
some attempt to get at valid assumptions. A few billion a year spent
on direct mail advertising by people who are quite sophisticated with
advertising techniques and are aware of their other choices disagree
with your characterization.
>In the age of online searching, I could just search the appropriate
>database for "AUI transceivers", and I would get a listing of every
>manufacturer who's serious about finding me. A database search like
>that would be likely to generate a 90% hit rate for me. And, more to
>the point, I would be a customer for one of those manufacturers.
Yes, but how would you find out about this db in the first place, or
find out that there's even a chance that something like you describe
might be available on it?
Maybe word of mouth, maybe you stumble into it by accident, not very
satisfying from the marketeers' point of view. So what's the other
choice? Fling its existence in your face of course, and try to do it
in a way that will only pique your interest.
You're also idealizing people's buying behavior. Some people will sit
down and do work to find their best deal. Others (or all of us at some
time) will just say ``looks reasonable, buy it'', it really depends on
the product and what your time and trouble is worth to you in each
individual case.
I don't think you've found any Holy Grail here, just various options.
The point being they can all co-exist, there's no need (from the point
of view of marketeers) to choose just one method. Why not do them all
so long as any of them will, by itself, yield profits? There's no
mutual exclusivity here, actually, quite the opposite (i.e. the how do
you find the other method remark.)
-Barry Shein
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