The Secret To Knowing Where To Spend Your Marketing Dollars

by Ryan McMullen

Without even straining your brain, you can probably come up with a list of close to 10 advertising mediums in about 30 seconds: TV, radio, SEO, billboards, email, direct mail, in-store, paid search and social are usually what come to mind.

With all these outlets, how do you know where to best spend your marketing dollars? The real secret is so simple:

You cheat.

Yes, you cheat. You spy.

Some call it lazy; I call it efficient. You find out exactly what your competitors are doing and you figure out what is working. Why should you spend your hard-earned dollars to test different marketing tactics when your competitors have already done the work for you?

I’m not asking you to break into your competitors’ offices and sift through invoices. We live in the information age, and technology tells us everything we need to know. For example, if you want to see how much the guy down the street is spending on Google Ads, you plug in his website to Spyfu.com and you will get a treasure trove of information.  

Now, I am assuming you’ve got a great product or service and a good message because without that foundation, the rest won’t matter. You can spend all the money in the world and you’ll never see results if your message blends in with everybody else’s.       

Assuming the above is true, when you paint your face black and don your camouflage to start your reconnaissance work, you are looking for three things from your main competitors:

No. 1: Where are your competitors advertising?

You want to figure out every single medium they are using and you want to dig deep.  Are they using radio? If so, which stations are they on? Look at the list that you created in 30 seconds and find out where they have a presence.

No. 2: When are your competitors advertising?

Now that you know where they are, when are they advertising? Are they spending their dollars around certain seasons, holidays, local events, the lunar calendar, etc.?

No. 3: How long have they been advertising?

This is the payoff for all of your hard work. Now that you know when and where your competitors are advertising, the “how long” tells us whether it works. If Company XYZ has been advertising on Google paid search for the past two years, you can be dang sure it’s working.Conversely, if they put up a billboard and it was there for only three months, you can bet it didn’t work.

Do what works. Don’t do what doesn’t work.  

Armed with that information, you will save yourself mountains of misery and, maybe more important, mountains of cash. You know which horse is going to win the race before it even starts. Call me lazy or call me efficient, but let the competition use its money to test where you should be using your marketing dollars and put those dollars where you’re going to win.      

Ryan McMullen (ryan@stlouismarketinglab.com) is the owner of St. Louis Marketing Lab