Coming from a small business myself, I know the pains of traditional marketing.  It seems that I was doing a major marketing push using the wrong vehicles.  I wish someone would have stopped me before I got in over my head.  Looking back now I realize the niche luxury item I was selling had no business in a "luxury living magazine", or a "country club magazine", or did it?

I became an expert  in,  "what doesn't work".  The thing that I find the most amusing about this situation is that I realized most of the people selling marketing opportunities like community mailers, postcards, TV, Radio, magazine, yellow pages, etc. aren't at all interested in if you get calls and sales from their ad.  They need to sell that ad to eat.  When my traditional ads weren't working I heard a lot of ingenious comebacks for why I didn't get any qualified calls.

"you only ran your ad for 6 months you should have ran it longer".   -  At $1750 per issue

"you should have got the full page ad like I recommended".    -   At an extra $2000

"We have no control over your sales ability".  -  This one was my favorite.

Another favorite one is the example of the one advertiser that did $100,000 in sales off of the last mailing.  They all have that same story.

I heard the same comments  from several sources.  Do they all go to the same class to learn how take the attention away from their ineffective products?  

Call me biased yes, but I've got close to $50,000 or more in a 2 year period that I either lost money, or barely broke even on my ads.  It seemed like I was running around working very hard  just to pay ads. Don't think for a second that my first question wasn't, "how did you find us?"  

Maybe the ads that we ran weren't very good, and that's why they failed? (created in union with the advertisers).

I have a lot of contacts in my industry, and I hear a lot of the same, break even, no sales, no calls, tire kickers, MORE ADVERTISERS CALLING TO SELL YOU MORE ADS!   Maybe everyone that I know can't create good sales copy?

The point of my ranting is to explain this.  This blog, website, company Fertilemarketing.com does not appreciate hard selling traditional advertising salesman.  It is kind of ironic being a marketing company, yes but very, very different.  You see we are not selling ads, we are selling time, and information. 

Don't think for a second that these blood sucking ad sellers are not going to be trying to cram "internet based traditional marketing" down our throats.   I heard of a company that sells text messaging by the thousand.  You collect and provide your customer's numbers, and they will send out X texts for Y dollars.  Great deal don't you think?  How about sending out 1 twitter message to your followers?  Or 1 post to your fan page?  Or update your blog?  Or send out a press release?

Our goal is to provide the knowledge and guidance to help you understand this new media for your small business.  That way when the blood suckers come you will be educated or already doing what it is that they are selling so you can invest your hard earned dollars smarter.

We will strive to uncover the latest and greatest techniques being used, and pass them on to you, via this blog, our Twitter feed, and our learning center.

You haven't hear the last of this very touchy subject.