Persistent presence, retail advertising and contact points

There is a resurgence in comments on the need for persistent presence. I remember similar commenting from the Nineties, though in bars where agencies gathered to nurse the wounds or douse the flames of whatever day it was, rather than social media.

In those days, it was called media planning. I only had one really satisfying experience in the field, planning media for a large multi-national soft drink with a staggering budget (at the time) of N$800,000. All the other budgets felt as mediocre as they do today.

Judging by the comments, the requirement is still the same: use as few ads as possible to get the message across to the entire audience and build remarkable sales in a day or two. In a nutshell, this is possible in terms of retail, although at some expense, but unlikely to have an impact on B2B.

If managers are not prepared to invest in assets and media spend, results will be less than stellar. A single ad made and placed once will be as effective as spitting into a bush fire. Yet, if you follow media, you will see this phenomenon regularly.

Persistent presence is necessary to sustain a dedicated and effective brand that supports marketing and sales. If not for persistent presence, the enterprise will underperform or fail. If you want proof of this, take a look at the regular failures of small, poorly branded clothing stores in malls and on the high street. Existence is no guarantee of success.

The shoestring model of retail business fails to take into account management of contact points and the customer’s position in the sales funnel. This might be addressed with a simple flyer, a sign board and a simple Canva-constructed social media post distributed by WhatsApp as is now common practice.

The obvious priority is to make sales (read marketing), and this has no shortage of budget in print media. The point to note is that these are major retail brands, advertising product offers. The benefit of this advertising is that it can be extended to in-store distribution in the form of flyers. It can also be extended to signage, and as mentioned above, the elements can be budget conscious.

The other benefit of shoestring retail advertising is that the shoulders can be used for brand messages that foster relationships and repeat sales.

However once is not enough. The messaging has to be persistent to remain top of mind in the consideration and purchasing phases of the sales funnels. Also worthy of consideration is that the messaging does not have to reach the entire universe of the audience but has to reach a sufficient number of people in the purchase phase of the sales funnel to generate an acceptable profit.

I place a lot of stock in this message from local economic and developmental points of view. Retail has a tendency to export capital to regional and international suppliers. If it fails to generate profits, that capital is lost to Namibia. If the retail is not sustainable it impoverishes the entrepreneur and is also likely to cause job losses.

The central message must be persistence. If it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell, to reference Leo Burnett. But if it doesn’t sell, given the potentially low cost of retail advertising, persist and reinvent.