I can’t tell you how many calls I get that start this way.  It usually proceeds into a request for me to buy advertising in someone’s magazine.  They explain how cool their publication is, talk about recent articles, and paint a rosy picture.   Then I ask them the same questions:

1.  What’s your circulation?
2.  What are the reader demographics?
3.  What if we doing something on a trial basis?  If I get results, I’ll pay.

If the person on the other end of the phone/IM/email can’t answer questions 1 or 2, it’s all over. And question 3 is always taken sarcastically, but it’s not meant to be.  If you can’t guarantee some kind of baseline result, why should I guarantee you money?  I’d rather just go to Vegas and bet it all on red.  At least then I get nearly 50/50 odds.

Here’s the thing: advertising is never guaranteed to generate any kind of result. And worse, print advertising is nearly impossible to measure — it’s not like you can actually track how many people see your ad in the magazine. At best, you’ll know how many issues of the publication were printed.

A few years ago, to satisfy my own curiosity, I ran the same ad in three different spaces/venues: one print (full page ad), one CPM banner ad, and one PPC ad on through a network. All we asked people to do was click on the banner (or go to a URL) to enter their email and tell us where they saw the ad. Having done that made them eligible to win this snazzy guitar which was generously donated by the good folks at Gibson.

Sure enough, the PPC ad generated the most clicks and impressions for the least amount of money. Print advertising was the most costly and had the lowest return, and the (CPM) banner ad was positioned nicely, but didn’t generate enough clicks compared to the number of impressions we paid for at a $5 CPM.  Equally depressing is the fact that getting a 2% click through rate is considered to be pretty good. 2,000 clicks out of 10,000 impressions is pretty good??!?! Yikes!

All of the numbers that came back from this campaign were logged onto a spreadsheet.  I knew exactly which channels drove the best results, and I used that info when I planned out future advertising.  Having concrete numbers in front of me allowed me to move forward strategically without wasting time or money.

Advertising, by its nature, is rarely (if ever…) a conversation.  Even when you’re offering something cool (a guitar, a free track, free donuts…), you need to do more than just say “here it is.”  In a direct to fan world, it’s all about the conversation, the engagement, and the relationship.

Ultimately, this all comes back around to the same advice Nimbit offers musicians on a daily basis: engage in a dialogue with your fans, provide something of value, and then give reasons to buy.  And when you do all of this, keep track of the results.  Make sure you know what worked and what didn’t.  Nimbit provides the tools to do this over and over again.

It’s not just about working hard – it’s about working smart.