The biggest waste of money that I see with jewelers’ advertising is spreading their dollars over too many mediums and not dominating any of them. Actually the BIGGEST waste I see is jewelers who are guilted into charitable contributions (either money or product) that do not provide a good ROI, But that’s for another post.
Whatever you do in marketing, OWN IT. If you can’t own it, don’t do it. The biggest frustration for marketing professionals is when jewelers say, “I tried TV and it doesn’t work!”. Oh really? when and where were you on? “Well, it was for a few weeks just before Christmas last year!” Oh, so you decided to jump into the biggest, deepest, most expensive advertising pond of the year with a locally produced, cheap ad when all the other independents AND the nationals decide to jump in. Not a smart investment.
Better to choose an audience and own them ALL YEAR LONG. It would be much more prudent to buy what you could afford (let’s say for example Seinfeld on cable), and own the 15,000 people in your market that watch that show. That way you’ll reach a nicely sized audience with the proper frequency rather than trying to reach the whole world with none. You want to talk to 1,000 people 100 times rather than talk to a million people 10 times.
Frequency is powerful. Never go into a medium without the right amount of it.