Economic indicators, wages, spending, productivity, safety and health—it’s all critical information for running your business and understanding where the remainder of 2004 may head. As an employer or employee, these data are critical for current and future business planning. Here are a couple of free resources with the most definitive statistics you can find:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Economic Policy Institute

“I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted. I just wish I knew which half.”

If this semi-famous, unattributed quote sounds like something you’d say, you’re not alone! Listening to advertising reps, you could be convinced that every one of them has the best coverage, the best distribution and the best results of any publication in the history of publishing.

So, how do you decide? Well, it starts with the ad itself. What are you selling? To whom? How is it different from what your competitors offer? Why are you doing the ad in the first place?

Once you have those questions answered—and know how advertising fits into your overall marketing or promotion plan—you can move on to deciding where to advertise. And there are lots of choices there too: Print? Radio? TV? Billboards? Which ones? How often? If this all sounds like more than you’d like to deal with, we’re here to help.

As a full-service marketing agency, we can help you choose what’s really right for you and your circumstances. Since we have no vested interest in steering our clients to any specific media, or even towards advertising over some other promotional tool, we can help you sort through all your options and then—if you decide to do an ad—make sure that it’s doing what it should.

When done right, advertising is an investment (not an expense) that can grow your Share of Voice (the sum of all your marketing efforts and how “loud” they are as compared with competition), which should increase your Share of Mind (how often customers think of you), which should improve your Top of Mind position (how often they think of you first), which should lead to your opportunity for both increased market share as well as customer preference.

Let us help you not only figure out which half of your advertising budget is pulling its weight, but also help make sure that you don’t have to ask that question in the future.

The following companies may have started out meek with a small customer following, but in less than 20 years they each took an opportunity to become a dominating force in their respective fields:

• eBay—est. 1996
• Christopher and Banks—public in 1992
• Amazon.com—incorporated in 1994
• AOL—1985
• Bed Bath & Beyond—started in 1985, public in 1992

M45 Marketing Services
524 West Stephenson Street, Suite 100
Freeport, IL 61032
815-232-2121 - Phone
815-297-0166 - Fax
www.m45.biz

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