Previous experiences can colour ones judgement when considering advertising and the role of an agency. Here are some of the objections we have encountered and our replies.

We’ve advertised before and it’s been a waste of money.
What makes you think you’ll do any better?

When confronted with this type of comment there are five main areas to consider.

First, is advertising the best method of promotion? If the market is small and well defined then direct mail could be better. However, if (a) the market is large, (b) the buying/specifying process involves a number of engineers/managers and (c) the market is served by two or more trade press journals, then advertising becomes a strong candidate in the promotional mix.

Second, where have the adverts been placed?Chances are, the ads have been placed in the most inappropriate publications which are either geographically too restricted, targeted at the wrong audience, too boring for anyone to read or a disastrous combination of all these factors.

Third, what did the previous adverts say?
Did they have eye-catching pictures? Was it immediately apparent what goods or services were being advertised? Did the adverts invite a response?

Fourth, when and how often were the advertisements placed?

Fifth, did the advertising produce any enquiries and if so, how were they handled?

Once these aspects have been considered, it usually becomes quite obvious why the previous advertising had failed. By identifying and correcting the errors BIA will make your advertising work much better.

We hardly get any enquiries from our advertising.

In industries where the target audience works at a desk with a computer, the chances are the reader will go directly to the advertiser's web site to get the information needed. Consequently, enquiry numbers are normally very low. However, some trades that don't work this way (e.g. plumbers) still produce good quantities of enquiries through the magazines reader enquiry services. It is therefore important to get your ISP (internet service provider) to provide web site statistics. You can also create methods for counting the number of times your web site is visited from every single advert. How? Contact me for details.

We get lots of enquiries from our advertising 
but no orders.

In most cases the first tangible result of advertising is an enquiry. (Sometimes an industrial product can be sold from the page but this is the exception not the rule. Tangible effects such as awareness can also be measured.) There is normally a lot of work required to convert an enquiry to an order and there can be two major factors working against you.

First, your sales team will find it a lot easier to make courtesy calls on existing customers than try to sell to new customers.

Second, although your company received the enquiry, chances are your competitors did too. The enquiry has simply invited you to compete for the business, it has guaranteed nothing.

Another (admittedly unlikely) possibility is that the advert was so poorly designed that readers misunderstood the exact nature of the product or service you are selling.

BIA will examine these possibilities together with the advert design, placement, product pricing and customer service. The reason for not converting enquiries into orders will be there. It’s just a case of identifying the reason and correcting the problem.

We've worked with advertising agencies before and had lots of problems!

1. The personnel are constantly changing !
   “We get an account executive, brief him or her on our products and markets and then by the time they’re fully au fait they either leave or get assigned to another account. We then go through the briefing process again and again and again.”
   That won’t happen with BIA since David Beavis is the central co-ordinator for all agency activities.

2. Agency charges are astronomical !
   BIA is a home office based business so the charge rates don’t have to cover expensive fixed overheads such as premises, staff, etc.

3. We end up rewriting everything ourselves !
   If the agency’s copywriters and account executives don’t have engineering backgrounds then (1) it is quite possible that key aspects of the product can be overlooked, (2) the significance of certain features may not be fully understood and (3) an experienced third party perspective cannot be applied.
   There are ways a non-technical agency can overcome these shortcomings, but its rather difficult to do so without further increasing costs.
   BIA is a specialist advertising and PR agency for industrial goods and services. You will normally find the first draft requires little or no alteration.