Well looking at the weather, it does sound a good idea. I think the saying was from a bygone era, referring to city brokers taking the summer off to do the season (Cowdray Park, Ascot, Wimbledon, Royal Henley, Cowes Week and Glorious Goodwood) before the yobs from the East End (1980s) took over the City. Now it’s just a giant betting office, buying and selling jobs by the nanosecond.
You’ve guessed it, I am going through a serious bout of cabin fever, but I have been advised by my number one daughter to keep clear of unions and teachers, hurrumph. I did promise to stay away from politics and soccer, so I will.
But as to the meaning of life, well, that’s another matter; we can all have a go at that. God botherers stop reading NOW.
I was telling you about Donna Tartt’s “The GoldFinch”, and what an enlightening read that was. Well I am half way through “The Universe verses Alex Woods,” by Gavin Extence. Not in the same beautifully written league but more like Adrian Mole finds insight through the eyes of a Vietnam War Veteran, living in Somerset. Nothing too strange there, but we get an introduction to the writings of Kurt Vonnegut. In fact if you Google Kurt Vonnegut, you can read many of his famous sayings, this one appeals to me,
A bit deep perhaps, most of his work IS enlightening and funny, as you may well know. But I think I will have a go at reading one or two of his novels again, as we had to read lots different books at school, which were probably wasted on spotty, hormonal, teenagers. Like most things were. I do remember one of our more trendy teachers playing us “Silent Night” by Simon and Garfunkel, which was a little haunting, as a couple of our class mates were due to return to the USA to enlist for Vietnam (that dates me), but I was alive in 1967, what a year for music! The next week he played us something about “All the good times we have wasted, having good times” (Animals) in evening prayers. He was too caring and left to have a nervous breakdown.
Back to work, we stopped half way through my rant against formal marketing originations / departments by recommending direct forms of marketing, as they can be measured. I was only just warming up when I realised I had gone into my third page so needed to stop.
We do make a dedicated range of products and therefore what I am about to describe may be interesting to those that do the same. And that is we started using “pay per click” on Google. Here are the figures (approximate). We started our campaign in 2011 and committed to spend £250 a month, and in our first year we landed £50,000 of orders, at no other sales cost. In 2012 we upped our monthly spend to £500 a month and returned £ 112,000. Last year we went mad and committed to £1000 a month and you have guessed it, we landed £220,000 of sales. Don’t reach for your calculators….that is 17 times our investment. We did try £1250 for a couple of months but we seemed to have peaked at just over £200,000 turnover from £12,000 spent. Happy days, it works!
Ah well, you must be making a wonder product that no one else has jumped on, I hear you muttering! Well, try bespoke ring binders. Not that exciting, but we do it well and get more than 50% repeat custom on these. Membrane switch panels are closer to 90% repeat custom. The point I am hoping to make is that this form of marketing, alongside more direct action does work, and most importantly is both measurable and controllable when it comes to expenditure.
Here endeth my 7th lesson. Nearly... we play a drinking game to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, it really is great fun, you draw lots for a quantity of countries and every time one gets 12 points the owner of that country has to down a pint or a large glass of vino, it really was over when the bearded lady sang, such fun!
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