Wednesday 23 March 2011

print rec ad market to return......

Someone mentioned that they firmly believed that the print classified (jobs,cars,homes) would return due to dissatisfaction with quality and quantity of response etc.
And then someone said so on twitter (my former golf buddy @alconcalcia) too
My first thought was they were joking but apparently not.
now the solution to quantity and quality response problems are

Clear employer/job offering and compelling reason to apply
Good copy - keywords / seo etc
Plan and buy the Relevant and best media
'attractive' advertising
Simple response mechanism
And great process/screening/resp mgmt

Now by definition these are broad topics that will differ and the solutions need to fit each client, but give me the above or let me create the above and your responss problems will disappear.

Now to use response as a reason to go back in time 5 years is to like reacting to some repairs that need doing to your car by ditching it and getting a horse instead.

To be fair it would mean i made a hell of an entrance when i arrived at my next meeting.

2 comments:

Alconcalcia said...

Ah Dominic, golf eh? I remember that...and what a nice day for it. I think the main point about the 'going back 5 years' thing is people only went from the press because of the cost. You know yourself that print was much easier to target than online is.

Of course, we can't be sure that there really will be resurgence, but I genuinely have heard people say that clients are fed up of getting heaps of unwanted, irrelevant and sometimes spam response. Not only have we made it cheap as chips with recruiters being able to buy half a dozen job boards for less than #100, we've also made it so easy for any old Tom, Dick or Harriet to apply (to maybe 100 jobs a day if they fancy).

In short,it's become messy.Yes, there is undoubtedly an element of science to it, but what's happening is that the majority are applying no science to the process and just piling it high, advertising it cheap and it's got very,very messy.

You may have seen today the Beeb got 50,000 replies to a recent campaign. I often hear of roles for care assistants and the like getting 300 responses. It is our of control and driving employers mad.

Dom said...

Cheers al. Unsurprisingly we disagree. Screening, copy, right media solve those volume issues. We are media neutral and book a decent amount of print ads now so despite name of our business i have no axe to grind, it just does not make sense not to employ technology and or expertise to solve this and instead go back to the old days which half of your target audience have since abandoned. Now how can we get back on golf course.......