What would you do with a billion dollar ad budget? – SCN Encourager

As fun as it sounds, it won’t solve every marketing problem.

Especially this one.

It’s one most organizations and businesses battle.

I’ll bet you’re familiar with it.

It’s called recruitment and retention.

And having a big bank roll in hand is no guarantee you can ever push and pull it into right balance.

Because it’s a fact.

Organizations and businesses must continually attract more customers (or students) in greater numbers every year than what they lose or any hopes for sustainable growth are a pipe dream.

This is just basic math, right?

But here’s the rub.

It costs about 11 times more to recruit a new customer than it costs to retain a current one.

Granted, this is a “business world” benchmark, but I think (for the most part) it applies to schools as well.

No one is immune from the negative impact of a consistently poor retention rate.

Not them.

Not us.

No one.

What got me thinking about this today is the discovery that Geico spends more than a billion dollars on advertising since 2012.

Dang.

You wouldn’t believe what the caveman and lizard tandem earn by pitching their company’s products!

But here’s the rub.

Geico is challenged by the very same recruitment and retention realities we are.

While no one has more success in attracting new insurance customers from year to year, Geico also loses about 50-60% of its customers in years 4 through 9.

That’s quite a churn-over.

And it could even be the cause of some “mayhem” if you care to listen to that guy from State Farm.

So, where are those up & outahere Geico customers going?

Well, they are returning to their local independent agents who (so far) have proven to be more effective at telling people about their available options for insurance.

Hmmm.

It seems that meaningful relationships are still the name of the game.

Something Geico’s annual billion dollar ad buys have failed to squash (so far).

It’s still fun to ponder what a billion dollar school marketing plan in my district might look like, though.

But I know that’ll never happen.

I’d come closer to balancing on that beach ball with the elephant first!

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