Why Your Advertising Doesn’t Work Like it Could!
Most people don’t go into business because they’re bored. They do it because they are typically non-conformists. They like calling their own shots, getting paid to do what they love, and enjoy the freedom that comes with being your own boss.
For most, however, it doesn’t typically happen that way. Many of the business owners that become my clients do so because they’re at their wits end trying to figure it all out. From finance to marketing to sales to distribution to human resources to legal to vendors to (fill-in the blank), they are overwhelmed, frustrated, and in many cases, broke.
Sure, they’re making a living, but they’re stressed-out and definitely not enjoying why they got into business in the first place. Too many times I’ve heard “My accountant says I run a profitable business, but I don’t have any cash” or “I’m spending so much money on advertising that doesn’t work that I’m going broke”.
“I know half my advertising is wasted. Problem is, I don’t know which half.” – John Wannamaker (the father of the modern department store)
While we help business owners in all these areas, the biggest (and most expensive) mistake nearly every business owner makes is in marketing (advertising). You see, most people think advertising IS marketing. It’s not. Advertising is a tactic, marketing is a strategy. So, right out of the gate, most businesses do it wrong.
That’s because the only sources they have to rely on for marketing, or in their case advertising, advice are people who SELL advertising. They all have a vested interest in where and how clients spend their money. The more the client spends, the more the vendor makes – whether is works for the client or not. Those media vendors (television, radio, newspaper, SEO, digital, direct mail, & even ad agencies) are not marketers – they’re sales organizations. Their focus is their own revenue first. If what they sell happens to help the business, it’s more a happy coincidence than a well thought-out plan.
You see, mass marketing is simply a process of elimination in which you keep paying to get better results.
I’ll break it down… briefly. Every medium has an audience. Within that audience, about 1%-3% are “in-market” for what you sell at any particular time. When your ad happens to collide with that person of interest, that’s called a lead. That’s the prospect that may call you or stop into your store. I call it accidental advertising because that’s exactly what it is. Therefore, the more advertising you buy, the better your chances of “running into somebody” that wants/needs what you sell – this happens through the process of elimination.
It’s the same as driving. When you’re in your car, you drive past hundreds, if not thousands, of other cars. But, if two drivers going to the same place meet at a city street intersection at the same time, the chances of a collision increase dramatically. You have an accident. That is the methodology behind advertising on local media. The more ads they sell, the more cars are clogging the city streets. Advertising used to work a lot better because there were fewer “freeways” to drive on to get where you wanted to go. City streets were sometime the only way. Collisions happened a lot. So, freeways were invented to de-congest traffic.
Today, there are many freeways (multi-media) to travel to avoid city street congestion. The same goes with media. With so many freeways, it’s a lot harder to get into an accident at any particular intersection. But, as insurance details, the more you drive, the chances of an accident increase – and so does your premium. You pay more as you drive more… hmmm, sounds a lot like how media advertising works – the more ads you run, the more it costs you to try to find that fender-bender that equates to results. See the similarity?
Here’s another reason why your ads don’t work: media is a message delivery system. Nothing more, nothing less. They all have an audience, some are better (bigger) than others. The problem is, no one in media pays any attention to the message. Media companies design your message as a service to help sell their delivery system. After all, if you don’t have a package, you don’t need delivery!
So, they make the package (the ad) for you. Pretty clever. But, make no mistake in that they are not marketers in the sense they understand marketing. Believe me, they don’t. Letting a media company design your message is paramount to letting your mail carrier design your direct mail marketing piece. While that may sound outrageous, there’s really little difference.
Your mail carrier is a delivery system, correct? He or she delivers direct mail marketing, correct? They’re very good at delivery, but they know nothing about marketing. Would you let your mail carrier develop an ad for you? Of course not. So, why are you letting a media sales rep do it?
They are not trained in marketing or ad layout or have any knowledge about what components are necessary to create an ad effective. They are trained to sell… period. And yet, the message is the most important element in marketing. It must resonate with the end consumer to get them to take action.
We have developed a marketing message formula called The Conversion Equation. We use it to create market dominating positions for our clients so they enjoy market dominating results and market dominating profits.
This is why we can offer our clients the opportunity to triple their leads in as little as 30 days and double their top-line revenues in 12-24 months. Who are you working with right now that offers that? We guarantee our work – we’ll show you how to grow your revenue by 9 times more than you invest. Who are you working with right now that offers that?
Want to see how we’ll expose up to 40 areas of your business that we can impact right now that will add $100,000 or more of new, recurring revenue without spending another dime to do it? Who are you working with right now that can do that? There is no cost for this analysis as we simply want to help as many small business owners as we can.
Let’s talk about it. Schedule 15 minutes that’s convenient for you here: https://calendly.com/bizpro
