Do You Sometimes Feel Like Your Advertising is Invisible?
An Iranian man who was convinced he was ‘Invisible’ walked into a bank helped himself to a large quantities of banknotes, while the on looking customers stared on in disbelief. Needless to say, the police quickly caught this genius.
When appearing in court, he tearfully told the judge that he was conned by a holy man to whom he paid 5 million rials [US$ 625] for a parchment that would make him "Invisible."
He has been jailed, meanwhile police were hunting the swindling sorcerer. -APP.
Well if he wanted to really be invisible he should have contacted the guy that wrote your last newspaper ad or radio spot.
You paid far more than "5 million rials" only to have your ad generate invisible customers. Leaves you kinda feeling swindled doesn’t it.
Do you think the police are out looking for the ad salesman that promised to fill your store with customers yet left you empty handed? Only in our dreams pal.
So what went wrong?
The first thing that goes "wrong" in most advertising scenarios is no one wants to hold their advertising responsible for results.
Instead, advertising sales reps do everything they can to get you to worship at the feet of the Holy Grail of "BRANDING."
Their sales patter runs along these lines… the radio sales reps says…
"Let’s talk schedule. I suggest you run your ad 6 times a day for the next six months. This will allow for maximum branding. The more times your ad runs the more people with remember your business. So the next time they need your widget they will come running into your store. And let’s make it funny. Everyone knows, funny means money!"
What a load of horse manure!
Advertising sales reps are the modern day version of the road show carnie that used magic acts and `freak show’ displays that depended on deceiving the viewer concerning it’s reality.
The concept of "branding" was invented by the advertising world to divert the advertisers focus away from the fact that the very promise of advertising is results.
Early on, the advertising media discovered that for the most part, they didn’t know how to write advertising that actually delivered the customers on a consistent basis, so in order to keep you, the business owner, buying they devised the idea of "branding."
Branding carries with it the promise of results sometime in the future, this is what’s known in the real world as "smoke and mirrors."
Look, don’t get me wrong, advertising works when done correctly. What I mean by "correctly" is direct response advertising, thus advertising that by its very nature asks for the read/potential customer to take some action. A measurable action!
If you get bad results, guess what, your ad ain’t making you money. So why run the ad 6 times a day for 6 months, unless you have some secret masochistic desire to punish yourself.
Mary, (pseudonym) owned a nursery in Pocatello, Idaho. She had signed an annual radio advertising contract. She had bought into the branding and make it funny sales patter and was excited to see all the customers come flooding through the doors of her business.
When she talked to me she had three months left on her contract and couldn’t wait for the pain to end!
The advertising had not worked for 9 months and still the "funny" ads kept coming week after week. There really wasn’t anything funny about this at all.
So I advised her to drop the "funny" shtick and to do live call in spots with the DJ and make irresistible offers. The idea being, the DJ would interview her for 60 seconds live on the air. For example….
During the interview she would tell the DJ how her source of baby fir trees in Montana was going out of business due to health concerns and how the owner let her have the whole lot for ten cents on the dollar just to put an end to it. And that three semi trucks were unloading them right now and as her way of saying thanks to all of her loyal customers for doing business with her all these years and she was selling them at cost! So they could come in and get a $100 tree for $10 or a $300 tree for $30. etc.
Well, as you can imagine the customers started flooding into her business. And she made a fortune from the upsell. People needed fertilizers, tools, gloves, etc.
She continued to do this type of offer every week for the remainder of her contract and then, instead of canceling it, renewed for another year!
When you hold your advertising accountable for results you have the opportunity to make adjustments. You discover what is not working and then discontinue doing it. You continue to ramp up. Find an ad that gets good results and then play with it and find out if you can do better. This way your advertising evolves into a powerhouse.
Before you know it you’re a millionaire.
Just like you always thought you would be!
You’ve got to hold your advertising accountable for results.
How do you do that?
If you can ‘t track it, it can’t be held accountable.
How do you make your advertising measurable? Ok, let’s look at the easy ways. First, off you can include an exclusive coupon in your ad that requires the customer to bring in the coupon to receive the discount.
You can have a specific phone number linked to a specific ad. When that line rings, you know it’s from the ad. Or you can use extensions at the end of your number and when someone calls in they will ask for the extension or you ask them what extension they want.
In your ad you can tell them when they come in or call in to ask for a specific person, this individual can be a real person or a pseudonym. Then simple keep track of the results.
Make an irresistible offer, something your customers can’t afford to pass up and make your money from the upsells.
Train your staff to ask where they are calling from and keep track of it on a tracking sheet.
I know a realtor in Canada that started tracking his advertising and was able to cut 60% of his marketing expenses while his business continued to grow at a 30% rate.
So when you boil it down, you’re still gonna have to deal with those misguided advertising ad reps, but now you can start taking charge and tell them you want an ad that you can track the response on.
Be prepared you’ll get to hear the branding sales patter all over again because they don’t have a clue of how to make an ad pay for itself.
If would like to learn how to write ads that really attract more customers then I recommend you check out these business mentors.