Bad Seduction

I just read some advertising suggestions on an Internet marketing site that are beyond annoying. They are flat-out bad advice.

They illustrate a complete lack of understanding of the whole persuasion process.

First, small business owners are told that advertising often has a cumulative effect, so ad-driven sales may not be immediate. Then, they’re told how to measure and track the immediate response of their advertising.

Reading past that little dichotomy, some of the suggestions included:

· Use magazine response cards. Remember to code the cards if you use multiple publications.

· Use a coupon in your newspaper ads. Code the coupons so that you can tell which publication generates the most sales.

· Put a line in your radio scripts to "Mention this ad and get a 10% discount."

· Ask all new customers how they heard about your business.

Make no mistake. These are all bad suggestions. Very bad. In addition to being very poor persuasion, each of these strategies assumes that your prospective customers are paying very close attention to your ads.

Trust me, customers don’t.

Good advertising is seduction. Pretend with me for a minute that all advertising is an attempt to get a "date" with your prospect.

How do these recommendations hold up under that scenario?

Would you, for instance, send a response card to anyone you could possibly be interested in dating, which says "If you’d like to learn more about me, fill out your name, address, and your specific areas of interest in me, and apply your own postage to return it to me?"

No, I didn’t think you would.

The advice contained in these recommendations also suffers from major misunderstandings in the motivations of customers.

Coupons assume that you have nothing to offer but a better price. Think about the implications of that for a moment. It suggests that after you’ve spent the money to advertise your discounted (and minimally profitable) price, that the customer has no reason to ever come back to do business with you again. Or at least, until you drop your price again.

Mention this ad? In three decades of mass media experience, I’ve never heard of a single person saying "I heard your ad. Give me the discount." Smart radio stations will never allow this on their air. Does that mean people don’t respond to advertising? No, it doesn’t mean that at all. It means that they won’t embarrass themselves by parroting your line. Not surprising, is it? Most people won’t admit that advertising affects them in any way.

Ask new customers where they heard about you?

They don’t know.

Oh, they’ll try to give you an answer. Really though, your advertising isn’t important enough for them to remember exactly what they learned about you, let alone the source of that information. But because they’ll want to be helpful, they will guess. They’ll usually guess wrong.

There are two major problems with any of these "track your response" strategies.

· They provide bad information. Bad information is worse than none at all. It gives you a distorted view of reality. Which leads to the second problem:

· You’ll be tempted to make decisions based on this bad information. You will frequently make the wrong decisions.

Consider this, instead. Send the object of your affection an "I love you" message.

Does it matter whether your "I love you" comes in a telegram, an e-mail, a card, or over the phone? Or is the expression of love the most important consideration?

Does it matter whether your ad message is delivered in the newspaper, over the radio, on cable TV, or by direct mail? Or is the message the critical part?

Your advertising will improve by orders of magnitude when you spend less time attempting to find the most effective medium, and more time searching for the most effective message.

Send This Page To A Friend

Read more!

Reading Comprehension At 70 MPH

Ben Franklin is reported to have once written “I apologize for the length of this letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

I chose Ben’s quote for our on-going discussion of advertising to draw attention to a basic truism: it takes more skill to craft a six word outdoor message than it does to write a 180 word radio commercial, or a quarter-page newspaper ad.

Why six words? Because in order to see those words one usually glances at the “board” while doing 45 miles per hour down a city street (simultaneously watching for traffic) or while tooling down the highway at 70 mph. This requires the message to be short, simple, and easily comprehended.

Perhaps six words are too restricting. Maybe eight words will work. Maybe eleven. But if you’re using eleven words, they’d better be short words. And short and simple, by themselves, aren't enough. The key is to make those few words attention-getting, and memorable. This is where 99% of the outdoor advertising examples you and I see just don’t cut it. (Remind me sometime to rant about visual clichés).

According to the Institute of Outdoor Advertising, outdoor has the ability to “generate awareness, create interest, and sell your product/service.” That was what IOA’s VP of Research, Cathy Hodges, told me in a letter 20 years ago. (Yes, I am an information pack rat. Yes, I really do still have the material she graciously sent May 2, 1985).

In fact, the research indicates that with a 50 showing, over a four week schedule, you’ll reach nearly 80% of the adults in your market more than 13 times. There’s no doubt that outdoor advertising is the most cost-effective way to reach large numbers of people.

Major national advertisers can use a short statement to reinforce the message they're sending over other forms of mass media. We've all seen McDonalds, or Budweiser, or Ford extend the impact of their television with outdoor as a "reminder," to build frequency.

Other national advertisers market image, and don't make a direct promise: Marlboro, Black Velvet, Chanel No. 5, or Coors Lite. Sometimes a strong outdoor showing is the only medium necessary to promote that image and build awareness.

And on a local level, other media sometimes provide the best examples of how to effectively use outdoor. "Burt Smith, Accuweather, Channel Six at Ten," for example.

But for most local advertisers, outdoor isn't a good choice.

It's that six-to-eleven-word practical limitation.

More words mean less readership. Fewer words make it much harder to craft a strong message. Writing effective copy for billboards requires incredible skill.

Today, however, we shall not dwell on the negative. Let me instead share with you of several gems that I saw as I drove North on I-35 from Wizard of Ads ^® Headquarters South of Austin to my home West of Fort Worth.

I saw hundreds of boards on this four and a half hour trip. Sadly, there are only six examples worth remembering.

Those that I don't remember? Several dozen real estate developments, all with pretty houses and such memorable messages as "Pinecrest, from the $180's." Car dealers bragging that they "will not be undersold." Indistinguishable restaurant after indistinguishable restaurant after indistinguishable restaurant.

But six that did stand out are excellent. Let's look at them, shall we?

First, my favorite use of outdoor - to give directions. Oh, you can add the promise of a benefit? So much the better.



I appreciated this board for the touch of subtlety in it's implied promise. Additionally, the Best Western logo was wrapped around the globe. Obviously, Best Western is everywhere. Excellent imagery:


Somewhere in Beaumont, Texas, a writer in the Visitor's Bureau deserves a raise. Over a photo of the sun setting on the water:



Some of the best radio and television ads are public service announcements. That's not surprising. Effective advertising involves emotions. Most writers admit that the easiest ads involve issues about which people are already emotional.

Here's the outdoor version of a public service announcement. Next to a graphic of an upside-down truck it said:



Appreciate this next one for it's simplicity. This board has been posted on major thoroughfares throughout the South for the last decade. Apparently gentlemen from Atlanta to El Paso have proven to be willing to travel to Houston for the procedure:



This is too good an idea to not use locally. Chris Gloede, in his Rants On Modern Marketing blog suggests that with the proliferation of cell phones, a billboard is a great place to post a number to call for special offers or more information. It's an idea worth stealing. Be sure to send Chris a "Thank you" note.

And my final example, this board combines a strong implied benefit, with an excellent name, all wrapped up with a direction. As a bonus, the name (Bush's Quick Chicken) and the implied benefit (three lane drive through) both promise the same thing... that I only have to pull off the road for a minute. Brilliant use of the medium. This board is my favorite of the whole trip:

Considering outdoor? The cost of exposure isn't the most important question. A much more important question is "Can I make an elegantly simple presentation of my business in only a few words?"

Well, can you?

Send This Page To A Friend

Read more!

Wishin' Don't Make It So

Advertising can not fix a broken business. Oh, you might draw potential customers the first time through advertising, but from that point on it's pretty much that customer's Personal Experience Factor that determines whether she'll be back, or not.

Advertising can't correct your company's problems, either. As my dear, sweet, saintly old grandmother, Fanny McKay, used to say: "Wishin' don't make it so, and neither do massive amounts of gross ratings points."

Today brought to conclusion a 26 week test that further proves this point.

Here are the facts:

• The advertiser is a gentleman who came out of retirement to operate a small service business.
• He truly is a craftsman.
• He doesn't intend to work many hours. He's open from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm, and never open on weekends.
• He didn't spend much to buy the business, possibly because of its location.
• He has a horrid location.
• We wrote good ads, and explained that the odd hours were the price you paid for the excellent quality of his work at his price, which is much lower than anyone would expect.
• The ads were voiced by a well-known and loved local personality.
• The client received over 400 exposures per month on a local radio station, equally rotated through all of the station's dayparts.

And at the conclusion of six months, and well over 2,400 ads being played to this station's audience, the advertiser had no improvement in business. None. Nada. Zilch.

Should we be surprised? That a service business in a bad location with hours that most customers couldn't keep, didn't see those people changing their lives to do business on his terms?

Send This Page To A Friend

---

Ever been to one of Roy H. Williams free public seminars? People who have attended use such terms as "life-changing experience." The next one takes place at Wizard Academy on August 4.

I promise that you'll never look at the world quite the same way again.

Read more!