More Advertising Thoughts From The Road

1) If people don't know you exist, they can't buy from you. (You've heard before that it pays to advertise).

2) Just because customers don’t complain doesn’t mean they are happy.

3) Don’t assume that everyone is like you. Other people don’t watch the same television programs you do. They don’t live in the same part of town you do. They don’t share your tastes in anything. Never assume that your marketing dollars should be spent on those things that would satisfy you as a customer.

4) Most small business marketing is focused on what the owner wants, instead of what the customer wants. Customers respond by ignoring the ad. Stop talking about you. Shoppers don’t care about your hours of operation, your location, or the number of years you’re claiming as "experience." They want to know how you can save their time, make them money, or make other people think highly of them. Talking about yourself may be gratifying to your ego, but it also wastes your money.

5) If you make sales presentations to people who don’t need what you offer, it’s a tough sale. Your advertising will have an equally difficult time in converting shoppers who don’t need what you offer. Stop trying to reach everyone. The narrower you target, the more successful your marketing will become.

6) An effective ad is focused. Like a hammer driving a nail into a hard board, an effective ad drives a single message into the mind of a prospective buyer. If you have more to say about your business, say the rest in another ads.

7) Make it easy for people to buy from you. If they’re interested in what you’re selling, tell them in your ad exactly what to do next. If you don’t, many will take no action at all.

8) Give people a reason to want to know how to get in touch, and they’ll figure out how.

9) You don’t need your phone number in your radio or television ad. Never say "we’re in the yellow pages," and direct your prospect to your competitor’s ads as well as yours. Instead make sure shoppers remember your name, and remind them to find you in the white pages.

10) Stop putting your address in your ads. Use your location instead. Don’t say "4321 Liftoff Lane." Say instead "At the corner of Liftoff Lane and First Avenue." Can you tie in a landmark ("across from the water tower")? So much the better.

11) Shoppers don’t call a logistics strategist when they want a package delivered. They call a shipping company. By the same token they don’t buy insurance from a financial services company. They don’t buy telephone systems from an integrated information systems specialist. People talk in terms of specifics, rather than in generalities. Tell them, in simple one or two syllable words exactly what you do.

12) The client almost always tires of the ad before the buying public does.

13) Good marketing is art. It is also science and business. It rarely works instantly. Sometimes the most important part of your marketing is patience.

14) Effective ads involve news that will impact shopper’s lives. Do you know what news is?

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