Seriously Effective Print Advertising
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43 Ways To Fail In Advertising Don’t Write A Marketing Or Business Advertising Plan
Please think about this. Marketing is probably your company’s only source of income. In turn, your marketing plan is probably the most important document you have.
Make The Wrong Offer Or Advertise The Wrong
Merchandise Your customer’s opinion is the only one that
ultimately counts. Your offer should match their needs and wants. Ask
for their opinion, and tailor your offer to their desires. And feature
well-known, branded products in your business advertising that are in high demand. This
will bring in the customers.
Don’t Advertise With The Correct Frequency You will waste more money in business advertising by
running ads too infrequently than by running them too often. Don’t try
to save money by reducing advertising frequency. You must stay in
contact with your customers.
Don’t Advertise The Benefits Your Customers Want Everything must be relevant to your customers.
Always talk customer benefits, not product features. For example: “Saves three hours” is a
feature. “Three hours to spend with your kids” is a benefit.
“Three hours to pay your bills” is not exactly the benefit your
customers want. Ask them what they want. Talk to them about the benefits
they want with your business advertising, not about features that you have. Don’t Provide Enough Information In Your Ads This can be deadly. In the yellow pages, for
example, if you don’t specifically list each product or service you
offer, customers will assume that you don’t have it. You must list every category of goods or
services that are important revenue sources to your company.
Essentially, you want to give all of the relevant information required
in your business advertising so that the customer will respond in the desired way. This holds true
for every type of media.
Don’t Set Goals For Your Business Advertising Advertising is an essential investment, and it
is hugely expensive. Without a clear set of goals for your investment
dollars, your return will be limited. Remember - You only get what you
measure. An extra 1% compounded annually makes all the difference over
time. Goals and objectives will help you to maximize your business advertising
return on investment.
Don’t Create A Business Advertising Budget This is a major reason why marketing fails. Your
advertising message must stay in front of your customers on a regular
basis. Your budget must be sustainable. Purchase your most important media first, and
make sure you budget for it over time. Don’t buy anything else until
you fully fund your primary media. Do not spread your business advertising thinly
across different media. Do not try one-shot ads. Do not sporadically
advertise. These are formulas for failure.
Set Unrealistic Expectations For Your Ads Consistent,
long-term business advertising builds a clientele. Running a few ads will not
bury you in new customers. You need patience and determination. As a
general rule, look for your advertising to impact on your business after
six months. This is reality. Business advertising is an investment,
not a miracle.
Advertise
To A Non-Existent Market A little
research can go a long way in determining the actual demand for your
products or services. If there is no demand, advertising cannot create
it. Business advertising can make people aware of solutions to their problems,
but people will not buy solutions for problems they don’t have, no
matter how much you advertise.
Think
Of Advertising And Selling As Unimportant Or Undignified You probably
wouldn’t be reading this if you thought selling was unimportant. But
let’s say it anyway: All of the business advertising in the world won’t help
you if you don’t close the sale. You must sell, you must be good at
it, and you must respect it.
Lack The Commitment To Sustain An Ongoing Program Management needs to agree on the marketing and
business advertising plan. And don’t let the accountants select your
business advertising
unless they are well grounded in marketing principles. If your company
can’t give your advertising the time, resources, and effort it
requires to succeed, don’t even start it.
Don’t Use A Business Advertising Calendar This valuable tool helps you to visualize your advertising frequency distribution. It keeps track of your
business advertising
schedule. Use it. See The Advertising Calendar for more information.
Don’t Commit Enough Time To Marketing
Activities Marketing is a resource-intense part of your
business. To be successful, it needs your time and attention. Remember,
marketing = customers, and you need customers.
Miss Your Target Audience This is targeting and media selection and planning. A vital question is where do your clients get their information? What do they read? What do they find believable and influential? It could be the newspaper, or the mail, or their friends. Match what your customers tell you with the
demographic information your media company provides. See Market
Targeting Strategy and Using Media More Effectively for more information.
Position Your Product Poorly From The Customer’s Perspective Think like the customer. Think like the
customer. Think like the customer. Give them what they want, and you
will get what you want. If you don’t know what your customers want,
ask them. Do not guess, do not assume. See Market Targeting Strategy for more.
Send Out Confusing, Contradictory, Or Inconsistent Messages Your fundamental advertising message should be
communicated clearly and consistently to customers, employees, the
public, investors, partners, and suppliers at every point of contact.
Your well-articulated message should go forth loud and clear to
everyone, every time, in every marketing message you create.
Design Bad Advertisements Your ad represents your company to the customer.
It is all they have to judge you by. Your ad is the first, and maybe the
last impression you make. It’s simple: poorly designed ads make you
look bad. Professionally designed ads make you look – Professional.
Advertise Merchandise That You Don't Have Enough Of Your advertising expenditure will be wasted if you don't have the products people came in for. And you get unhappy customers.
Don’t
Get Attention Remember
Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action? Well, attention is first in
business advertising. If
your customers don’t notice your ad, your chance of success is exactly
zero. Conservative ads are conservative, and they don’t get read. You
must get attention. Please read Attention if First
for more information.
Write
Bad Copy Avoid
copy that is too obscure, witty, technical, or full of jargon. Don’t
hide your benefits in your copy. Write copy that sells, and ask for
the sale. Remember that professional copy writers get paid for a reason.
Please read Copywriting
for more
information.
Let The Newspaper Or Yellow Pages Graphic
Artists Create Your Business Advertising For Free First, how much do these folks know about your
business? Second, it is a simple fact that graphic artists
do not have extensive training in marketing, copywriting, business law, or
advertising. They may be great artists, but that does not make them
great advertisers. We continue to stress the importance of creating the
very best, most professional advertisements that you can. That means
hiring a professional. Third, newspaper and yellow pages graphic
artists are commonly required to produce 10 – 20 ads per day. Perhaps
they do not have enough time to do their best work for your business
advertising. Maybe free
is not a good deal after all.
Select The Wrong Media It is true that the media IS the message. In addition to your ad, the form of media you choose also represents your company. It should be a good fit. Your choice of media should make you look
professional. [This does not mean to go and buy television time.] You
want to match your advertising to your clients. Where do your customers
go to get information? Don’t guess – ask them. Make the media
company give you their audience demographics. Does it match your
clients?
Pay Too Much For The Media You Use Often there are discounts available when buying
business advertising space. There will be free listings, free color, volume
discounts, etc. Ask for discounts and negotiate hard, or have a
professional do it for you.
Copy Your Competitor’s Advertisements If you want customers to notice you, you must
stand out from the crowd. Blending in gets you nowhere. CONTRAST
gets ATTENTION.
Don’t Copy Your Competitors' Business
Advertising As a general rule, you need to match your competitors' level of business advertising as a percentage of gross sales in order to maintain your current level of business. If you want your business to grow, you need to
advertise more than, or more effectively than, your competitors. If you
are up against much larger competitors, you will need to spend
proportionately more than they do to grow your sales.
Don’t Respond To Your Competitors' Business
Advertising And Promotions You have to watch your competitors. If they radically change the playing field, they could take your customers overnight. For example, they might start offering free technical
assistance for life, or a free loaner car. If they get their business
advertising in the
yellow pages, and they beat you badly with their offer, you will have to
wait a whole year to get them back. You want to do that to them.
Sometimes you have to match your competitors' offerings just to stay
in the game.
Don't Preempt Your Competitors With Ads And
Promotions Same thing - different angle. Don’t chase your
competitors. Make them chase you. The public will see you as the leader,
and everybody likes a winner.
Feature Yourself In Your Ads In general, this is a bad idea. Seldom is the owner of a company the most effective advertising spokesperson for that company. Advertising is about getting the best results possible. This is also a consideration when you choose the name of your company. Your name should reflect the business you are in. Saying "Johnson & Sons" says nothing about what it is you do. Stick to "Johnson's Construction Company", or better, "Dream Home Construction".
Get Bad Ad Position Or Poorly Time Your Business Advertisements If your business advertisement is printed on the inside fold of the
newspaper or the yellow pages, you will lose half of your customers.
Bad placement can mean a 50% loss of readership. And people look at different parts of the
newspaper to get different information. Ever notice how ads selling the
same things are grouped together? If you place your business
advertisement in the wrong
location in the paper, your customer will miss it. If you place it on
the wrong day of the week, your customer will miss it. Does that sound
silly? It’s not. It is very, very serious, and it’s your money. See Using
Media More Effectively for more information.
Fail To Close The Sale After Your Business
Advertisement Brings In Prospects The job of an advertisement is to get a
potential customer to call you or to walk in the door. With the
exception of direct mail, that is all a business advertisement can do. It’s up to you to
close the sale.
Advertise To New Prospects And Not To Your
Existing Customers Marketing experts claim that it costs five -
eight
times the amount of money to get a new customer than it does to keep an
existing customer. And it takes at least three exposures to your
business advertising just to get
a new customer to notice you. Your existing customers already know and
trust you. They are your best, first prospects. Direct your business
advertising to them first.
Don’t Coordinate Your Marketing For Economies
Of Scale And Synergy Synergy in business advertising is a real thing. It comes from the
cumulative effect of all of your marketing messages and materials
working together. Being consistent with your marketing is the biggest
factor in building synergy. Create a solid plan, and stick to it.
Don’t Test Your Advertisements In one test, marketers changed just the headline
of an advertisement, and they achieved a 500% increase in response. You
only get what you measure. Test your ads. Please read Testing and
Tracking Ads for more information on improving the response to
your business advertising.
Don’t Test Your Media Channels Often a small, local newspaper will offer a much
better response for your business advertising investment than a large regional
newspaper will. There are community newsletters, the yellow pages,
coupon mailers, bulletin boards, direct mailers, and dozens, if not
hundreds, of other types of publications to place advertising in. Test to
see what gives the best return.
Don’t Test Different Marketing And Promotion
Methods A trade show may get a better return than a
mailer. Coupons achieve very high return rates. A poster may out-pull a
flyer. A catalog may beat your brochure. One brochure will beat another.
One ad will beat the next ad. Test, test, and test your business
advertising. And test some more.
Hire A Great Graphic Designer Who Doesn’t
Really Understand Marketing And Business Advertising Graphic design is only one part of professional
business advertising. Graphic artists study artistic communication design – not
marketing – not copywriting – not business law - not advertising. If
you choose to use just a graphic designer, carefully study all of the
other aspects of advertising, or get a professional to help you. You are
going to need to help your designer if you want good results from your
ads.
Don’t Do Any Advertising Or Any Promotions At
All Business advertising is expensive, and it can be scary.
The truth is that some advertising doesn’t work. But if you are
careful, and you advertise in the most professional way you can, the
odds are with you. If you don’t advertise at all, the odds of financial
success are a million to one. You could give away your services, and
your reputation will grow like wildfire. But it you want to earn a
profit in a competitive marketplace, you need to advertise.
Look For A Business Advertising Miracle With A
One-Shot Advertising Program Business advertising is a long-term process of building
recognition and trust with the public. Miracles rarely happen, and
one-shot ads are just a waste of money. Expect to stick with an
advertising program for at least six months just to measure the initial
impact.
Change Your Business Advertising Too Frequently You, and everyone around you and close to the business will get tired of your ads. But only the customer counts. It takes a long, long time for your customers to get tired of your ads. Many companies never change their business advertising. Create professional
advertisements that really work, and then stick to them until they no
longer generate the sales response you want. Don’t change ads that are
working.
Slow Down Or Stop Your Business Advertising When
The Economy Slows Down The golden rule of business advertising, if there is such
a thing, is stay in touch with your customers. If you are inconsistent,
they won’t trust you. If they can’t find you, they will go to your
competitor. And if they forget who you are, you have to start all over
again.
Continue To Advertise After The Return Drops
Below The Profitable Level This is
tracking of your return on investment. When your $1 in business advertising
expenditure does not generate enough sales to pay your expenses and
provide a profit, it’s time to change your advertising.
Don’t
Use Direct Response Advertisements Direct
response ads are designed to get your customers to respond now. They get attention with
design, size, placement, and timing. They stimulate interest by
touching on human emotions, desires, and needs. They create desire by
offering solutions [benefits] to emotions, problems, or needs. They get
action by making the solution highly desirable, yet affordable and easy.
And they command your customer to take action immediately.
Don’t Tell The Truth The Federal Trade Commission
monitors business advertising in the United States. If ads are misleading or
untruthful, penalties can be very severe. Please read Print
Advertising Law for more information.
Ask
For Help Unfortunately, there are many more possible mistakes to make with your business advertising than are listed above. Going wrong with your ads is easy to do, and expensive to remedy. As always, we strongly recommend that you hire a high quality graphic designer, and show all of your work to a marketing professional for a second opinion. It’s a cheap investment for something you are going to reprint endlessly - without a mistake. Please contact Professional Advertising for additional assistance.
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