Are you striking out on your advertising?
Have you tried advertising your business only to be disappointed in the lack of response? Don’t worry you aren’t alone; big businesses also find themselves in this situation. In a recent BusinessWeek piece, Steve McKee opens up quoting a recent poll of LinkedIn users that addresses the question: Of the ads you see in a typical day, how many engage your attention?
How many people do you think answered most of them? Half? Three-quarters? Other percentage?
If you guessed other, you were correct as only one in 100 respondents noted that the majority of ads they saw were relevant. Ninety one percent of respondents stated that none to a slim margin garnered their attention.
Still feel alone? Didn’t think so.
While the sheer numbers alone are alarming to advertisers, McKee drills down into seven common reasons why ads fail, making the piece more of a useful learning tool than a horror show. Of the seven common follies (click here for the full list), perhaps the most common detractor will hit home the hardest – You Like it.
O.K., this one may sting a bit, but you are not the best judge of your own advertising. You can’t be, because you simply know too much about your brand and have too much affection for it to remain objective. Look at Burger King. Its advertising over the past few years has been quite successful in appealing to the company’s core target audience of young men, but many Burger King franchisees could personally do without it. The smart ones recognize that they’re not the target and leave it alone. Your advertising is not only not about you, it’s not for you. Both points seem counterintuitive, but that’s why this stuff isn’t for amateurs.
The article does a great job of posting reasons that your advertisement fails, but it doesn’t go into ways to avoid them. The Web is filled with sites (many linked on the blogroll on the right-hand side of this post) offering lots of useful knowledge and tips for planning a marketing campaign. Below are some sites that offer useful tips on correcting some of the issues referenced in the BusinessWeek piece.
Copy – Our resident small business marketing expert Mindy Sanderson put together a Webinar on crafting compelling copy (Part 1 and Part 2) that offers some great tips. You might also want to check out the CopyBlogger site, where there is a 10-step copywriting tutorial and a list of copywriting courses.
Design - Dave Ball from our staff pens a column that offers some design tips, but you might want to also give a look at AdGoodness for some inspiration. The site shows off the best and worst ads currently running around the globe.
Implementation – Perhaps one of the most useful sights on the Web when looking into marketing your small business may be Duct Tape Marketing. The site is filled with tutorials and “How To’s” that can help you plan out any type of campaign from viral video to SEO and traditional marketing channels.
