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Which Ads Don’t Work?

Written by: Lei Wang

Article Overview: The clever creative ones that come with first-class graphic design, full colour print on glossy papers, but they have absolutely no sales power. If you search through the Yellow Pages and look at a dozen ads in one category, most will look the same and feel the same. Most ads are more like an enlarged version of the company's business cards. They have the company name in the title, a lifeless description of the product or service, and a phone number at the end.

Which Ads Don’t Work?

The clever creative ones that come with first-class graphic design, full colour print on glossy papers, but they have absolutely no sales power.

If you search through the Yellow Pages and look at a dozen ads in one category, most will look the same and feel the same.

Most ads are more like an enlarged version of the company's business cards. They have the company name in the title, a lifeless description of the product or service, and a phone number at the end.

The only difference is that these ads cost more to produce than business cards do.
The advertising industry often encourages businesses to buy more advertising, claiming that, “people need to see your ads at least seven times before they'll remember it, and 12 times before they act on it.”

This statement has some truth to it. Traditional marketing and advertising methods have hit a wall because there's too much clutter in the marketplace.

An average person comes across more than a thousand commercials on any given day. This includes radio ads, TV ads, banner ads, and even sales calls at dinner time. There is simply too much information for us to take in, so we simply ignore most of it.

People are becoming ever more cynical, our trust is often betrayed by empty promises from companies and politicians. It's hard to believe much of what we hear from the media.

We have developed a powerful “spam” filter to keep everything out. We find a way to let in messages that truly matter to us, our needs, our pains, our desires, and our goals.

For your message to bypass the filters, you must offer compelling value in exchange for that attention. If you don't, you have virtually no chance of being heard.

Imagine you are selling home insurance for fire damage, Instead of “we offer the best deal in town…lowest rates in the last 100 years…satisfaction guaranteed,” how about:

“What to do when your house is on fire and
FIVE things you must never tell your insurance agent”

OR

“Did you know that out of the 100 houses on your street
TWO will be burnt down to the ground before April 23rd?”

If you want to double, triple and even quadruple the return on your advertising dollars; if you want to find out how to advertising without spending $1 on advertising; visit my website by clicking on the link at the end of this article, and sign up for your *FREE* Marketing Lessons.

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Article Tags: 100 years, advertising methods, average person, banner ads, business cards, clutter, desires, dinner time, empty promises, fire damage, first class graphic design, glossy papers, home insurance, insurance agent, politicians, radio ads, seven times, spam filter, traditional marketing, tv ads



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