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Why Your Small Business Advertising Isn’t Working

Guest post by: Stephen Feswick

Article Overview: Stop blaming the media if your advertising isn't working. Advertising ALWAYS works. But your message may be the problem. What can you do to improve your advertising? Read on...

Why Your Small Business Advertising Isn’t Working

Have you ever said to yourself, "I tried radio once, but it doesn't work for me." What about: "Newspaper? I bought an ad and it did nothing for me."

Read my lips: Advertising on the radio, newspaper, TV, and in magazines ALWAYS works. The selected media always delivers your message as promised. People hear, see and are exposed to your advertising as promised, so the real question is: Are you saying something people are interested in and are you doing so in a manner guaranteed to attract and hold their undivided attention?

It's so easy to blame the media, but the truth is that you, as the advertiser, are 100% responsible for the results produced by your advertising message.

Imagine two people attend a party. Let's call them Bob and Phil.

Bob is a nice guy. He never makes waves, never stands out in a crowd. He's polite, neat and easily fades into the background.

Phil, on the other hand is the life of the party. He's funny, engaging, some times outrageous. If you ever met Phil, you'd never forget him.

At the end of the night Bob comments, "That party sucked!" Phil looks at Bob incredulous and exclaims, "Sucked? That was one of the best parties so far!"

Same party, same partygoers, and yet two totally different outcomes.

How is that possible?

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to ensure your ads don't suck.

1. Is the message of genuine interest to your audience? Does it address a genuine perceived need, solve a legitimate problem or is it simply serving your bloated inventory problem?

Said another way, are you solving your customer's problems or simply attempting to solve your own?

2. Are you addressing your audience with your own true identifiable voice? When you speak do people instantly recognize you or do you sound like everyone else and simply fade into the background?

3. Do your ads grab the attention of your target audience and hold it until they know what they're supposed to do next? Are you the life of the party?

4. Does your audience know specifically what the next step is? Do they know what they must do immediately following their exposure to your message? Unless you're Coke, McDonalds or Nike, you do NOT have the marketing budget to focus solely on "building your brand".

5. Have you built in a means of effectively measuring your audience's response to your message? The GRP's of a select media is NOT the form of measurement you should be concerned with. These meaningless measurements serve only the advertising agency media buyers who cannot purchase media based on merit and true effectiveness.

Measure instead the number of phone calls received, coupons remitted, flyers returned, ballots stuffed, test-drives conducted, and sales concluded. Be certain to make a clear request for a specific, measurable action and then measure the results carefully.

After all, what gets measured gets repeated.

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Article Tags: small business, small business advertising



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