Myths and Madness – 7 ways to waste your advertising dollars
Caution: reading this article may cause indigestion, headaches and all-over-achy feeling for non-performing advertising agencies and marketing managers. For instant relief, remove the non-performers and take a healthy dose of common sense until you are no longer plagued by the myths and madness that kill advertising campaigns.
By Wolfgang Franke
Madness: Assuming that the brand identity of business-to-business products and services is just as important as the brand identity of packaged goods. This is almost never true. Why? Packaged goods are sold in retail outlets where the packaging has to compete for attention with the packaging of competing products. This is not the case with business-to-business products. Moreover, the buyer is rarely, if ever, influenced by your logo and the other elements that make up your brand identity. Do you need a professional brand identity? Yes, but it should be a minor, not major, part of your budget.
Myth: People don’t read. So advertising text should be as short as possible. No, no, no. The truth is that ads with long text consistently outperform ads with short text (provided the text is customer focused and is written by a pro).
Madness: Ignoring the purchasing power of women. The indisputable fact is that women – not men – make or strongly influence most buying decisions. Many products and services are purchased primarily by women, yet even these ads are designed by men for men. How can you pick out an ad designed by men? Look for the warrior colors – red and black. Ads for women are bursting with color because savvy marketers know women are attracted to color.
Myth: A couple of big ads are better than a series of smaller ads. Yes, size matters. But don’t sacrifice frequency (the number of times people see your ads) to run “single-shot” ads that are easily missed by your target audience.
Madness: Spending 80% of your marketing budget (or more) on the least likely to buy your product, a pattern we see again and again. The big mistake here is the assumption that existing customers know what you have to sell. They don’t. You
can sell more to your existing customers and the best part is that spending on marketing directed at existing customers is the least costly, least risky and most likely to produce to profit.
Myth: Buying big newspaper ads is a safe, low-risk media choice. This is the strategy of choice for car dealerships that run silly, say-nothing, clip-art plagued newspaper ads. There is no theme, no hook, nothing memorable – but the newspaper gets a nice big, fat cheque. What would be better? Try radio. Several dealers have carved out a nice piece of the market by running consistent radio campaigns.
Madness: Marketing a product or service without a marketing plan. Why do you think the bank insists on seeing a marketing plan before coughing up some money for a new business? They know that the business – and their loan – will be at much higher risk if the company has no marketing plan. It’s simple, really. If you don’t know where you are going, how the heck are you going to get there?
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