Are You Making This Big Mistake With Your Marketing?

In my last post I reviewed/critiqued a newspaper ad in my local newspaper. It’s rare these days, but the ad was pretty good. Just a couple of minor mistakes (actually, there was a really big mistake I missed, but more on that later).

Unfortunately, it looks like this business followed up that great ad by making one of the biggest (and most common) marketing mistakes business owners make. But, they still have time to fix it, but not much time.

What is the BIG marketing mistake? Sadly, this happens more times than I can count. They failed to follow up… so far. Like I said, the jury is still out because the week is not over yet.

But if they do not run that ad again this week in the same newspaper, they basically took the money they spent on that ad and flushed it down the toilet (WOOSH).

This mistake drives me nuts. It really does. I mean CRAZY nuts!

Time and time again I see a business run an ad, and then I never see anything afterwards. Like the business owner expected the calls to flood the phone lines from placing one, single ad.

More than likely the business did not receive many calls from the one ad they ran. Maybe (more than likely) they didn’t receive any calls. And the business owner thinks the ad was a failure. A waste of time and money, and he/she is now disgruntled at all marketing.

What the business owner fails to understand is, it takes repetition. The ad must be seen over and over, over a period of time before it will be effective.  If it were my ad, or one of my client’s ads, my advice would be to run it a minimum of 4 weeks in a row.

After the 4 weeks, you can then better evaluate the effectivness of that ad. If after 4 weeks you did not receive any calls, you have a problem. The problem may be the ad itself. Maybe the copy in the ad did not resonate with the market.

Or, maybe you ran the ad in the wrong newspaper/media. As I learned from my mentor many years ago, a successful marketing piece requires 3 things.

Market – Message – Media Match!

You need the right market to start with, then you need to send the right message to that market, using the right media. Let me break that down so it makes more sense.

If I sold a golf instructional DVD course, my market is the average weekend golfer, right? So my message would need to appeal to them. Whatever I say, it has to resonate with them, and make them desire my product. So far we can assume I have the right market and the right message.

How will I get that message to my market? What’s the best media to use? Actually, in this case I have options for my media. I can try running an ad in the sports section of the newspaper. It’s at least worth testing, right? Do you think the weekend golfer reads the sports section of the newspaper?

We might also try the Internet. How about Golfing Digest magazine? That sounds really good. Who reads Golfing Digest magazine? My weekend golfer market does.

So now I am ready to test my ad.

That’s right, we’re still not home free. I need to test this ad to make sure my Market-Message-Media match works. There’s always a chance I have the right market and media, but my message is off.

So during this process test, test, TEST!

Okay, I really don’t want to stray too far from the main theme of this post. And that is, if you decide to run an ad in the newspaper, make a commitment to see it through. And know right from the get go that this is not a one shot deal.

In fact, I don’t know of any marketing tactic that is a one shot deal. Do You?

As good of an offer that may have been in the ad, most people will forget about it 2 seconds after reading the ad. Or, maybe they cut the ad out, put it off to the side and had every intention of calling but they had a busy week. Or, they were traveling that week. People today are very busy, and as much as we’d like them to drop everything so they can respond to our newspaper ad, that’s just not going to happen.

We need to be realistic about this. It might even help if we put ourselves in our prospects shoes. I know, this is extremely difficult for most business owners to do. But you need to at least try.

When I am in a planning session with a client and we discuss a marketing tactic, I make absolutely certain my client is committed to giving that marketing tactic every opportunity to work. And more often than not, when they do make that commitment, the marketing works.

The moral of the story is, don’t quit on your marketing (tactic) unless and until you have given it every opportunity to succeed. Avoid making one of the most common marketing mistakes!

One final thought for today…

I cannot believe I missed this during my critique of the newspaper ad, but I missed the biggest problem with that ad. I’m embarrassed to have missed it, but I did (eventually) catch it so don’t beat me up over it too bad

Did you catch it? Go back and read my critique. Do you see what’s missing from this ad? That’s a hint, it’s something missing. And, it’s something you need to do with EVERY marketing tactic you do.

If anyone can guess what it is I missed, I have a special little something for you.

Yours for Massive Results Marketing,

Jay

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