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Creating
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Welcome to the
July 2007 issue of
“Creating Marketing Magic.”
Why Your Last Advertising Campaign Failed
When I go to a
social gathering, I hate it when small talk gets to the "what do you
do for a living" question. I hate it because when I introduce myself
as a marketing and new media consultant, I'm invariably greeted with
one of the following three responses:
- "I'm in the [fill in the blank] business. How can I
advertise to improve my business."
- "I've tried advertising. It doesn't work for my kind of
business."
Or, when they learn that I help clients harness the internet to build
their business, I get:
- "Can you teach me to use my computer to make money? By the
way, I can barely turn on a computer, I don't use email and I
don't have a product or service to sell, but I'd like to make
$10,000 a month from the comfort of my own home without making
a huge investment of time or money."
It's the inevitable third response that has me turning down
invitations to social events these days.
When I first launched my web development business, I foolishly thought
I was leaving the world of marketing and advertising behind me. It
took less than 2 years for me to realize that my new clients were
asking me to build them a web site, it was generally because they had
heard a web site was a "great way" to easily advertise and promote
their business. I learned right alongside my clients (the hard
way) that a web site is just another WAY to deliver your marketing
message.
It doesn't matter what media you use, if you message isn't relevant
then no matter what media you choose, it's doomed to fail.
EVERY TYPE OF MEDIA WILL FAIL
WHEN ASKED TO DELIVER A MESSAGE
NO ONE CARES ABOUT!
Have you ever run an ad that failed to deliver?
Chances are, your ad that failed fell into one of four categories:
The Story
Continues Here:
1. You targeted "everyone"
By targeting everyone, you in essence doomed your message to failure
from
the beginning.
Often, business owners will look at the wide variety of backgrounds of
their clients or customers and get overwhelmed. They sometimes try to segment their
customers into terms of the demographic information presented by their media
rep.
However, when looking at their customer list, they see only diversity.
"How can I choose just ONE target audience? Half of my customers are
men,
the other half are women. Some of my customers are over 50, some are
under 50...
some are affluent, others are not!"
In frustration, they try to create a marketing message which will
speak to ALL
their customers instead of just one. By trying to create marketing
messages that
speaks to everyone, they end up speaking to no one. The ad fails and
the media
(or messenger) is blamed.
2. Your ad didn't communicate information that was important to the
customer.
Prospective customers noticed the ad, received the message and
understood it
perfectly. They just didn't care.
Actually, this is just another version of the first
reason for failure. This phenomenon happens frequently when a
message is targeted to EVERYONE instead of SOMEONE.
Your job is to discover what THAT CUSTOMER actually cares about and
talk directly to them.
One GREAT way to target your message is to keep a specific
customer in your
business in mind as you create the campaign. That way you will be
creating a message which is targeting someone you know that you have
already helped. When you create a message targeted to THAT
customer, you'll reach others who are like THAT customer. Your
message
would break through to
other people out there who were experiencing the same issue as your
current customers.
In my book,
Beyond the Niche, I talk about selling candles to
illustrate this
point. While it may appear that three people are just buying candles,
the reason
each customer is purchasing the candles are actually very different.
One customer may be purchasing candles as a way to decorate the home,
while another
is purchasing the candle to provide lighting in an emergency
situation. Yet a third
customer is purchasing a candle as a way to cover up odors in the
home. On the surface,
it just appears that these are three different customers buying
candles. However,
each customer has a different reason for buying those candles.
If you’re selling candles, then you’d better know ALL the reasons why
your customers
buy candles so you can focus your communications with potential
customers on those
REASONS they're buying. It doesn't matter what you're selling, the
same is also true.
Like it or not, creating business success is all about communicating
the BENEFITS of
what you do effectively with the people who live and work in your
community. In the case
of the chiropractic professional, those benefits are largely focused
upon pain relief… PERIOD!
3. The ad might have worked if the message (or call to action) was
clear.
I am positively STUNNED at the number of ads I see that don't provide
contact information! I
wish it was only in my immediate area, but I see this phenomenon
everywhere I travel.
Recently, a local fish market was advertising a "clam bake on the
beach" special where for $79.95
you could pick up everything you need for a clam bake. They may have
been providing everything
you needed for a do it yourself clam bake, but their ad failed to give
ANY information about
how to go about contacting or visiting the business.
Every ad needs to let listeners/viewers/readers know how to contact
you. The more ways, the
better! List your phone, your address AND your URL plus email! Make it
easy for people to
act upon your ad!
4. Your ad campaign was shorter than your selling cycle.
If you were running a business that sells products, I would tell you
that if your customers
buy your product once a week, don't expect your ads to return a profit
during the first week.
If your customers return once a month, don't expect to break even on
your advertising during
the first 30 days.
If your selling cycle is longer than 2 or more years, then
don't expect to see real
measurable results from your ads – even if they're compelling and
tightly targeted – for the
first 6- 12 months of your campaign.
To determine your "selling cycle" take a look at how long your
customers go between purchases.
Compute the 'average" amount of time between purchases and you'll
have your selling cycle.
Remember, advertising is reaching your CURRENT customers as well as
POTENTIAL customers. Your ads are running not only to tell NEW people
about your services, but to also remind your CURRENT customers where
they should turn when they experience pain.
It's been my experience that most advertising failures fall into the
first and fourth category. Either the message was too broadly
targeted OR the campaign was cut short, long before it had a chance to
make an impact upon potential customers.
When I was working as an account executive with an advertising agency,
our greatest frustration was the client who grew "tired" of hearing or
seeing the ad campaign. Changes were ordered, usually at the
time when the ad was just beginning to make an impression with the
target audience. Our desire to leave well enough alone was often
viewed as "laziness" on our part when in reality, it was anything but.
It was a simply a desire to allow the campaign to "run it's course" as
customers moved through the product selling cycle.
Create a compelling message and combine it with compelling creative,
then allow this properly constructed marketing message time to run
it's course.
Questions, comments, rants, raves? Feel free to .
Find My Niche and Creating Marketing Magic
are written Kathy Hendershot-Hurd who
is the founder of Virtual Impax, a small business
marketing consulting firm and the author of
"Beyond
the Niche"
available at online book stores everywhere.
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