The Secret of Advertising

Advertising is a funny thing to get right. Beginners to the business often get turned off when they try a certain form of advertising once and have it not produce any calls. They will then tell other businesses that (tv, newspaper, radio etc..) form of advertising doesn’t work.
Something that beginners to the advertising world need to understand is that there are many factors that make advertising work and you need to have most of them on your side to get the best possible results.

I remember some time ago I was advertising in the local community paper which is given out for free on a weekly basis. It had previously worked well for me but over time it had it began to lose its effectiveness. I took a look at the local paper to investigate why my ad wasnt working as well as it once did and noticed that another computer business brought a big box ad which overshadowed my smaller text ad.

So, I called the local paper and ordered a similar sized ad as the other business and the phone calls came in again. A few months later it began to lose its effectiveness again and I once again checked the paper. Now there were multiple computer businesses with similar sized ads right next to mine.

At this point the cost of the ads were double what I used to pay, so I wasn’t making as much per call. In fact, I would just barely cover the cost. I followed a suggestion from a blogging buddy and made my ads much smaller (back to the way they originally were) but increased the amount of suburbs it appeared in. As a result I was getting many more calls than I had with a single large ad in less suburbs.

The two factors that I believe made the smaller ads work better are:

• More People, More Choices – With a bigger advertising area, more people were able to see my ad. It is quite possible that people in the other areas have already used the services of the computer technicians that were previously advertising in their area, and didnt like them. My ad gave them another option.
• The Little Guy is Cheaper – Many people believe that the little guy is cheaper and friendlier than the big boys. I know I definitely prefer dealing with the smaller businesses where I know the owner, know he’ll look after me and give me a good price. I believe the smaller ad gave me this image.

Sometimes external factors can effect your advertising which may cause it not to work, even if you did everything right. A good example of this I once read about was in 1994, David Hasselhoff (the Baywatch guy) once scheduled a pay-per-view concert on TV. He invested $100,000 into the concert including its advertising and it was going to be huge. However, at the same time of his pay-per-view concert, OJ Simpson was running away from the police in his white Bronco being filmed by a helicopter on National TV. Due to the live nature of the now famous footage, the amount of views were a lot lower than expected and Hasselhoff lost a lot of money.

Another example is my story of the smaller advertising with a wider spread may not work for people in a country town. If you live in a country down there may not be as many people living further out which will make it ineffective.

The point I am trying to make here is that all forms of advertising can work for you. If something didn’t work for you, you need to identify why it didn’t work (eg. only cows live outside my country town or OJ Simpson was running away), change it and try again. Once you get it right keep on doing it until it no longer works.

Another thing Ive noticed is that business owners have too high expectations of advertising. It is unrealistic to think that a $100 advertisement will bring in $30,000 of business, if it did almost every business would be successful. If you can cover the cost of the advertisement then you are ahead – everything else is a bonus.

You need to find what works for you by keep tweak until you get it right. Then stick with it until it doesn’t.