A business with no advertising is a sign of no business

Many years ago a friend of mine owned and operated a franchised sign company. His memory hook, or tag line, was a “A business without a sign, is a sign of no business.” That statement is so true, it even transcends all forms of advertising

Ask any successful business owner, they’ll tell all about the value, and importance, of advertising.  Businesses that don’t advertise are totally invisible to their potential customer.

Bottom line -if you’re in business, advertise!

Have you ever had the same reaction to an ad, whether in print, radio or television, that Dagwood had? If you watched television during the Super Bowl in recent years, I’ll bet you have. One of my favorites of all time were the series of ads for an Internet company called Outpost.com. Remember them? Probably not. Ever been to their Web site? Nah. But what great commercials!

You remember…the well-dressed older gentleman speaking to the camera in a soft voice while seated in a large chair next to a cozy fireplace. He was talking to us about a new kind of company that helped you do something on the Internet….what exactly I have no recollection. But then….then the camera panned over to the other side of the room where gerbils were being loaded into a cannon and fired at a small hole in the middle of a brick wall. The first several missed, and each time the sound of a splat was followed by a camera shot of the older man saying, “Just missed,” and “That was close.” I believe the second series of commercials involved the same old man setting a pack of hungry wolves loose on a collegiate marching band. We talked about it at the office water cooler the next day, but had no idea what the heck it was all about.

The above is a great illustration of what is wrong with the bulk of advertising today. Too many ad agencies creating slick-looking, over-produced ads that are nothing more than eye candy. Sure, they look great, and they win the ad agency awards, but are they effective?

What Roy Williams (www.wizardofads.com) writes about this problem is the following:

Advertisers assume that people comprehend their ads. Most often, they do not. The volume of advertising which gushes toward the customer’s mind is like a fire hose aimed at a teacup. There is simply too much rushing in to contain. Most advertising in America is deflected, spilled and lost. At the end of the day, precious little information is retained.Will your advertising be part of that precious little, or is it being deflected, spilled and lost?

The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience is read by doctors and medical students who desire to understand how human beings recognize and identify objects, use visual mental images, read, produce and comprehend language, move and store new information in memory, etc. (I think it makes sense for ad writers to understand these things, too.)

Stephen Kosslyn, an editor for the journal and a professor of psychology at Harvard, tells us how auditory pattern activation is an essential element in language skills. Kosslyn says, “A word is like a key. When a word unlocks the correct stored memories, it is meaningful.”

I believe the carefully guided recall of a sequence of these stored memories is the magic behind every powerful ad. Do the words of your ads unlock stored memories in the mind of the listener? The memories can be real or imagined. The important thing is that they be recalled from the mind in such a manner as to actively engage the imagination. To put it plainly, you must cause the listener to see himself taking precisely the action you so artfully describe. When the listener does not mentally participate, the advertising is deflected, spilled and lost.

“Engage the imagination and take it where you will. Where the mind has journeyed repeatedly, the body will surely follow. People go only to places they have already been in their minds.”

What Is “Branding,” Really?

“Branding” is the hot, new buzzword favored by smooth talking ad people who always seem to speak as though it were something new and mysterious. So far, I have yet to find even one of these empty suits who has the slightest idea of how branding is accomplished in the mind.

Branding is far from new. Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel prize for his research into branding in 1904. Remember the story? Day after day, Pavlov would ring a bell as he rubbed meat paste onto the tongue of a dog. The dog soon began to associate the taste of the meat with the sound of the bell until salivation became the dog’s conditioned response. In psychological terms, this is known as, “the implantation of an associative memory.” In other words, “branding” in all its glory.

There are three keys to implanting an associative memory into the mind of your customer. The first key is consistency. Pavlov never offered food without ringing the bell and he never rang the bell without offering food. The second key is frequency, meaning that Pavlov did it day after day after day.

The third key, anchoring, is the tricky one. When implanting an associative memory, the new and unknown element (the bell,) has to be associated with a memory which is already anchored in the mind, (the taste of meat.) Frequency and consistency create “branding” only when your message is tied to an established emotional anchor. Pavlov’s branding campaign was anchored to the dog’s love for the taste of meat. If the dog did not love meat, the frequent and consistent ringing of the bell would have produced no response other than to irritate the dog.

If I say, “It’s a Norman Rockwell kind of restaurant,” you immediately think of the place as being, “cozy, happy, warm, innocent and kid-friendly,” right? Your assumptions about the restaurant would be anchored to your feelings about the art of Norman Rockwell. To frequently and consistently associate the restaurant with Norman Rockwell would be to implant an associative memory into the mind. Branding.

The buying public is your dog. If you desire a specific response from it, you must tie your identity to an emotional anchor which is already known to elicit the desired response. If you make such an association with consistency and frequency, branding will occur…but don’t expect too much too soon. It takes a lot of repetition to train a dog to salivate at the sound of your name.

Do you have the patience, Pavlov?

By STEVE MCKEE, BUSINESSWEEK.COM
Posted: 2009-05-18 08:44:29
Filed Under: Small Business, Marketing

Artville

Your ability to sustain a long-term advertising program shows customers that you’re a successful, reliable brand.

I recently purchased a new digital TV. Normally, Circuit City would have been on my list as one store in which to shop, but the struggles the company was facing (followed by its decision to declare bankruptcy) made me nervous.

I was sure I could somehow get my TV serviced under the manufacturer’s warranty if something were to go wrong, but I figured it would be more of a hassle if the retailer from whom I purchased the TV wasn’t there to back me up. So I went elsewhere.

This principle, which I call “the fear of warranty,” is one of the reasons why GM is doing everything it can to avoid the bankruptcy process. People tend to feel less comfortable doing business with companies they perceive are on the ropes.

But I submit that the principle holds true at the other end of the spectrum as well. Brands that are setting the world on fire make people feel more confident about (and perhaps even more intelligent for) doing business with them. And one very visible signal a brand can send about its momentum is how consistently it advertises.

Riding the Victory Train
You probably have at least a vague familiarity with the names Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin. They’re the Presidential historians who always seem to be called upon by the television networks to provide expert commentary during campaign seasons. They really seem to know their stuff.

Of course, you and I can’t say with certainty whether or not they are the most qualified historians to comment on Presidential elections. Oh, sure, they are intelligent, studied academics who provide interesting insights. But there are probably many other capable people who could do the same.

What makes us believe that Beschloss and Goodwin are the leading experts is the fact that they are visibly and consistently out there, presumably because they’ve been vetted by people who should know. The fact that we see them on TV all the time is, in and of itself, proof of their leading expertise. Simply put, their visibility leads to credibility.

The same thing is true with products and services we see advertised day after day. The more visible a brand is, the more opportunities it earns to build trust with its customers and prospects.

Consider some of today’s most successful products and services. Without each of us personally spending a great deal of time and effort researching, testing and comparing competitive alternatives, we don’t really know whether Nike makes a better shoe, Michelin manufactures a better tire, or Verizon has created a better network. Instead, we entrust at least some of our judgment to the momentum these brands appear to have in the marketplace.

In some respects it doesn’t even matter what their ads say; the simple fact that each of these brands is actively and consistently “in the game” speaks volumes — especially in challenging economic times — and generates genuine momentum for their brands.

The Wisdom of Crowds
In his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki makes the case that “together all of us know more than any one of us does.” He says, “Markets are made up of diverse people with different levels of information and intelligence, and yet when you put all those people together and they start buying and selling, they come up with generally intelligent decisions.”

In the world of advertising, consistency is like a scorecard on the wisdom of crowds. People know that advertising is expensive, so the more a company advertises, the more successful it must be. And the more successful it is, the more it means that other people are choosing it. Which means that it may be a good idea for you and I to choose it as well.

Your brand can benefit from this power of positive momentum. Through your initial advertising efforts, people will learn that that you exist. With repeated exposure, they’ll learn that you’re stable. With even more repeated exposure, they’ll assume you’re successful — after all, based on your ability to sustain a long-term advertising program, you’d have to be.

The specific content of your ads is, of course, of vital importance as well — Beschloss and Goodwin wouldn’t last long if they were misleading, annoying, or ignorant. But what’s true of your career, of sports, and of life in general is also true of advertising: never underestimate the power of simply showing up.

Steve McKee is president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland Advertising, a firm that specializes in helping stalled companies rekindle growth. He is the author of the new book, When Growth Stalls.

2009-05-18 08:29:02

by Diana Ratliff

So you’ve got a dynamic product. You’ve determined that there’s a definite need (or want) for it. And you know what you want to say in your advertising copy. Congratulations! (You’re way ahead of most of us!) But assuming you DO eventually get to that point … and most of us do, after some trial and error, perhaps … what happens next? Now that you have a product, a need, and a message, how do you get that message out to your potential customers? You have an ever-increasing (and often bewildering) array of options. There are the tried-and-true alternatives such as billboards, classified ads, direct mail, display ads, telemarketing, business cards, bulletin boards, ad specialties and the like. Then there are the newer, “high-tech” methods such as CD-ROM presentations and Internet marketing (Web sites and e-mail). How do your know which method to choose? You may find it useful to keep the following criteria in mind when you’re trying to select the advertising media for your business. This list is by no means all-inclusive, but it does provide a starting point for your decision-making process.

Is the option portABLE? If your product or service is purchased on impulse or when an emergency occurs, it’s important to have your company information immediately available. A good example of a portable ad could be a business card or a magnet on the refrigerator. A poor example would be a billboard (unless the sign promotes a tow service and you happen to break down right in front of it!)

Is the option adaptABLE? If you travel on business, you can carry a telephone script with you and call from any hotel room. You can modify your script as you go along. You can even use selected words or phrases when you meet someone in person. So telephone prospecting could be a very adaptable alternative for you.

Is the option acceptABLE? If your message is to be seen in a positive light, it has to be delivered in a manner that your prospect finds acceptable. Telemarketing is often seen as intrusive. Direct mail may be seen as “junk mail.” On the other hand, an ad in the classified section of your newspaper is accepted readily because your prospect chooses whether or not to read it. It’s also associated with a valuable service (delivery of the news.)

Is it affordABLE? Sometimes your finances are tight. If you’re absolutely certain you’ve found THE best advertising option, then by all means find the money and get started. Borrow. Barter. Beg. Whatever. (So long as it’s legal, of course!) Still, some options are much more cost-effective than others are. You can get 1,000 full-color business cards made for less than $100. E-mail advertising (depending on how you collect your addresses) can be done very inexpensively also.

Is the option capABLE of conveying the information you need? A direct mail letter allows you page-after-page to explain a new concept. A CD-ROM presentation can add an audio or visual element, which may be essential for your customer to fully grasp your offereing. At the opposite extreme, a simple sign tacked to a bulletin board (“FREE adorable puppies! Call 555-5555″) may be all it takes to make the sale. There is, unfortunately, no “one size fits all” advertising approach, simply because so many variables are involved.

Advertising methods or messages that are extremely effective for one company may be a complete flop for another. You need to objectively assess the product or service itself, the industry you’re in, the people you’re trying to reach, and the risk involved with the purchase. Even the time of year and the name of your company can influence whether or not someone chooses to do business with you. You may have to test, test, and test yet again before you find the effective approach (or, more realistically, COMBINATION of approaches) that’s righ for YOUR business. However, when you find the advertising method that works for you, the results can be extraordinarily profitABLE.

And now the Good News . . .
Coffee News is designed to be portable, acceptable, capable and affordable in meeting your advertising needs. Contact us today to discover how they can help your business reach its goals.

5 Minute CoffeeFax re-printed with permission by Coffee News®

by Susan Carter

Everyone is looking for the magic formula to improve the effectiveness of advertising. It’s tough out there. Competition is fierce. And, for the smaller company, a smaller budget can often be the demise of an effective campaign when up against a larger company that can afford to invest in more ads, bigger ads, and high tech generated ads. But here’s the good news: having a bigger budget to spend doesn’t make an ad better! It doesn’t automatically get people to buy the product or service. YOU have the power to compete. And all it takes is for you to remember these three little words:

CUSTOMERS BENEFIT NOW!

No, that’s not the headline I’m telling you to use in your next ad. It is the concept formula I want you to use when you create (or someone else creates) your next ad. Regardless of the words you use in your ad, these three elements MUST exist to make it most effective. You MUST:

• Talk directly to your CUSTOMERS.
• Tell them the BENEFIT they will receive.
• Place urgency (NOW) on their response time.

CUSTOMERS. One of the biggest mistakes advertisers make is to talk about themselves and their products rather than talking about the CUSTOMER and what he/she gains by buying the product (or service). Potential customers don’t want to know about you; potential customers want to know how what you do or sell benefits them. Instead of focusing on you and your company, focus on the customers and their needs.

BENEFIT. If you do not make it clear — in the headline — what benefit the reader receives, then there is no reason for that reader to continue on with the ad. You MUST focus on what the reader (customer) is going to GAIN (benefit) by using your product or service.

If you’ve ever been in involved in sales, you know the acronym WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). Potential buyers want to know how what you have benefits them. In order to tell customers “what’s in it” for them, you need to understand the difference between a feature and a benefit. A feature is something that your product does or has (for instance, a telephone may have touch tone or pulse dialing; call waiting or voice mail…these are features). A benefit is how those features help the buyer. Instead of saying, “Our new whippersnapper phone offers automatic remote forwarding,” say, “With automatic remote forwarding, YOU will never miss another important call!” You’ve got to give them the WIIFM!

NOW. To move readers to act immediately, give them a reason to do so! Incentive works wonders in advertising. For instance, to make the example used above better, amend the headline to say, “With automatic remote forwarding, YOU will never miss another important call! Order by January 15th and receive your first month of service FREE!

Now, there’s not only a reason to contact you, but a reason to contact you NOW. That free month of service may cost you a little up front, but what is the cost of losing a customer who never got around to contacting you because he/she has nothing to lose by putting it off?

Here’s another example. Let’s use you and your buying habits to demonstrate the effectiveness of each of these ads for the same offer. YOU are the buyer. You’re reading through a page of computer ads. Which headline would most attract your attention?

At CompuGlitch, We Focus on Customer Satisfaction–and Achieve It.
We’ll Give You a Great Deal on Your Next Computer Purchase.

At CompuGlitch, We Offer a 10% Discount on all Computers Purchased in
the Month of February.

Purchase Your Computer by February 15th and Save Up to $300.00!

Let’s critique these three headlines from the buyer’s perspective.

Headline #1 is focused on the seller (At CompuGlitch, we focus…) which means nothing to the reader. This headline tells us what the company is focused on: achieving customer satisfaction. Quite frankly, as a consumer, I expect nothing less, so this self-serving declaration is meaningless. You are wasting my time. The offer (a Great Deal) also tells me nothing specific. If I’m inclined to read the ad further, I might find out what that great deal consists of, but I’ll probably glance at the other headlines first to see which ads I want to read further.

Headline #2 is still focused on the seller (At CompuGlitch, we offer…), but the 10% discount is a good start at demonstrating a benefit. A 10% discount might be worth pursuing–and I have all of February to think about it. Although better than headline #1, this too can be more powerful.

Headline #3 is focused solely on readers (Purchase Your…) and the benefit has been turned into an actual dollar amount. By determining what the greatest amount of savings will be with that same 10% discount (for our purposes we’ll assume a $3,000 computer purchase is feasible; 10% of that is $300.00) the actual dollar figure of $300.00 sounds like a whole lot more than 10%.

So, in headline #3, we meet all three criteria of the formula:

CUSTOMERS (Purchase Your Computer) BENEFIT (Save Up to $300.00) NOW (by February 15th).

Once you know how your business benefits your customers, and you begin to focus on the CUSTOMERS BENEFIT NOW formula, you can write ad headlines that will increase reader response–and start watching your profits soar!

5 Minute CoffeeFax re-printed with permission by Coffee News

by Roy Williams
www.WizardOfAds.com

You’re a wounded soldier in unbearable pain during WWII, so the medics give you a shot of morphine. When your pain returns, they give you another shot. Morphine erases pain, so as long as the medics don’t run out of morphine, that’s the end of your problem, right?

Not quite. You’re still wounded, remember? The morphine is merely masking your symptoms. What you really need is life-saving surgery and a time of rehabilitation.

So what do you want me to pull out of my bag right now, Mr. Wounded-Soldier-in-Pain? Surgical tools, the solution to your problem? Or morphine, that tasty little drug that takes away the pain while you continue to bleed and die? Oh? You say that what you really want is to swallow a pill that will make the pain go away and heal the wound so that it’s like you were never wounded at all? Sorry, that pill doesn’t exist.

So what do you want to see me pull out of the bag?

Pain is your body’s warning that is has a problem that requires your immediate attention. Consequently, every businessperson in financial pain needs to understand the following:

1. Your business is telling you that it has a problem that requires your immediate attention.

2. “Slow traffic” or “a downward sales trend” is not the problem, but merely a symptom of it.

3. At best, every fast-acting Ad Gimmick is a painkiller exactly like morphine.

4. Morphine very quickly becomes addictive, and if used for too long, it will kill you.

5. No one looks forward to the surgeon’s knife, even when it’s what he or she desperately needs.

6. Because of their woefully incomplete training, most advertising people are not equipped to perform life-saving surgery, but are outfitted merely as medics to promote their own proprietary brand of morphine.

7. Recovery from life-saving surgery is painful, slow, and not the least bit fun.

8. Playing with morphine, cocaine, heroin and other painkillers is gigantic fun!

Are you beginning to understand why businesspeople are drawn to fast-acting ad gimmicks whenever they’re in financial pain?

Making morphine is easy, but using it is dangerous, and often deadly.

5 Minute CoffeeFax re-printed with permission by Coffee News

by Ilise Benun

Advertising is an important part of any successful marketing campaign. However, it can be a daunting task. Here are three of the most frequently asked questions regarding advertising. The answers will help you create a better advertising strategy for your business.

1. Does advertising work?
Well, advertising can work, but it’s neither magic nor immediate. Have you heard this joke before?

I know my advertising is 50% successful. I just don’t know which 50%.

Well, it’s not a joke. Unless you’re running direct response ads (such as infomercials that encourage people to send money or to call an 800-number immediately), it’s nearly impossible to accurately measure the effect of advertising.

The way advertising works — and the way all marketing works, for that matter — is through repetition. You gain your market’s confidence through high visibility and the consistent reinforcement of your marketing message. These messages work as triggers to remind your prospects that they are interested in your services and products. It’s got to sink in, below the surface, so that when your prospect has a need, your name, your logo and your message come to mind.

So the first rule of advertising is this: Once is not enough. In fact, once is a waste. The chances that your prospect will just happen to see your ad the one time you just happen to advertise are very slim. You have to start small, go slowly and give it a chance, which means you must run your ad over the course of six months.

During that time, you can change a word here or there to test its effect on response. Or test three versions of one ad in the same type of media and see if the differences affect response. Using this strategy, you’ll be able to track the results, at least enough to get a sense of which ad is more effective.

2. Isn’t advertising expensive?
Many businesses fail because they don’t spend enough money on advertising; others fail because they spend too much or buy inappropriate ad space. The cost of advertising is measured, not in dollars, but in response. If you buy an expensive ad and lots of people respond to it, then it wasn’t expensive at all. And, likewise, the fact that you get a great deal becomes irrelevant if no one sees your ad.

The expensive ads aren’t even necessarily the most effective. For example, a classified ad in the back of a neighborhood paper can be more effective — and cheaper — than a snazzy, four-color display ad in a national magazine. But size is only one of the issues to consider. Another is the quality of the ad itself: what it looks like, what it says and how everything is laid out.

It’s essential that you create a high-quality ad, no matter what kind you choose. According to Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the Guerilla Marketing series, “Far more people will see your ad than will see you or your place of business, so their opinion will be shaped by your ad.”

3. Where should I advertise?
Be proactive, be decisive and be creative in your media buy. Put yourself in a prospect’s shoes and imagine his or her moment of need. You know your customers. What are their resources? What is the easiest thing for them to do? Go to the Yellow Pages? Call colleagues for referrals? Look in files they may be keeping just for moments like these?

If you don’t know, or it you want more concrete answers, don’t hesitate to ask your customers. They’ll tell you. Survey the competition; where do they advertise? Or do they? If they don’t, there may be a reason for that.

If you’re considering buying space in a magazine that reaches your target audience, review several consecutive issues of that magazine. Chances are that if you see repeated ads for products or services that your target audience is likely to buy, you’re on the right track.

Before signing a contract, review other advertisers, maybe even a few former advertisers. And don’t advertise just in the media outlets whose sales reps are persistent with you. You must research your market’s buying habits and make the best choices for your business.

Ilise Benun is the publisher of a quarterly newsletter entitled, The Art of Self Promotion, and the author of the forthcoming, Self Promotion Online (North Light Books, Fall 2000), as well as two handbooks: 133 Tips to Promote Yourself and Your Business and Making Marketing Manageable. Her articles have been featured in business media, including Working Woman, HOW Magazine and Nation’s Business. For more information about Ilise, visit her web site at www.marketing-mentor.com/