3 Rules For Getting The Most Out Of Your Advertising Budget
I learned how to do marketing before the Internet existed.
All the advertising I was doing was in print, TV, radio, telephone, fax machines, and so on. If you were to go back twenty years before I learned marketing and advertising, to lay out an ad, people were using manual typewriters, X-Acto knives, and Wite-Out.
However, the two types of advertising I’m going to talk about still apply today:
When most people talk about building a brand, they’re referring to “image advertising.”
This is the most common type of advertising colleges and business schools teach. It tries to convey a certain image about a particular company, explain how great the company is, describe how honest or trustworthy the company might be, and create an aura of professionalism. The whole idea behind image advertising centers on the company or product and basically promotes “Me, me, me!” The rationale is if you look nice and professional, people will somehow decide to do business with your brand.
Direct-response advertising, on the other hand, focuses on giving prospects the most compelling reasons for buying a product or service.
Long story short: name recognition alone isn’t going to drive sales.
While image advertising works for big corporations such as Coca-Cola, it rarely works for smaller businesses. Especially in the beginning.
But even after you’ve built a “successful” company, you always want prospects to know, like, and trust you — and that’s the goal of direct-response advertising. Your job as a business owner is to establish trust and rapport so your prospects feel secure about making a buying decision.
I have a friend named Richard Rossi, who’s the president and executive director of the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists. He says:
“The number one question in all consumers’ minds is who can I trust?”
Of course, you still want name recognition so people trust and recognize your company. However, name recognition alone isn’t going to drive sales — you also need a compelling sales message delivered with integrity.
Since advertising costs money and time, here are three strategies to ensure you get the most out of your advertising budget.
1. Never pay for any advertising unless you can track its results.
Don’t bother running an ad unless you can measure its effectiveness.
If you don’t know whether or not an ad is bringing you customers, then you’re basically throwing money out the window and hoping customers magically show up.
Since the first day I started marketing, I’ve seen so many con artists charge people money in exchange for the illusion that they are making progress. For example, just the other day, a friend who is a yoga instructor told me she paid $35 for someone to get her 1,000 Instagram followers.
Now, granted, maybe that will turn into something.
However, she seemed more impressed with having 1,000 people follow her than with the idea of two people actually hiring her for private lessons.
Don’t confuse having a bunch of social media followers, Facebook likes, or YouTube views as somehow translating into people who are going to pay you for your products or services.
The only useful ads are the ones that actually generate paying customers.
2. Don’t run an ad a second time if it didn’t work the first time.
Many advertising “experts” believe you should run an ad multiple times to imprint its message into the public’s consciousness. They claim that consumers respond only after seeing the same ad several times.
And yet, if nobody responds to your first ad, chances are extremely slim that they will suddenly respond enthusiastically after seeing that same ad three times in a row.
Most advertising fails because it only tells prospects three things:
-This is who we are.
-This is what we do.
-This is our phone number.
But such a message rarely compels anyone to take action and buy something.
Ultimately, your messaging itself is far more important than how many times you run it.
When advertising your business, it’s going to cost you the same whether your ad generates one prospect or one hundred prospects. The more you develop your message, the more powerful your advertising becomes.
3. Never fall in love with your ad.
You may think your ad is the greatest thing you’ve ever created. But if it doesn’t attract customers, don’t use it again, no matter how much you love it.
Most people fall in love with the idea that bigger is better, and they repeatedly buy huge or costly ad space to deliver their message. Listen, I’m all for having a great image, but I’m much more concerned with your business having substance and compelling offers that give customers reason to buy from you.
By using a free recorded message, such as a video on a landing page, you don’t have to spend money on huge ads. Instead, you can buy a much smaller ad and use a free, pre-recorded message to get better results for much less cost. And you can use this same ad online, offline, or even on the side of a van.
In 2009, when I first got my Twitter account (@joepolish), I had a twenty-four-hour free recorded message on my profile. he first week I had it set up, someone called, listened to the recorded message, and bought $3,000 worth of training and services from my company.
The beauty of this was that I had automated my advertising — I was turning prospects into paying customers without even knowing it.
Remember, the only way to get paid is to become good at marketing. As long as people have the money to purchase what you are selling, the only thing that stands in their way in terms of deciding to buy is fear. If you remove the fear, they will buy.
Your ad is designed to help alleviate their fears and help them make an educated buying decision. If you create powerful ads that make people trust your company, they will buy.
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