I am a huge fan of marketing. I firmly believe that in the business world, effective marketing can cure most ills and boost even the most sagging of bottom lines. Advertising has the ability to directly influence consumer behavior, contribute to pop culture and even provide quality entertainment. Marketers are often the most creative and inventive group of individuals in the business world, yet the thing I find funniest is just how often we fall into the trap of repeating the same ideas over and over again.
With that in mind, here’s a look into several of the more popular advertising clichés and some background information as to why they work and how you can use them to improve your business.
PHRASE: Think outside the box
WHAT IT MEANS: Be creative. Do things different than anyone else.
This is probably the single-most overused phrase in marketing today yet the reason it is so frequently cited is that, despite the tired, worn out phrasing, it remains the single most important aspect to marketing. The very reason marketing and advertising exist is to help a company promote itself and to distance itself from the competition. It’s ironic however, that the phrase itself has become clichéd, cringe-inducing mantra for marketing professionals everywhere; a once proud creative concept discarded to the scrap heap of other tired slogans and jingles.
Despite its overuse ‘thinking outside the box’ is a rallying cry to businesses and agencies everywhere; a challenge to be inventive, to be unique, to give a reason for potential customers to remember you and forget everyone else. Being creative and on-point is the single hardest task for a marketing professional and the most critical. It is also the single most important concept for businesses to grasp with regards to advertising, and the hardest one to embrace.
I’ve been in countless meetings with small business owners who sit down and excitedly state that they’re eager to do something different; to push the limits of what has been done before in the local market; to go head-to-head with the ‘big boys’; to be creative or funny or even controversial. But for some reason, it never seems to happen. Daring, bold or adventurous campaigns are developed only to have the same result — the business owners love the concept, tout just how well it captures the attitude and message they wish to portray, and then they get cold feet and opt for a rehash of the same boring, bland and uninspired marketing they’ve run for years.
Truth is, the only box that exists in marketing is the one we create for ourselves. You can’t be afraid to stand out and be different. Doing the same marketing that the competition employs, or advocating a safe, conservative approach only succeeds in preventing you from realizing your potential. Businesses and marketers have to believe that the only limitations they face are the ones they impose upon themselves. There is no box.
PHRASE: To make money, you have to spend money.
WHAT IT MEANS: In order to grow, you have to invest in yourself.
It’s in a company’s best interest to market itself yet many businesses, particularly small businesses, have no formalized marketing budget. If times are good and money is plentiful, then that’s when the marketing is done … at least, that’s what I’ve seen to be the common approach.
I’m not advocating extraordinary marketing budgets which have no chance of generating a return. I promote responsible, realistic spending in the range of 5-7% of the company’s annual revenue. This amount, in combination with a sound marketing strategy, should be more than sufficient to properly reach new customers. The old adage that you have to spend money to make money is very true — even in a down economy. You can be very effective with your advertising — even on a shoestring budget — as long as you are willing to develop a sound marketing plan and stick to it.
Most companies I work with (usually small businesses) lack a predefined marketing budget and no formalized marketing strategy; they usually market only when times are good or when they have the money, which is a counter-intuitive approach to effective marketing. Yes, you market when times are good, but you also market when times are bad. It’s been shown that companies that market during recessions and bad times actually make MORE money than their competition and emerge from the hardship with increased market share and more business than they had before the bad times. I’ve referenced this particular research article before, but it’s worth including again: READ: A Critical and Synthesis of Research on Advertising in a Recession by Gerald and Kethan Tellis
Look at it this way … If you don’t advertise, you are essentially paying your customers to go to your competition.
Not advertising your company is never a good idea. If your bottom line dips, make budget cuts where you can and evaluate where and how you’re spending your money. Maybe there are inefficiencies elsewhere in your company or economies to be gained by evaluating new procedures, but avoid the knee-jerk response of cutting or eliminating your marketing budget. As long as you are advertising effectively and making sound marketing decisions, your advertising is NOT the cause of your financial downturn, so why cut it? Because it’s the easiest cut? It may be, but it is also the most detrimental cut you can make toward turning around your bottom line performance.
PHRASE: Pick one media and do it well
WHAT IT MEANS: Don’t dabble in many different advertising sources, just find one thing that works and stick to it.
This particular cliché is, in my opinion, a very outdated and ill-suited approach to marketing in the modern age. You would be surprised how many business owners I come across who have adopted this approach to their advertising.
The issue I have is that unlike any previous point in our history, humankind is more mobile, more connected and has more diversionary options than ever before. More and more we find that every one of our customers has more and more companies vying for their attention. To reach those customers a business has to diversify and invest in marketing to where the customers are and how they want to be reached as opposed to putting all their eggs in one basket and hopes that it will reach everybody.
It’s one thing to find a media vehicle that works. If it works, why would you stop using it? But it’s another thing entirely to shun all other opportunities. Yes, by all means, invest in marketing that is proven to be successful for you, but a business should have a healthy media mix as part of their marketing plan to reach as many people in as many different ways as makes sense from a strategic and budgetary standpoint. Most businesses have a wide array of customers with different interests; different lifestyles. They may not all read the newspaper or listen to the radio. They may not all watch a particular program on TV or know how to use the Internet.
The trick to mastering a multi-media advertising mix is to do your research. Find out who your customers are and what they do for fun or how they spend their leisure or professional time. Select the best two, three or four vehicles and spread your message to the world. The more touch points you can make, the more ways you can reach a customer with a consistent marketing campaign. The more ways you can reach a customer consistently, the more likely it is that you will connect with them and deliver your message to them just at the right time when they are ready to make a decision.
PHRASE: Be first and be the biggest
WHAT IT MEANS: Be the first ad the customer sees and make it impossible for them not to notice your ad.
I hear this one a lot when it comes to newspaper and phone book advertising and I agree with it … with a fairly sizeable caveat. The idea behind this particular cliché is to help the customer get noticed. And I agree. The idea of any advertising is to help a business get noticed. Where I disagree is in the method. Here’s why…
Newspapers
With newspapers, the prevailing wisdom is to put large, full or half page ads on every right-facing page. I had the opportunity to attend a Colorado Press Association (CPA) advertising seminar a couple years ago and it’s the widespread belief among their sales staff that the right-facing page approach is best. The interesting thing presented in this seminar was a result of a survey which showed that readers preferred left-facing pages for the advertising (because people read from left to right) and preferred smaller ads which didn’t compete with the news (the real reason they’re reading the paper).
My approach for advertising is in frequency. Don’t by the big one-off full page, full color ad. In general it’s a huge waste of money. After all, what if the reader doesn’t read that particular section of the paper? Yes, you can request specific placement (hopefully as a result of research which has shown you that your customers tend to prefer one section over another), but that guarantee also typically comes with a premium price — usually an additional 10-15% of the cost of the ad. My approach calls for multiple smaller ads scattered throughout the same paper. You can still spend the same amount of money by this approach (or in some cases save money), but you will hit the reader more often with your advertising message.
The number of touches is critical in marketing. It usually takes somewhere between 5-8 impressions before the customer even realizes that they’ve seen your ad before. If you can spend the same amount money, and get all those impressions in one paper as opposed to running the same ad 8 times at 8 times the cost to achieve the same results, which approach makes more sense?
Phone book
Let me just say up front that advertising in the phone book is typically a waste of your money and here’s why…
People don’t go to the phone book to choose a company to do business with. People go to the phone book (and in greatly decreasing numbers thanks to the Internet) because they already know the business they want to use – they just want to find out their phone number or address. The phone book reps will give you tons of “facts” about how often people use a particular category or that the phone book is where most customers hear about businesses. Those facts are often misleading — especially when you filter them against common sense. Put your own experience to the test when it comes to phone book advertising. How many times do you go to the phone book?
It is a giant waste of time and money to advertise in any vehicle that stays closed up and locked in a drawer or closed 362 days a year (yes, the average phone book is only used 3 times a year). You, as a business, are paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars a month to have your ad sit amid all your competition in a dark, closed space.
The competition is another good point to bring up. Why would you pay good money to be listed right alongside all your competition? Right off the bat, you’re diminishing the chances of success because A) you have no ability to deliver your message on your own terms irrespective of the other competition and B) you have no say on where or how the ad is presented within the overall layout.
Which brings us to the ‘Be first and be the biggest’ idea. The phone book reps are the biggest preachers of this approach. They know that phone books are typically best used for ‘emergency’ type services like plumbers, roof repairs, water mitigation and bail bonds. If you in a pinch and don’t know who to call, you’re going to flip to the desired section and you’re going to call the first person you come to. This is where the first and biggest approach comes in. The phone book puts all the full page, full color ads for each section up front. The smaller ads and then black and white ads are arranged in decreasing order the farther back in the section you go. So if you can’t secure the first page of the section and can’t afford to spend the thousands of dollars a month required to secure this page, the phone book is essentially telling you that they can’t deliver performance on your advertising.
Unless you fall into the above described ‘emergency’ categories, my advice is to put your money into other advertising media. Build up your company’s brand awareness in the public eye and position yourself as THE business to call. Then go with the free listing in the white pages to address those few instances where your potential customer just needs to look up your address or number.
In closing…
‘Thinking outside the box’ may have started as being a way to describe the abstract concept of originality and creativity. If you want to achieve true enlightenment in marketing, you must first realize that there is no box to begin with. You can choose to do your research and identify the best means to address the needs of your marketing and promotion as applies to your situation. Don’t blindly follow trends. Learn from them and adapt. Be strategic in your thinking and interpretation of available information and make informed decisions. Most importantly, be consistently different. When you choose a marketing path, dedicate yourself to that path. Familiarity and awareness come from repetition and have designed marketing that addresses the needs of the customer, you’ll find that the needs of your business are met and your advertising grows in strength the longer it is consistently reinforced to the public.
The only box that exists in marketing is the one in which you place yourself.
Courtesy of:
Matt Schroeder at the Allegra Marketing Blog
