Business Suicide: Getting Your Name Out There

Focusing your marketing on getting your name out there or building your brand is fine if you are running a billion dollar company, but for the rest of us it's like jumping out of an airplane and trying to sew yourself a parachute on the way down… Chances are you aren't going to make it. Sure, the BIG companies can do it, but most of us don't have piles of money big enough to land in if something goes wrong.

Building a brand by advertising is not efficient, our goal has to be to generate a response from our target audience. Rather than creating ads that say "Hey look at us, we're over here, look what we can do, we're the best!" Your advertising should say "Hey you with the problem, we understand your situation, call this number by Tuesday and we can make it better…"

In the first type of ad, we are counting on people to remember us, and think of our business the next time they might need something. It's really hard to tell if these ads are working because we aren't asking them to respond. If the ad works we don't really realize it, if the ad doesn't work we still don't realize it, and we go out of business. (Whether it works or it doesn't we've spent a lot of money, so at least the people selling the ads aren't going out of business.) In the second type of ad we can count how many people call between now and Tuesday. If people call and give us more money than we spent on the ad it was successful. If they don't we know to stop spending our money on it and test something else.

So why do most people focus on the brand building type of advertising?

Because it's what the ad people sell us of course. And why wouldn't they? It's easier for them not to have actual measurable results to answer for, and it's what everybody else is doing so most of them don't know any better…

Now don't get me wrong, I love ad reps. If you have ever dealt with a good one, you know that they are worth their weight in gold. But you have to make sure they understand that the ads you run are going to have to generate revenue not just "get your name out there". Yes, it might take a little more work up front, but once you find an ad that works you will have that much more money to spend running it more often.