It's a great secret, most advertising doesn't work!

The advertising industry is a highly competitive Industry, their sales people have been highly trained, and honed by a Darwinian survival of the fittest process, to sell you advertising.

They are great at playing on your competitive instincts and your vanity, by showing you how your competitors are advertising and how you are lagging, and what a great deal you can get. You will often be under pressure from your own staff and your ego to advertise, to have your company name, products and services out there, to prove you have arrived.
And it is so easy, just pay some money, let the professionals design the ads, and the orders come flowing in.

Guess what, your competitor’s marketing does not work either! Plus whilst its nice to get a warm feeling from promotions, it’s a lot cheaper if you want a warm feeling, to have a hot bath, or a hot drink, than wasting advertising money. The reason for the waste is that one simple rule is over-looked, people typically do not test and measure their advertising.

Luckily from now on you will know that every sum spend on advertising needs to be measured. You need to know all of the costs associated with placing the Ad, what the REAL response was, how many of those turned into REAL orders, and what profit you got from those deals. Investing in advertising is just a business decision, forget the hype, the “keep up with the Jones” simply work out, I put X in and got Y out, is that rate of return good enough?

If you cannot answer the question, then it's highly likely you are wasting money.

Advertising is a highly effective way of getting to your target audience when it is done well. But for many companies, the material is not well written, it is in the wrong media space projecting to the wrong audience, or the company is paying too much for the advertising space.

The answer is to test and measure your advertising strategy. Do it in small chunks, test the process. First be clear, the point of advertising is to elicit a response – so be accurate and specific, how many responded, how many turned into a sale, what profit did we make from those, was it worth it?

Discover what does not give a good enough return, what works, rescue your money from the bad campaigns, and expand the good campaigns.

The old adage is still true:- that 50% of advertising is wasted money, the problem is knowing which 50%! The technique of testing gives you that ability.

Think how much better off you will be if you can shift all the wasted advertising money, into proven beneficial advertising!

In advertising the headline is most important, it should grab the attention. Just a minor change in a headline can make significant improvements in responses. For instance, do not start a headline with your company name, that’s a boring “So what”, make the headline personal to them, working with their ideas and fears. And throughout the copy, consistently push your benefits to them. Finally at the end always have a call to action, an encouragement to do something now.

Some other insights into the world of Advertising:-

Never place ads on Left-hand pages (unless your ads are in Middle-East publications), in the West we read books and newspapers left to right, and naturally ignore left hand page ads.

Never pay the full rate for Advertising, it’s a cut-throat business so haggle.

Do not automatically advertise in the same publications as your competitors, make your own decisions, not follow their mistakes – test your strategy first.

Be sceptical about investing in Advertising, make sure that other less expensive and better marketing activities have priority first.