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Forget about advertising your way to success. It won’t work. At least not in the long run. Here are the reasons.
Preconception
Your customers live in two different worlds. The first is the world of preconception. That’s the picture you paint of your business through advertising. The problem is, it’s not usually reality. By nature, businesses only say the very best things about themselves. In advertising all businesses are wonderful businesses with the best people, the best prices and the best service.
Then comes the second world, the world of the customer experience. And when that world does not match up with the world of preconception, you just blew your entire advertising budget to let the customer know you are dishonest. And that brings me to reason number two.
Believability
Customers don’t believe what you say in your advertising. They know you are just trying to separate them from their money. In fact, according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, only 24% of customers actually believe what they hear or see in ads. Staggeringly high if you ask me.
And yet businesses continually pour money into ad campaigns to try to convince people who aren’t listening. Even if you believe what you’re saying, customers do not. And they refuse to be hypnotized into believing that you do.
The Myth of Response
The thinking is, run an ad, get some business. Only that’s not the way advertising works. People are busy. They have not been waiting around to hear your ad to figure out what they are going to do. You simply cannot program them through incessant repetition.
Money
You don’t have enough of it to advertise your way to success. Especially given the three reasons listed above. Audiences of traditional media are fragmented not just by the web, but also by an increasing number of choices within their own media. It takes an enormous budget to reach an audience large enough for critical mass.
Still wonder why the last advertising campaign didn’t work?
Related Articles on Advertising:
10 Questions To Ask Before You Advertise
A Reputation for Quality, and other meaningless marketing phrases.
Courting Customers
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