Marketing vs. Advertising
Betting on the wrong one will eventually cost you the fight.
One of the first things I do when I've been hired by a company is to check out all their prior marketing efforts. 99% of the time what I notice is that this small-business has been wasting their marketing budget copying the tactics used by huge companies like Nike, Apple, or Pepsi.
This probably happens because the owner decides the best thing he can do is copy what he sees the world's most successful companies doing in magazines and on TV.
Most figure, "If this Fortune 500 Company has their logo attached to a cutesy or funny message in their commercials and ads, and they are very successful, if I attach my logo to a cutesy or funny message in my commercials and ads then I can be successful!"
The only problem with that logic is that the world's most successful companies spend more for 1 full page ad in a national magazine than most small business spend on marketing in a whole year.
Companies like McDonalds or Chevy have invested billions of dollars making sure that you not only recognize their logo, but that you also associate a phrase, song, and feeling to it. This phenomenon is not something a small business can hope to accomplish with a 4 or 5 figure marketing budget. Any attempt at doing so is just a waste. These big companies can afford to waste their money but as you know the small business can't waste a thing.
I can't tell you how many times I have upset a business owner by moving their logo to the bottom of their yellow pages ad. Their precious logo means so much to them but to the person looking for an answer in the yellow pages it means absolutely nothing. What the person flipping through the yellow pages wants is to know which company is going to do the best job.
Instead of focusing on YOUR brand and YOUR logo, and instead of using cutesy little pictures and funny tricks to get attention, you need to use your advertising dollars to communicate to your target market that you can solve the problems that keep them awake at night. You need to educate them on what you do and how well you can do it. Most of all you need to give them a reason to call you RIGHT NOW instead of later.
The marketplace is so saturated with services, companies, and brands that it's hard to win over the mind of the average consumer. The cutesy or funny stuff
may get people to notice your ad, and it may give people a laugh or a smile, but it is not going to give your prospective customers the confidence that you are the best at what you do, nor will it motivate them to contact you immediately.
Grabbing your prospective customers' attention, keeping them interested while you tell them how you can help them, and inspiring them to some action requires a much different approach than most small businesses are using right now.
Here is a real life example of what I am talking about… the yellow pages ad before I got my hands on it…
Before - Advertising
Confusing readers with technical jargon like
- "carbon fiber technology"
- "epoxy injections"
- brand names like "Fasteel"
After - Marketing
helping readers know who the best choice is with words like:
- "expert"
- "specialist"
- "best"
- "excellence"
- "effective"
- "FREE" (3 times)
You see, people are inherently selfish and they only care about things that are going to help them achieve their goals. Everything else gets filtered out. So when you can only afford a little quarter page ad you have to do all you can to make that little piece of real estate work for you.
"I display my logo prominently because [insert multi national conglomerate CEO] talked how important BRANDING is in the last issue of [insert business magazine]" is something I hear pretty often from business owners who are justifying their big logo at the top of every ad. It's my experience that a snazzy logo has nothing to do with making the phone ring with a new order. I mean really, how many times have you picked one company over another because you thought their logo was better?
Here is another real life example of Marketing vs. Advertising to illustrate what I am getting at.
Before - Advertising
The first ad, the ADVERTISING one, looks really nice but the reader is not inspired to take any sort of action, that is, if they ever even take notice of the ad which they may not because it features the company name as the headline.
- passive
- looks "nice"
- generates awareness
After - Marketing
The second ad is an example of smart MARKETING:
- Aggressive - the ad incites the reader to do something specific rather than just be "aware" of the brand.
- Generates hot leads - At the end of the day the company has the name, address phone, number and email address of people thinking about fixing up their home with the intention of selling it in the near future. This list of leads would probably be useful to you if you were a home repair company, don't you think?
- Trackable - By counting the number of leads who responded to this ad we can know the cost-per-lead which serves as a benchmark to help us test different ads against each other until we find the best possible combination of headline, copy, and offer.
So unless you have an inflated budget with extra money to waste on "awareness" then you need to make sure you know exactly how many customers are linked to each ad you place. This is exactly what marketing is designed to do and why you should always put your money on marketing as the one to win the fight for small businesses.
|
