Get Real

It is increasingly rare for a client to ask for advertising that will do the maximum it’s capable of – more frequently we’re asked for a campaign to do the impossible. 

Let’s get some facts on the table: advertising will not turn around a poorly run business, it will not make your product or service any better nor will it correct the problems of appalling customer service delivered by disinterested employees.  It will not address systems or process issues, it won’t instantly rectify years of neglecting clients nor will it transform your business from being knackered to vibrant. Advertising will merely bring forward the likely outcome – if your business is a good one then you should expect better and faster results – alternatively advertising can help a bad business to fail faster.

As someone who makes money from clients who spend money on advertising and other marketing communications it might be surprising that I urge you to stop and think very seriously before spending another pound.  Please ask yourself, is your business issue one that advertising can actually address or are you choosing to ignore the realities and hope that by doing something, in this case advertising, your problems will be solved?  Commissioning a new campaign or a new agency or even a new marketing director or whole marketing team are relatively easy things to do and can create a sense, albeit a very temporary one, that because of these actions the solution is just around the corner and all be well again soon!  Nonsense! Marketing communications cannot achieve three quarters or more of the issues they are often commissioned for – primarily advertising is there to inform and motivate people to take the next step which is usually an enquiry. Only a small percentage of all the advertising you see and hear actually makes sales. It’s a complete myth that it does more than steer people to your website, shop, office or place of business – that’s where the job of making the sale is done.

To completely contradict this important point I would draw your attention to another great waste of money spent on advertising – the instance where you do have a great product and service but have such a large potential audience or an audience that is changing daily (for example the holiday industry or financial services where people are only interacting with you on an infrequent basis), and you attempt to communicate with everyone.  In fact this is possibly an even greater folly than the attempting the impossible as the damage is less obvious initially but just as harmful eventually.  Most small and medium businesses, and that’s most businesses by the way, just don’t have the resources, distribution and investment necessary to be able to talk to everyone continuously – and yet so many attempt to.  It’s much better to be dominant in particular sectors whether these are geographic, defined by industry type or determined by socio-economic or some other classification.

The third largest waste ground for advertising pounds is where the client doesn’t have a clue about who is really buying their products or services. I recall a brick manufacturer who sold their products to house builders believing it was their buyer who made the purchasing decisions as they were the ones who placed the orders.  In fact it was the technical team and the architects who controlled the specification and the buyer was merely implementing their colleagues’ decisions.  When I saw the brochures and catalogues and directories they’d previously produced, all of which added up to hundreds of thousands of pounds, I could have cried knowing that these, at best, were just sitting on a shelf or propping open a door in the buying department having been sent to completely the wrong target audience.

We are all bombarded by thousands of advertising messages every day, nearly all of which we ignore and yet, despite knowing this to be true, many business people genuinely believe that their advertising will somehow be treated differently, will have complete stand out and will cause an immediate response of the kind we envisaged! If only!  Get real – start by defining a really clear desired result; what it is you want to achieve, and then consider very carefully whether this is a marketing communications issue or a more general business one.