Are you sure your ads are pulling their weight?

When you created your last ad, did you have a specific plan?  Or did you just get on camera and yell “I’M CRAZY!  I’VE GOT CRAZY PRICES!  SO COME ON DOWN!”?

It’s so easy to create the same old ad that says “sigh, we’re here, yawn, snore.”

Have a purpose

And sometimes, maybe that’s just what you need.  But not usually.  Whether you are doing a TV ad, something for a magazine, a direct mail piece, whatever – have a purpose.

This is something I just hadn’t thought much about until Laura showed me an ad map.  All you have to do is ask yourself 4 simple questions:

1. What are my prospects currently doing?
2. What do I want them to do?
3. What do my prospects currently believe?
4. What do I want them to believe?

Try this yourself

This is one of the easier things you can do to improve your advertising, so why wait?  Dive in right now!

1. Create this simple box in a document or spreadsheet (OK, here, we’ve done it for you).
2. Examine each of your current ads, ask yourself those 4 questions, and fill in the boxes.  Then fix them!
3. Whenever you are creating new ads, always use this first.  If you outsource your ad creation, make sure your people have one of these and are clear what the ad is supposed to do.

Not just ads

Think about this for everything your customer sees.  Are you asking those questions for how you answer the phone, your logo, letterhead, marketing materials, vehicles, business cards? Each of those should have been created while asking questions 1 & 3 and should be designed to reinforce your desired answers to questions 2 & 4.

We’d love to see some of yours! Please post a comment and tell us how it went (or even post your answers if you feel like sharing).

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Posted: November 7th, 2009 at 7:27 pm

Category: Marketing and Selling

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