Improve The Way You Advertise Your Small Business
What is the single biggest mistake that local business owners are making while advertising their local business?
Purchasing Media Before Defining Your Target & Creating A Message
Before you purchase media whether it's newspaper, radio or TV you need to define who your target market is and how you're going to go about attacking that market. Before you go out and spend big money, write that check you've been wooed by an advertising rep you've got to really think about who you're going after before you place that ad.
There's what we call The 3 M's in Marketing. It's your Market, your Message and then the Media. You always, always, always pick out your market first and you clearly describe that target.
As a quick and easy example, just think if you're a restaurant. In the restaurant business, there's probably three segments of business. There's breakfast, there's lunch and then there's dinner. And each one of these markets are quite a bit different, so if you are developing a breakfast campaign, are you speaking to young families, double income parents that are both working and very busy, business folks looking to have a breakfast meeting, etc.
Or are you crafting that message so that you've got retired folks in your ads and you're talking about how much fun it is to have breakfast each and every morning with a group of friends at your local diner?
Most people go out and make the mistake that, you know, they have the sexy cable girl walk through the front door while you're trying to do five other tasks. And she says, "Hey, we've got this great special over here at the cable company and we can get you on TV for just three bucks a spot."
And before you know it, she's got $3,000 of your money and you have no idea if you want to market breakfast, lunch or dinner and she walks out the door with your check.
You get home at night and you say to your wife, "We're going to be on TV."
And she says, "Well, that's great. What are we going to talk about?"
You need to clearly define who you want to attract before the sexy cable girl walks through the door what you want to sell and what problem you're trying to fix inside your business first. And then you develop a message all around that decision. And then you go out and you decide, Okay, now should I put this on TV? Should I put this in the newspaper? Should I be using inserts? Should I be using direct mail? Should I be using email? Or should I be using all these things?
Most people make the huge mistake of spending $3,000 with the cable girl and then they try and determine what they're going to sell. It's a completely backwards way to make that decision, and it's really why so many businesses get themselves into trouble.
It's very important to know who you're going after first before you can start any campaign, whether it's young people, families, old people, upper income, lower income. You've got to know who you're talking to first before you spend any money to try to talk to them. You can't go the other way around.
The more clearly you can define it, the better. I mean, even if you're going to have a breakfast, just think. If you could narrow it down to the retired citizens that are former Lions Club members and have a specific breakfast just for those folks on a Monday morning, see, then you've got a clear target.
You can go out and buy a list. You can do some joint venturing. You can find these people much easier and it costs you a heck of a lot less money than it would if you just say, hey, I've got a problem with breakfast. Let's do a TV ad that says come in for free breakfast or a two dollar breakfast.
You're now targeting those most likely to respond to the very specific offer, rather than doing a wide approach where only a couple of people want to hear from you but you're trying to talk to everybody.
What the cable girl will tell you is, "Look, You're going to get 300,000 impressions," but to be honest, out of that 300,000 only 1,000 people really want to hear your message. If you can target down to the 1,000 that really want to hear your message, you're able to spend a lot more money on that 1,000, and you're a lot more likely to convert them into customers.
Never, Never again purchase media when advertising your business before you clearly define who you are trying to attract and what the message to that target will be.
by: Darin Spindler
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