What's wrong with Advertising today? - Part 1

Let's just take a look at what advertising is supposed to do...

1. First, it has to get the attention of the prospect or buyer. Before a buyer will do anything they have to be drawn to your ad.

2. Second, you must present the buyer with additional information that will help them as they gather knowledge and form opinions about your products or services. Assist your buyer and help them along in their decision making process.

3. Third, you need to make buyers feel that by purchasing from you they are making the very best choice available. They may have lots of options, but yours is the best. They are going to make a decision by reducing their risk, and your ad should be helping them do that.

Now if you look at most ads you’ll see that they don’t meet the above three criteria.

You will find that for many companies the most dominant part of the ad is their company name and logo. Do buyers really care about your name and logo? Does this draw to their attention what you are selling? Remember the first thing you have to do is get their attention.

Other ads will have some really great pictures or backgrounds that again are supposed to capture our attention. This may be very appealing to an artist but it doesn’t do anything for your potential customer. Unless maybe he or she is an artist!

And then we’ve got ads with gigantic maps showing people how to find you. Or what we call menu type advertising where you have lots of products with prices that again are supposed to grab our attention. Most don’t.

Take a look through the newspaper and see what ads get your attention. Most fail miserably.

So what about our second criteria, which is assisting the buyer in their decision making process. Again you will find most ads use worn out clichés. “In Business for over 40 years”, “Best Service Guaranteed”, “Quality Workmanship”, “Reliable”, “Trustworthy” and so on. Well so what? Would I want to do business with you if you didn’t offer all these? Most people expect all these things so why do we have to say them.


Other ads will talk about their products and services in the same fashion. “Our copiers will make your office more productive”, “We service all makes and models”, “Our athletic wear helps you look and feel fabulous”, “It’s not what we do, it’s how we do it”, “Your performance is our priority”.

Again if I’m a prospective buyer I would hope that all of these things are a given. I shouldn’t even have to ask. None of these are assisting the buyer in gathering information and helping them form opinions in their decision making process. Look at some more ads and see for yourself.

Let’s look at the third thing advertising is supposed to do. Lower the risk so they can make a wise decision.

None of what we have previously discussed regarding what most people put in their ads do this and the main reason is that we have not educated our prospect to the point where they are willing to do business with us. Clichés don’t work and neither do great pictures, company logos, maps, phone numbers etc. Even things like “Best Prices In Town”, “Deepest Discounts”, or “Fastest Delivery” mean nothing. Would you really want to do business with someone who says “Highest Prices In Town” or “Slowest Service”. So why do we have to say it? We hope to get these things anyway. We need to help the buyer by educating him or her to the point that they are ready to call or visit.

So in short, most forms of advertising fail because they don’t meet these three (3) criteria.

In our next segment we'll delve a little deeper into today's advertising methods.