10 Deadly Sins of Advertising (Part 1)

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November 27, 2007 by James
Filed under: Business Development, Classical Marketing 

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So recently I promised to explain the 10 deadly sins of advertising, here is a quick reminder of the first 3 which I’ll cover today.

  1. Failing to test
  2. Running institutional adverts
  3. Not stressing uniqueness

#1 - Failing to test: This one is just plain laziness. You might have a winning advert on your hands but you can always find ways to improve and you should be doing this through tests. Test the headline, the copy, the offer, the graphics, the layout and design - test one piece a time and compare to your control (the successful advert). Your cost to publish your advert is likely fixed - your conversion is variable and open to improvement with new advert variations. When you look at ROI, testing becomes a no-brainer.

#2 - Running institutional ads: This one makes me soooo mad when I see it. “But James we need to brand ourselves like Nike and other recognizable companies.” Come on! If and when you have millions of dollars to invest in a long term branding strategy we can talk again, until then you need sales. You need customers and you need adverts that achieve this. Direct response advertising is often considered somewhat ‘cheesy’ by high-brow types, but the data speaks for itself - the approach works and has done so for over 80 years. Branding works too… but it often takes 80 years :)

#3 - Not stressing uniqueness: Can you place your competitors name in your adverts and no one would likely tell the difference? Not good… You need to find your uniqueness and ensure it is included in your marketing messages. Without something “special” you are like all the others - a commodity. When you become a commodity you are then chosen based often on price. If you live by price… you die by price. Find your uniqueness: do you offer 24 hour service, is your guarantee twice as long as everyone elses, do you offer your widget in 37 colours, give this some thought - it pays dividends every time.

More soon…

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