Clean Informer Magazine Spring 2016 | Page 22

MARKETING PUTTING ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET. If you’re getting all your advertising from one ad. When people are interested in hiring you, they will read about how you can solve their problems. PICTURES THAT ARE IRRELEVANT TO THE SALES MESSAGE. media, you may get in trouble. What happens when that website, newspaper, or commercial stops working? Your business is sunk. A common mistake many newbie owners make is putting all their ad dollars in testing out one advertising medium. This is even more dangerous. When you’re trying to grow a company, you have to take massive action. The key to successful advertising is relentlessly testing several options with the best educated guess you can make. If plan A fails, move on to plan B until it works. Even the best advertising writers create ads that fail. Be prepared for failure. When you fail, learn from your experience and move on. Test your ads small and never put all your money in one advertising media. NOT MAILING TO YOUR CLIENTS. Your first marketing effort should be to keep your current clients coming back to you. If you spend any money on marketing, the first thing on your list should be mailing newsletters, letters, or postcards to your clients. Also send them email newsletters. But remember that regular mailers always get the best response. Advertising really isn’t hard. Just find out who your prospect is and what she wants. Then create a message that tells how you can meet her needs better than any other company. And last, pick an advertising media that best reaches your Here’s one: “Forget the Rest Try the Best.” Let’s prospect with your message. Stay focused on the goal of your advertising. imagine for a second your prospect is intrigued Then make a wise choice in choosing your media by that statement and they start to read more and writing your ad. Don’t make the mistakes of your ad. What the prospect is looking for is other cleaners make. proof of your bold claim. Making a claim like that causes a prospect to think, “Yeah right, prove it.” If you don’t follow your bold claim John Braun with some form of measurable proof, you lose Hitman Advertising their interest. Something many ads lack is the use of meaningful pictures that either enhance the sales message or catch attention. But be careful about using pictures solely to catch attention. If the picture is completely irrelevant to the message, your prospect gets turned off. MAKING A BOASTFUL CLAIM AND THEN LEAVING THE PROSPECT HANGING. 22