Advertising Doesn't Work -- We do!

Years ago I owned an advertising agency in a small market in the hinterlands. There was a graphics room for the artist and photo shoots, an audio recording room, a reception area where clients could wait — God bless them! – and my own ‘executive office’ with a window overlooking a lovely parking lot where I had my own reserved slot… But, I digress.

There was little that distinguished my ad agency suite from hundreds of other offices around town, except for one little thing…

It had one feature that made it VERY distinctive, and probably one-in-a-million in the world of ad agency offices, from coast to coast.

You didn’t see this little feature until you left my executive suite itself. Then, as you turned around to leave the room, you saw it. Over the door was a long sign that claimed “Advertising Doesn’t Work — We Do!”

What?

Why would an ad agency point out the obvious fact that any advertiser knows all too well — that usually advertising doesn’t work? Hundreds of my clients would ask me that question. Well, once asked, the question focuses on what advertising works, and how to get it. So, that’s why I wanted to bring up the subject — pointing out that advertising usually doesn’t work.

Because it almost never does. The first thing any SUCCESSFUL business person learns, especially if they are spending their own money, is that single important fact.

But almost nobody ever talks about it. Nobody.

Just “getting your name out there” doesn’t build a bottom-line. Doesn’t increase traffic. Doesn’t increase cash flow. Doesn’t raise profits. Doesn’t guarantee YOU the advertiser ANYTHING.

However, “covering all the bases” with “a little here and there” does in fact do one thing. It makes the ad agency money.

For a while.

But sooner or later the clients find out. Some of them discover it on the way to bankruptcy court. Some find it out in time to save their business.

Add it up -- Hundreds per month in every “Yellow Book” phone directory. Hundreds per month on every radio station and television station, scattered all through the day-long schedule to “cover the full audience”. Hundreds or even thousands on every newspaper, every week. Thousands on direct-mail and free-distribution newspapers. Tiny business card ads in every charity newsletter and club magazine — don’t want to offend all those potential loyal club member customers.

Even the smallest business can spend $10,000 a month on this caca-dodo. A hundred grand a year on nothing. Nothing memorable. Nothing worth crossing the street for. Nothing worth telling a friend about. Nothing at all.

If they were to disappear, and for most business managers that is the probability, nobody would notice.

And, after all the dust settles and the business closes its doors, after the sweat and tears have dried on the cheeks of its owners… after they have lost their house and cars, exhausted their life savings and robbed all the money from their kids’ college savings accounts. After years of 80+ hours per week slavery to trying to save their life-long dream business… they would say: “I don’t know why we failed, we were advertising everywhere.”

But, they missed one little fact:

In Business, Being Everywhere is Being Nowhere

Their advertising was killing them. Literally. I’ve seen it personally. I saw one of these businessmen lean over and then faint away in a fatal, stress-induced heart attack. We were standing in the front of his huge, and empty, furniture store. Slowly, he collapsed onto a nearby couch, hands hanging loosely over the cushions. In minutes, he was gone!

Minutes before his lights went out for the last time, he had been explaining to me that he couldn’t afford to have a big sale promotion that might save his business, because he was already doing TOO MUCH advertising.

None of which was working for him, obviously. He had, in fact, advertised himself to death.

Advertising almost NEVER works. It’s a fact. Over 99% of it is pure crap. Customers know it. Media reps know it. Ad agents know it.

The last guy to figure it out is usually the one paying for it.

And if you’re in business, that would be YOU.

Can this be a lesson for us web marketing people?

Make Your Ads (and Your Time) Count

When you spend a buck or a minute on something, make it count. Don’t try to do a little of this or that, all over the place. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Don’t create thousands of things trying to cover all the bases. Do you think you can out-spam the entire web with its trillions of pages? Make your pages count. Create meaningful, original content. Focus. Elaborate. Detail. Reference. Make a difference!

The web will love you for it.

Look at things from the point of view of a Google, a Yahoo, an Ask, or MSN, Metasearch, Dogpile, etc. Can you imagine what they think of yet another copy of yet another useless, duplicated, completely unnecessary, redundant, duplicated, all-over-the-place, unfocused web-site? Who needs yet another useless web page?

The search engines now provide most web traffic to web sites. Yes, some does come from bookmarks, email links, tell-a-friend and so on. However search engines like Google and Yahoo and Ask do most of the heavy lifting in generating visitor traffic. Whether from pay-per-click links on search engine result pages or from the “organic” listings that are not paid for, the search engines drive the web.

But in order to serve up the results pages, these search engines need to evaluate what is REAL and what is NOT about each of billions and billions of possible search keyword phrases.

And what do they see? Billions and billions of useless, meaningless non-original pages. And more coming every day. Many of these pages are scraped from other pages. They aren’t even trying to be original.

If you’re building yet another page or hundreds of them, why bother, unless you have something unique to say?

You can work yourself to death and spend a fortune building stuff that everyone else already has done. Or, you can do something better, bigger, more focused, filled with facts, etc.

The 3 Rules of Web-Site Promotion Success

So, since we know that in general, advertising doesn’t work, we can focus on what does work.

1. Originality.
2. Significance.
3. Community (sharing)

You could say it another way.

1. Be unique.
2. Do something that matters.
3. Let others know.

Those are the three ways to succeed online. And, in the brick-and-mortar-world too. What works in real world advertising also works for internet marketing.

You have 2 choices

(1) Work yourself to death like my old friend in the furniture store who literally died saying he was covering all the bases.

Or, don’t.

(2) Instead, create wonderful content that’s different from the other guys. Make it stand out. Market the heck out of that singular page. Not everywhere, but in a few select places where it counts. Follow those 3 rules of successful web marketing.

You’ll live longer. And get a little famous. And, just maybe — rich!