As a marketer, I am regularly reminded of this phrase when working with clients. New media opportunities appear in the digital world and rapidly replace the old tools like Direct Mail, PennySaver, Newspapers, and the Yellow Pages. For years, many businesses relied on these tools to get customers. While the media and their delivery have changed radically; what is unchanged is that no matter what method of advertising is used, one must always deliver an ad with a compelling offer that reaches people likely to use the product/service in a way that the message captures their attention and causes them to take action.
There is old adage in the direct mail business that says a successful campaign is 40% list, 40% the offer and only 20% creative.
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Tips for Making Your Ads Pop!
You have seconds, not minutes to capture their attention
the more things change; the more they stay the same.
...so this happened
enough, because the new locations were not producing the sales they had anticipated. The client wanted to figure out what was wrong. Largely, we had modeled the marketing and advertising strategy on what had worked in their existing locations. It was extremely frustrating, and we were all puzzled as to why the new locations weren’t as successful.
In the early 90’s, I was working with a client. It was a regional company with 4 locations…they had been growing quickly and had just gone public. They used the money they raised to open new locations in new, regional markets. They were bright, had a great product, and they understood who their current customer was. But four months after opening the new locations, they were struggling. Their sales were not growing fast
As a team, we took a step back and decided to approach it from a fresh perspective. We held focus groups in the new markets to figure out what was going wrong. After a few weeks of listening to customers and potential customers, a light bulb came on. We had a compelling product. We were reaching the right customers. We had a compelling offer. But we did not have it all communicated correctly. Our creative was off the mark. The sales pitch we were using did not resonate with customers in this part of the country the way it did in others. People in Texas, their new market, were different from people in Arizona and California. So we changed the offer. It was surprisingly simple little things: (1) we didn’t list the hours the locations were open on the