The Top Five Advertising Agency Mistakes

5/23/2008 7:35:02 PM

The most common mistake advertisers make is putting an “artist” in charge of creating and executing their campaign. Few artists have ever made their living selling products, yet this is what they are hired to do – sell products! If an “artist” hasn’t made any money selling products before, what are the odds his ads will sell product and make money now? Use this list to check your ad campaign for fatal flaws.

Most advertising doesn’t earn the advertiser a return on investment because the advertiser doesn’t identify which ads produce response let alone measure how much revenue, if any, the responses generated. To measure success, quantify response.

Running an ad without:

1. Making an offer to purchase,

2. Asking for the order and

3. Establishing a deadline for placing an order is a waste of effort and hard earned money. For advertising to produce profitable results, it must be constructed with these three principles of salesmanship in mind.

As unconventional as this may sound, nobody really cares about how great your company is. A prospective buyer – for the most part – only cares about how your products and services will make their life better. Do your ads answer the prospect’s question “What’s in it for me?” If so, you will – at the least – have an opportunity to win their business.

When you buy advertising with the idea everyone is your potential customer, you are by definition paying for excess media to reach large groups of people who will never become your customers. Target your audience first by clearly defining who your best prospects are – then buy the appropriate media to reach them.

Advertising is the salesmanship of goods and services through media. Institutional or image ads don’t directly sell products or make specific offers. What business can afford to pay a salesman who doesn’t sell product or ask for the order? These types of ads only produce results for the media and the representatives who sell them.

To avoid these top five advertising mistakes and the many more not listed visit the Marketing Strategies Catalog section of this site.

Tim Cohn is a Google Advertising Professional and author of the book For Sale By Google.