12 Golden
Ad Rules

Author E. C. Parry
Internet Edition

Copyright Broad Brush Publishing Ltd.
© 2001
	
First of all let's ask ourselves a question.

	Why are you advertising ?

Silly question...or is it?  Businesses advertise for several different reasons.

	Big corporates advertise to keep up the image and profile of the company.

	Companies reliant on branding do it to increase or maintain the brand image, to 
	them the brand is all important and has immense value in its own right.

	Mail Order companies advertise to get you to buy their current offerings off the
	page.  But only one in four or five products are successful for them so about 80% of
	their advertising is testing.

	'Ceramic Exchange' companies advertise with a loss leader so that you're hooked
	enough to buy back-end products from them.

	Some companies do it to create a database list.

	Catalogue companies are creating a list and offering mail order and back-ends.

I could go on but this should give you sufficient reason to realise that there isn't one clear cut answer such as "to sell...stupid!"

	So, why are you advertising this way ?

	You're not a corporate and you don't have a famous brand.  You wouldn't be
	reading this if you were.  This information is strictly for small business.  Let the
	big boys spend their cash on arty farty graphic designers, copywriters and
	marketeers.  They haven't a clue anyway, after all why should they care, it's not
	their hard-earned cash that's paying.  But its my guess that it is your money that
	pays for your ads.  You owe it to yourself to spend it wisely.

	You are also not a large Mail Order or Catalogue house or even a 'Limited Edition
	Birds of the Coast Porcelain' flogger, for the same reason.

You might be a small Mail Order company trying to grow bigger, in which case you have a good reason to advertise in the press...read on !

I don't see much evidence of many of you trying to make up your own prospect lists.

	So, why the hell are you advertising this way ?

	Sorry to bang on like this.  But I made a promise to you, it was this.

		I'll either save you hundreds or thousands of pounds on advertising

		or

		I'll show you how to significantly increase your response to your ads.

We have to establish that advertising in the newspapers is going to give you a worthwhile response.  We have to know why you are advertising this way.  What do you hope to achieve by it?  If examination of these questions indicate that the response per pound spent is poor or can be bettered some other way, then I've saved you pounds.  If you can establish good reasons then we'll move on to improving your responses.  If you aren't entirely convinced that you shouldn't advertise then you've probably got to apply the advice 
which follows in order to stand still.

So, let us look at some of the other reasons you might be using to justify advertising.

		Our competition advertises.

Fair enough.  But they might be advertising because you are !  These things have a habit of being self-perpetuating.  So does advertising style, but more of that later.  The assumption is that because someone is regularly advertising they are getting a worthwhile response.  Not so.  90 to 95% of adverts are losing money.  Do you know what response your ad is producing, does your competition ?  Again more of that later.

		We have something special to say.

This might be a sale, a new product or service line, a new branch opening etc.  At last  a good reason to advertise!  Now we need to examine how widespread the pulling power of this something special is.  Is it something special to the nation?  Would people travel 50 miles to acquire it?  Would they come 5 miles?  Or is it just the immediate locality?

Is it of interest to all people, or just some special interest group, or just women, just children.... How large is the market for your product or service?  Even if it's large, be wary. Take tyre repairs for example.  There are millions of car owners but do they need repairs every day of the week?  Will they travel 50 miles for a repair (perhaps, if they live in the North East of Scotland....I don't know).  No, tyre repairs is local and intermittent.  A special offer on repairs this weekend is only going to appeal to those with a puncture now.  New tyre sales on the other hand are different.  The buyer has a time frame in which to purchase new tyres as replacements for regulatory challenged rubber.

		We need to keep our name in front of the public.

Anyone who faces selling an intermittently purchased product or service faces this challenge.  Our tyre company does.  You probably do.  Quick-Specs shops do, plumbers do, replacement windows do.  Let's face it, almost all of you reading this do.  Food, petrol, consumables etc. don't.  They have to be there, they tend to be branded goods sold and advertised with huge budgets on TV, in the National press...Corporate advertising, massive sponsorship deals .  That's not us.

How localised is your sale?  There are other ways of keeping your name in front of local buyers.  Fliers, shop window ads, Thompsons, Yellow Pages, imaginative shop or workshop displays, sponsorship of local teams, events and talent.  All of these can be cheaper than persistent newspaper advertising and have far more effect.  

It isn't the purpose of this book to examine the detail of all the businesses who have wisely purchased this booklet.  You must do that !  I urge you to examine and review and re-examine the status of your products and services.  Remember, like the tyre repair shop, not all of your products fall under the same category.  New tyres are not repairs, they produce a different set of circumstances.

		Don't be egotistical in your assessment

You're trying to make an honest crust (I hope!).  It's tough out there.  Your best interests will not be served by pretending your product or service is greater or more widely wanted than it is.  Be ruthless in your assessment, you will then have real faith in the decisions you make regarding advertising your wares.

There is only ONE good reason for advertising.

YOU HAVE GOT TO HAVE SOMETHING SPECIAL TO SAY !

Even if you have to keep your name in front of the public

YOU MUST SAY SOMETHING SPECIAL

Don't advertise just because your competitors or people in the same line of business do.  You don't know what the response to their ads is, they probably don't either! This leads us on to the next vital point I want to make.

		Do you know what response your ad is bringing in ?

If you say YES then I don't believe you... oh go on then, I do, but you are extremely rare.  Nobody but nobody asks me how I heard about them when I use a service, go in a shop, get my drains unblocked, my car serviced or a tyre repaired.

		If you don't ask, how can you assess the impact?

		How can you evaluate the contribution to sales per pound
		of advertising?

		You can't !

		If you can't...STOP advertising until you can...it's money
		down the drain !

Years ago one of the businesses I ran was set up to provide a specialised service to architects.  It was regionally based because distance was a bit of an objection.  When we set up we were offered a free entry in Yellow Pages, as you are.  We took it, as you do and thought nothing of it.  We sold our service initially by direct mail, follow-ups, meetings, sales pitches, the way you do.  As clientele built up, referrals came into play.  Then our product range expanded, a recession hit architects and we extended our market.  We did a marketing survey and plan courtesy of the DTI and do you know what we discovered? 33% of new customers came from Yellow Pages and all we had was a free entry, not an ad, not even a 15mm panel, not even a bold entry !  Guess what.... we took out an ad.  Guess what.... the response didn't increase !  The moral?  Things change, if you aren't collecting feedback you're living in the dark, that's only good business for mushroom growers.

Feedback is essential... so how do we get it ?

Simple... ask for it !

If you are a mail order company you should already be doing this, but you'll be surprised how many new mail order companies there are and how many don't follow simple rules. This advice also applies to any business eliciting a written response from its advert, so don't skip it just because you're not mail order.  You might be offering free advice or a gift etc as a way of attracting customers... of course, you might only have one ad in one paper and It. might be the only way to get the free something. In that case it's obvious where the lead came from.  Once you put the ad in more than once or in more than one place you need to know how successful the offer is.

Always put a unique reference in the address.

You've seen them.  You know what they are for... use them !

If you are running a series of ads, increment a number or letter, tell the media what you want, they're used to doing this operation automatically, if you instruct them.

Now, if you aren't eliciting a written response then prospective customers are either going to appear at your premises or ring you up.  The former if you're a shop or seller of products more likely and the latter if you are a service provider.  This is not hard and fast, of course, some businesses provide both.  Opticians test eyes as a service and sell specs and ancillaries as products, so you can get both visitors and telephone callers.

What do we do in these circumstances ?  Ask !

Make up a form which has columns or rows for all the ways customers could have heard about you.  Word of mouth (referral), Yellow Pages, Thompsons, Talking Pages, Business Pages, Flier, Shop window, Billboard, Newspaper Ad (one for each newspaper you're advertising in), just passing, noticed the... in the window.  List all the possible ways people could hear about your shop, product or service.  Mark the list off in the old fashioned groups of five manner, like so...
				
At the end of a day, a week or month depending on how busy an organisation you are, add them up and work out the percentages. That'll be illuminating !  Also work out the cost per prospect for each category.  I don't want to go into reams of maths here but you've got to relate this to the timescale of the pulling method.  If you're advertising every week in the paper, how many prospects a week are attracted that way.  If it's Yellow Pages assess how many will be pulled in the year by multiplying the weekly or monthly figures.  A shop window ad may be in for 6 weeks, your shop window display and/or offer may be like that for 2 weeks.  Referrals cost nothing unless you run a campaign to get more referrals by offering discounts, bonuses or gifts.

Referrals cost nothing !  I'm going to leave you to absorb that one and work out how high they figure in your pulling power and how to make them higher.

Once you've got a reasonable amount of feedback you'll be able to adjust your strategy to account for the real response to your advertising.  Some of you will find you are spending tens or hundreds a week for no responses at all.  Unless you are adamant that it is the quality of your advertisement which is the cause and not the media then stop and concentrate on the ways which bring most customers to you for the least outlay.  Equally some will find that the cost per response is many times the average profit per customer.  This can be OK if you have a good back-end business where repeat business is important and customers keep coming back for more of the same or different.  Posh marketing calls this residual value.  If residual values are low and referrals are low, the new customer you have just acquired at a cost many times greater than the means of attracting them is not going to provide you with residual income that is worthwhile.  In this case you have either got to stop advertising this way or increase the response rate of your advertising.  You'll also know by how much you need to increase the pulling power.  If you can't get the cost of sale below the profit margin you aren't going to make money are you ?

All books, tapes and courses on advertising cite cases where the response to an advert or sales strategy has been increased ten or twenty-fold.  They would, wouldn't they, it indicates what wonderful stuff they are telling you.  I believe them.  I'm sure there are such cases... but I'm equally sure they are not the norm.  Unless your existing advertising is so horrendous (you'll be able to judge this for yourself by the time you've finished this book !) then don't bank on that sort of response uplift.  Aim for twice or three times.  If you need more to get the cost of sale down then think hard about whether or not advertising in this way is the best way to pull in responses.  You could end up spending more and more money for less and less profit earning responses.

To summarise... advertise in newspapers only...
		
		if you have good reasons and...		[Rule #1]

		you have something to say and...		[Rule #2]

		the response can be measured and...		[Rule #3]
			
			when the response has been measured

			only continue if...

			it is worthwhile or is open to improvement.

If you would like to receive the complete booklet with the other nine rules and a checklist (25 pages in all) please send an email to us at:- sales@broad-brush.com and we will advise you how you can pay us $8 or £5 so that we can email the full RTF file to you.