Myth: Quit advertising because it just doesn’t work
A lot of people enmeshed in the online world like to refer gruffly to other types of marketing as “interruption marketing.” Predominantly, they are talking about advertising. Advertising “interrupts” your reading experience. It can certain interrupt your television watching or your radio listening (do people still listen to the radio?). On social media platforms, advertising can fall into the downright annoying category. Yes, a lot of arguments are floating around about why you should stop advertising. As far back as 2009, Business Week noted, “The vast majority of ads don’t register with consumers.” In a recent post for Business2Community, Patrick McDaniel notes that many people go up to him and say, “Yeah, I tried advertising. It didn’t work.”
In fact, a simple Google search for “advertising is dead” yields quite a few results:
Are all of these folks right? Is advertising dead? Does advertising just simply not work?
What does “work” mean?
Not to be glib, but exactly what were you expecting your advertising to do? False expectations can be a big problem for businesses and marketers. If you were expecting your advertising campaign to pull your company out of the recession, you probably found yourself disappointed. Similarly, if you thought advertising would make people like your product more, you were likely not satisfied with the results. As Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston note in Marketing in the Round, advertising is really best for direct marketing and building brands. If your objectives and measurement systems aren’t in alignment with those types of tactics, you’re going to run into trouble.
Why do people think advertising doesn’t work?
The most common reason advertising doesn’t “work,” I might hypothesize, is that people don’t really understand how to make advertising work. Advertising is more like a puppy, not like a cat. You can’t leave it alone and assume it will take care of itself. You need to plan your media placements carefully. You need to make sure you are hitting the right audience with the right kind of creative. And yes, you need to find ways to measure everything you’re doing.
When we recommend advertising programs to our clients, we present online ads as akin to billboards. People don’t click on banner ads much anymore, but they notice them, and if you are going to an industry website, seeing companies you want to learn more about can create an environment where clicks are more possible than in other places (like, say, CNN). We also recommend not using banner ads for sheer promotion anymore. Give people a REAL reason to click. Offer something that can answer a question or that can help your potential customers meet their objectives. If you are led to believe that an online banner ad will increase traffic to your website by leaps and bounds, you will probably end up believing that advertising doesn’t work. If you don’t capture click-throughs via a special landing page, you’ll end up on the same boat.
In print advertisements, it’s important to make sure your ad makes sense for your audience. Does your audience like copy-heavy ads that are more like advertorials or do they respond to graphic-heavy ads with very little copy? Do they like straightforward presentations or does their eye get caught by out-of-the-box creative? There are plenty of ways to test these kinds of approaches, whether it’s running two different ads in very similar publications or timing your ads for a Reader Study issue, where people can respond directly to your ad and say what they think about it.
Again, if you do not have a methodology for capturing leads from your print ad, you are likely going to believe that advertising doesn’t work. You need to find a way to attract readers to your website, and not just to your homepage. You need to drive traffic to a page where you can capture information. Incentivize this part of your program. Again, offer readers something that will entice them to click, whether it’s a free white paper, an e-book that answers a key question, or something else along those lines.
If you engage in a print advertising program with an expectation that you will immediately be inundated with sample requests and sales, you will again end up believing that advertising doesn’t work.
You can do social media and still advertise
Many people seem to draw a black-and-white contradictory picture between social media marketing and advertising. If you are on Twitter for your business, you clearly can’t also advertise. Right?
In fact, this kind of thinking is leading companies away from some really intriguing integrated marketing opportunities. Print ads could drive traffic to a Facebook page. A QR code on an ad could lead to a YouTube video. You could even invite people to answer a question they see in a print ad by contacting you on Twitter. The possibilities for translating interest in a print ad to engagement elsewhere could be almost endless, in fact. But the “this or that” mentality overshadowing marketers these days may cloud over all of that potential.
What do you think about advertising? Should people just give up on this type of marketing or is that crazy talk? What are your experiences with advertising? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
PS, this post is letter Q in the Alphabet of Marketing Myths series. You can catch up on the series here.
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colleen-lane/4989879689/ via Creative Commons
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What do people think would happen if Coke and Pepsi stopped advertising. It wouldn’t take long before the other brands would start to gain marketshare and build traction among existing customers as well as prospective.
This advertising dead clap trap is just more nonsense that some people spew because it is self serving and because as you mention many don’t have realistic expectations.
@TheJackB That was a hot topic when the bottom fell out of the economy a few years ago. Lots of companies wanted to stop advertising, but it’s actually been proven over the years that that is one of the WORST things you can do in tough economic times. If you stay out there when times are tough people are more inclined to believe that you are holding strong and doing fine. If you disappear, you’re letting people think you went down.
Now why would you want to do that?
@margieclayman People like to believe that they act based upon logic and reason but they rarely do.
Maybe I’m just a sheep who follows wherever my master leads me…but I think I have to admit that advertising works for me. Want to know why I tried my first Dos Equis beer? Because I thought the “Most Interesting Man” commercials were brilliant. The delicious flavor keeps me buying it from the store, but the commercial was what initially caught my eye.Doesn’t advertising simply have the goal of creating top-of-mind presence for companies? An ad may not sell product directly, but next time you’re hungry and deciding where to go…maybe you’ll think of the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” dog and head over for a few heart-burn inducing tacos. Yes? No?
@LuftigWarren So funny! When I was younger, I only drank Coors Light because I loved and supported the commercials.
@LuftigWarren Those kinds of ads, like the ones that get featured during the Super Bowl, can be a double edged sword. Sometimes they leave enough impact that you remember the brand name and are inspired to try it out. However, sometimes ads are too clever for their own good. You watch an ad and think it’s hilarious but afterwards you have no idea who it’s for. I have to admit, I know the ad campaign you are referencing but I probably wouldn’t be able to name Dos Equis as the brand those ads are promoting. It’s a fine line.
Hi MargieClayman I think I may be coming full circle in regards to advertising. When I first started in practice *cough* years ago, dentists relied on word of mouth almost exclusively. That evolved into it being acceptable to “advertise” in the Yellow Pages and maybe even the local papers. With the advent of internet and digital marketing, dentist have been pretty slow on the draw to utilize social media and digital marketing as part of their marketing armementarium. I, however, thought it was the next BIG THING and so I jumped into social media to promote awareness of my business with both feet. It has had some wonderful results and I will continue to utilize social media. However, I still need to reach a local audience…I need to sort of wave my business in front of the local people’s faces and I am starting to think that maybe I need to rethink my “disdain” for traditional advertising. Perhaps I need to give direct marketing another chance…mailers and ads in local papers perhaps. I don’t think that I will ever return to the paid Yellow Page ads however.
Interesting post, Margie!!
xo
Claudia
@SocialMediaDDS I think businesses like yours could really benefit from direct marketing in the “traditional” sense if there wasn’t so much disdain surrounding those types of tactics. We should talk some time 🙂
Like anything, there is a time and a place for marketing. It’s typically the people who say ‘we are not getting any return’ who are the ones that are not tracking the return. How the heck do you track return on a billboard for example? People are not eating or pumping gas at your billboard. You need to get creative about it.
I worked at a hotel while in college and we decided to leave pamphlets at rest areas along the highways leading up to the area. We didnt want to 100% trust the reservation agent to always ask who referred them and then get into gritty details about what rest stop they were at so we put different prices at each. One rest stop had 10% off, another 15% off, etc. So the person would say ‘i have this thing here that says 20% off’ and we could track it.
i dont think it’s dead at all. For those starting out, it may not be the best course. I would probably recommend doing something with your budget that is more closely tied to return. But for branding and keeping yourself top of mind, I still believe in it.
@C_Pappas Correct as usual. Expectations need to be realistic. A billboard is not likely to drive traffic to your website (even if you put a QR code on there, which some companies have actually done….oy vey). A print ad that is highly promotional with no call to action probably will not generate as much interest as an ad that promises to solve a problem and a nice bow tied at the bottom. And there are countless ways to track these things. Maybe billboards could be tied into Foursquare somehow so as you drive by you can say you checked in. There’s an undiscovered country that is being ignored because “advertising is dead.” It’s a shame.
margieclayman Ah yes, the __________________ is dead debate. LOTS of things have been declared dead when they aren’t (I can’t help but think of Monty Python / Holy Grail – I’m not dead yet!) Maybe I’m a relic but I still listen to the radio, I still read the WSJ and I still get magazines. I too am amused by the most interesting man in the world commercials. You are spot on. It’s all about expectations, there’s no silver bullet.
@NicoleFende We hates the is dead, preshus. I think I will need to write a post sometime that incorporates that Monty Python scene. You’re not dead till someone whacks you in the head to make sure 🙂
@margieclayman @NicoleFende
Bloggers: Here’s one — nine pence.
Advertising: I’m not dead!
Real-Life: What?
Bloggers: Nothing — here’s your nine pence.
Advertising: I’m not dead!
Real-Life: Here — he says he’s not dead!
Bloggers: Yes, he is.
Advertising: I’m not!
Real-Life: He isn’t.
Bloggers: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
Advertising: I’m getting better!
Bloggers: No, you’re not — you’ll be stone dead in a moment.
Real-Life: Oh, I can’t take him like that — it’s against regulations.
Advertising: I don’t want to go in the cart!
Bloggers: Oh, don’t be such a baby.
Real-Life: I can’t take him…
Advertising: I feel fine!
Bloggers: Oh, do us a favor…
Real-Life: I can’t.
Bloggers: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won’t be long.
Real-Life: Naaah, I got to go on to Robinson’s — they’ve lost nine today.
Bloggers: Well, when is your next round?
Real-Life: Thursday.
Advertising: I think I’ll go for a walk.
Bloggers: You’re not fooling anyone y’know. Look, isn’t there something you can do?
Advertising: I feel happy… I feel happy.
The whatever is dead debate makes me laugh. That’s like the “blogging is dead” blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago. Just because it doesn’t work for YOU doesn’t mean it’s dead. People are funny.