There is no box: An exercise in advertising clichés

I am a huge fan of marketing. I firmly believe that in the business world, effective marketing can cure most ills and boost even the most sagging of bottom lines. Advertising has the ability to directly influence consumer behavior, contribute to pop culture and even provide quality entertainment. Marketers are often the most creative and inventive group of individuals in the business world, yet the thing I find funniest is just how often we fall into the trap of repeating the same ideas over and over again.

With that in mind, here’s a look into several of the more popular advertising clichés and some background information as to why they work and how you can use them to improve your business.

PHRASE: Think outside the box
WHAT IT MEANS: Be creative. Do things different than anyone else.

This is probably the single-most overused phrase in marketing today yet the reason it is so frequently cited is that, despite the tired, worn out phrasing, it remains the single most important aspect to marketing. The very reason marketing and advertising exist is to help a company promote itself and to distance itself from the competition. It’s ironic however, that the phrase itself has become clichéd, cringe-inducing mantra for marketing professionals everywhere; a once proud creative concept discarded to the scrap heap of other tired slogans and jingles.

Despite its overuse ‘thinking outside the box’ is a rallying cry to businesses and agencies everywhere; a challenge to be inventive, to be unique, to give a reason for potential customers to remember you and forget everyone else. Being creative and on-point is the single hardest task for a marketing professional and the most critical. It is also the single most important concept for businesses to grasp with regards to advertising, and the hardest one to embrace.

I’ve been in countless meetings with small business owners who sit down and excitedly state that they’re eager to do something different; to push the limits of what has been done before in the local market;  to go head-to-head with the ‘big boys’; to be creative or funny or even controversial. But for some reason, it never seems to happen. Daring, bold or adventurous campaigns are developed only to have the same result — the business owners love the concept, tout just how well it captures the attitude and message they wish to portray, and then they get cold feet and opt for a rehash of the same boring, bland and uninspired marketing they’ve run for years.

Truth is, the only box that exists in marketing is the one we create for ourselves. You can’t be afraid to stand out and be different. Doing the same marketing that the competition employs, or advocating a safe, conservative approach only succeeds in preventing you from realizing your potential. Businesses and marketers have to believe that the only limitations they face are the ones they impose upon themselves. There is no box.

PHRASE: To make money, you have to spend money.
WHAT IT MEANS: In order to grow, you have to invest in yourself.

It’s in a company’s best interest to market itself yet many businesses, particularly small businesses, have no formalized marketing budget. If times are good and money is plentiful, then that’s when the marketing is done … at least, that’s what I’ve seen to be the common approach.

I’m not advocating extraordinary marketing budgets which have no chance of generating a return. I promote responsible, realistic spending in the range of 5-7% of the company’s annual revenue. This amount, in combination with a sound marketing strategy, should be more than sufficient to properly reach new customers. The old adage that you have to spend money to make money is very true — even in a down economy.  You can be very effective with your advertising — even on a shoestring budget — as long as you are willing to develop a sound marketing plan and stick to it.

Most companies I work with (usually small businesses) lack a predefined marketing budget and no formalized marketing strategy; they usually market only when times are good or when they have the money, which is a counter-intuitive approach to effective marketing.  Yes, you market when times are good, but you also market when times are bad.  It’s been shown that companies that market during recessions and bad times actually make MORE money than their competition and emerge from the hardship with increased market share and more business than they had before the bad times.  I’ve referenced this particular research article before, but it’s worth including again: READ: A Critical and Synthesis of Research on Advertising in a Recession by Gerald and Kethan Tellis

Look at it this way … If you don’t advertise, you are essentially paying your customers to go to your competition.

Not advertising your company is never a good idea. If your bottom line dips, make budget cuts where you can and evaluate where and how you’re spending your money. Maybe there are inefficiencies elsewhere in your company or economies to be gained by evaluating new procedures, but avoid the knee-jerk response of cutting or eliminating your marketing budget. As long as you are advertising effectively and making sound marketing decisions, your advertising is NOT the cause of your financial downturn, so why cut it? Because it’s the easiest cut? It may be, but it is also the most detrimental cut you can make toward turning around your bottom line performance.

PHRASE: Pick one media and do it well
WHAT IT MEANS: Don’t dabble in many different advertising sources, just find one thing that works and stick to it.

This particular cliché is, in my opinion, a very outdated and ill-suited approach to marketing in the modern age. You would be surprised how many business owners I come across who have adopted this approach to their advertising.

The issue I have is that unlike any previous point in our history, humankind is more mobile, more connected and has more diversionary options than ever before. More and more we find that every one of our customers has more and more companies vying for their attention. To reach those customers a business has to diversify and invest in marketing to where the customers are and how they want to be reached as opposed to putting all their eggs in one basket and hopes that it will reach everybody.

It’s one thing to find a media vehicle that works. If it works, why would you stop using it? But it’s another thing entirely to shun all other opportunities. Yes, by all means, invest in marketing that is proven to be successful for you, but a business should have a healthy media mix as part of their marketing plan to reach as many people in as many different ways as makes sense from a strategic and budgetary standpoint. Most businesses have a wide array of customers with different interests; different lifestyles. They may not all read the newspaper or listen to the radio. They may not all watch a particular program on TV or know how to use the Internet.

The trick to mastering a multi-media advertising mix is to do your research. Find out who your customers are and what they do for fun or how they spend their leisure or professional time. Select the best two, three or four vehicles and spread your message to the world. The more touch points you can make, the more ways you can reach a customer with a consistent marketing campaign. The more ways you can reach a customer consistently, the more likely it is that you will connect with them and deliver your message to them just at the right time when they are ready to make a decision.

PHRASE: Be first and be the biggest
WHAT IT MEANS: Be the first ad the customer sees and make it impossible for them not to notice your ad.

I hear this one a lot when it comes to newspaper and phone book advertising and I agree with it … with a fairly sizeable caveat. The idea behind this particular cliché is to help the customer get noticed. And I agree. The idea of any advertising is to help a business get noticed. Where I disagree is in the method.  Here’s why…

Newspapers
With newspapers, the prevailing wisdom is to put large, full or half page ads on every right-facing page. I had the opportunity to attend a Colorado Press Association (CPA) advertising seminar a couple years ago and it’s the widespread belief among their sales staff that the right-facing page approach is best. The interesting thing presented in this seminar was a result of a survey which showed that readers preferred left-facing pages for the advertising (because people read from left to right) and preferred smaller ads which didn’t compete with the news (the real reason they’re reading the paper).

My approach for advertising is in frequency. Don’t by the big one-off full page, full color ad. In general it’s a huge waste of money. After all, what if the reader doesn’t read that particular section of the paper? Yes, you can request specific placement (hopefully as a result of research which has shown you that your customers tend to prefer one section over another), but that guarantee also typically comes with a premium price — usually an additional 10-15% of the cost of the ad. My approach calls for multiple smaller ads scattered throughout the same paper. You can still spend the same amount of money by this approach (or in some cases save money), but you will hit the reader more often with your advertising message.

The number of touches is critical in marketing. It usually takes somewhere between 5-8 impressions before the customer even realizes that they’ve seen your ad before. If you can spend the same amount money, and get all those impressions in one paper as opposed to running the same ad 8 times at 8 times the cost to achieve the same results, which approach makes more sense?

Phone book
Let me just say up front that advertising in the phone book is typically a waste of your money and here’s why…

People don’t go to the phone book to choose a company to do business with. People go to the phone book (and in greatly decreasing numbers thanks to the Internet) because they already know the business they want to use – they just want to find out their phone number or address. The phone book reps will give you tons of “facts” about how often people use a particular category or that the phone book is where most customers hear about businesses. Those facts are often misleading — especially when you filter them against common sense. Put your own experience to the test when it comes to phone book advertising. How many times do you go to the phone book?

It is a giant waste of time and money to advertise in any vehicle that stays closed up and locked in a drawer or closed 362 days a year (yes, the average phone book is only used 3 times a year). You, as a business, are paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars a month to have your ad sit amid all your competition in a dark, closed space.

The competition is another good point to bring up. Why would you pay good money to be listed right alongside all your competition? Right off the bat, you’re diminishing the chances of success because A) you have no ability to deliver your message on your own terms irrespective of the other competition and B) you have no say on where or how the ad is presented within the overall layout.

Which brings us to the ‘Be first and be the biggest’ idea. The phone book reps are the biggest preachers of this approach. They know that phone books are typically best used for ‘emergency’ type services like plumbers, roof repairs, water mitigation and bail bonds. If you in a pinch and don’t know who to call, you’re going to flip to the desired section and you’re going to call the first person you come to. This is where the first and biggest approach comes in. The phone book puts all the full page, full color ads for each section up front. The smaller ads and then black and white ads are arranged in decreasing order the farther back in the section you go. So if you can’t secure the first page of the section and can’t afford to spend the thousands of dollars a month required to secure this page, the phone book is essentially telling you that they can’t deliver performance on your advertising.

Unless you fall into the above described ‘emergency’ categories, my advice is to put your money into other advertising media. Build up your company’s brand awareness in the public eye and position yourself as THE business to call. Then go with the free listing in the white pages to address those few instances where your potential customer just needs to look up your address or number.

In closing…
‘Thinking outside the box’ may have started as being a way to describe the abstract concept of originality and creativity.  If you want to achieve true enlightenment in marketing, you must first realize that there is no box to begin with. You can choose to do your research and identify the best means to address the needs of your marketing and promotion as applies to your situation. Don’t blindly follow trends. Learn from them and adapt. Be strategic in your thinking and interpretation of available information and make informed decisions. Most importantly, be consistently different. When you choose a marketing path, dedicate yourself to that path. Familiarity and awareness come from repetition and have designed marketing that addresses the needs of the customer, you’ll find that the needs of your business are met and your advertising grows in strength the longer it is consistently reinforced to the public.

The only box that exists in marketing is the one in which you place yourself.

YOUR TURN:
What do you think are the most overused cliches, slogans and ideas in advertising? Click here to sound off on it and other topics on our Facebook discussion page!

The perils of perspective.

Okay, big philosophical question time…

Does any business really need a marketing company to help them advertise?

I’ve tossed this question around in my own brain for close to a decade now. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, a “YES” answer is truly in my own best interests as far as continuing my career.  But there’s also a strong case to be made for a business having marketing professionals at their disposal.

• Yes, a company should hire a marketing company.
• Yes, a marketing company can be critical to helping businesses reach new customers.
• Yes, a marketing company can help businesses craft effective marketing methods.
• Yes, a marketing company can take care of all the details – the printing, the production, the media buys, the negotiation, the public relations, the creative, etc. – so you can spend time focusing on running your business.
• Yes, a marketing company can serve as guide toward maximizing your resources and getting you the best bang for your buck.
• Yes, a marketing company has advanced research tools at their disposal to help identify emerging industry trends, consumer purchasing habits, customer demographics – all of which you can use to tailor and refine your business to meet the needs of the market.

Yes, but…

In my 15 years in this business, I’ve seen a lot of savvy, intelligent business owners who are just as capable of developing their own marketing. I’ve seen people with a knack for self-promotion and creative thinking. I’ve seen non-marketing people come up with brilliant and clever ways of pushing their message into the public arena. I’ve had to learn that sometimes the role of the marketing company is not to necessarily come up with the idea, but to help the people with the idea bring the concept into reality.

I’ve also seen even more savvy, intelligent business owners who have absolutely no idea of how to market their product or service. Yes, they know their widgets inside and out and if you get them going on a topic related to their business and they’ll talk for hours upon hours with limitless enthusiasm. But when it comes to marketing, they have trouble corralling all that excitement and all that enthusiasm into a simple, and easily understood message. On my personal blog, I’ve written about the 5 Biggest Do-it-Yourself Marketing Mistakes. In this list, I’ve identified the most commonly mistakes people make with regards to their advertising. These errors are not a result of willful intent, or the customer loudly stating “I do not want my advertising to work!”  Instead, the culprit is actually the very enthusiasm which spurred the idea for the business in the first place, and this is where a marketing company can truly help a business realize its marketing potential.

It’s a matter of perspective.

It’s a very hard thing to do for any person  – to distance oneself from his passion – and that’s really what work is, it is a passion. People simply don’t get into (and stay in) a line of work if they aren’t passionate about it, and they certainly do not start a business around something they hate to do.  A business for any owner is truly the extension of himself – he pours his heart and soul into the company, he dedicates countless hours of education, research and hand-on experience into development and customer service, he is intimately entwined with his venture in every facet – and that familiarity, that passion, can be the biggest roadblock to successfully marketing the product or service. Personally speaking, I can market any company; any service. It comes easy to me. It’s natural… EXCEPT when it comes to marketing my company or my employer. In this case, I am so passionate, so intimately involved and invested in its success that crafting a finely tuned campaign or project is like pulling teeth; I stress about the smallest detail. I obsess over the most inane nuance. I lose sleep. I stop eating. I sulk around and grumble and talk to myself in a seemingly fruitless effort to sort out and work through all the mental blocks I’ve imposed upon myself.

My greatest obstacle in marketing my own interests is removing my own interests from the equation. And I’m not alone.

Hiring a marketing company may seem like a big expense – to take a chunk of a limited marketing budget and give it to another company to provide a service you feel you can do yourself. But the single biggest benefit is not in the bulleted list I rattled off earlier, it’s that a good marketing company will be able to provide that much-needed 3rd party perspective; to provide an outsider’s view of the situation and provide meaningful suggestions and ideas designed to communicate that very passion and excitement in a manner that is easily understood by your target audience.

Over the years, I’ve developed a list of marketing and design “rules“. This list is a fun, tongue-in-cheek compilation of certain truths I’ve found during my time in this businesses. As I blog, I’ll occasionally reference these rules as a means of supporting my argument or position. You’ll likely see these pop up from time to time. In this case, I quote rule #3:

“The greatest obstacle to an effective campaign is usually the client.”

At first glance, this rule could be interpreted as a dig toward the client, but that’s not really the intent. The rule speaks to the proximity and personal investment a client has and his inability to step back and look at the marketing from the viewpoint of the customer. Too often, the client can assign importance to one particular area or service which interests the business owner personally, but would not have any benefit or generate interest on the part of the reader.  By marketing to the needs of the customer, a business will ultimately achieve its own success.

The question still remains as to whether a business truly needs a marketing company. So what’s the verdict?

I wish I had one. I wish I could tell you without a doubt that your investment in 3rd party marketing services was the right thing to do for every business. Truth is, it’s not. I do, in most instances I feel that a company could benefit from professional marketing guidance; someone to help keep your message fresh and on-point, identify new methods for advertising and locate key areas for targeting. A marketing company can free up your valuable time; time better spent on running the day-to-day business. A marketing company can serve as an advocate for your interests and negotiate better deals to stretch your marketing dollar a bit farther. They can be a helpful resource and help you achieve your goals faster and more efficiently than if you were to assume the entire burden.

If you do decide to consider a marketing company, here are ten considerations to keep in mind:

1. Does the marketing company’s business philosophy mesh with your own?
   – Do you feel their ethics and morals are in line with the way you run your business? It’s important that both sides share compatible philosophies.
2. Do they have experience in marketing your type of business?
   – A good general-service company should be able to handle any need whereas specialty agencies might focus on a particular industry and not be suited for every type of account.
3. Does their creative product meet your criteria for quality, inventiveness and communication?
   – Take a look at their work product. Is it polished? Can you easily determine the messaging? It is engaging? Does all their creative look similar or can you distinguish one client from another?
4. Do you feel as if they will work with you, or if you are working for them?
   – Do they engage you in healthy discussion or do they speak down to you? You will want an agency that offers suggestions and helps explain their decisions, and takes the time to address your concerns. You don’t want a firm that acts as the ultimate know-it-all on every topic and acts as if they know more about your company than you do (it does happen)!
5. Can you afford their billing rates?
   – All agencies bill at different rates. Ask for generalized product costs and hourly rates.
6. Do they have a good reputation among your business peers?
   – Ask around. Do people speak highly of the marketing firm’s strategies, people and product?
7. Do they share your enthusiasm for your business?
   – If the company can’t get excited about landing your account, how can they convey excitement to your customers?
8. Does the company do a good job of setting and meeting expectations?
   – Does the company explain timelines and costs to you before any project begins? Do they deliver on their promises (for both time and cost)?
9. How responsive are they to your concerns?
   – Do they get back to you the same day, next day, next week? Do you have to continually ask for updates or are they proactive?
10. What does your “gut” say about them?
    – Your instinct about a company will usually prove right. Do you believe they can do what they say or are they giving you a sales pitch?

If you are happy about your business, its position and rate of growth, then you probably do not need a marketing company to assist you with your advertising efforts. Obviously whatever you are doing is fine.  Do not get sucked into an ego-driven belief that having a marketing company handle your account is any measure of success. The only measure of success is your business’ performance by whatever criteria you deem important. But if your business isn’t performing at a level you would like; if customers aren’t flocking to your door; if you are unable or unwilling to devote the time to marketing your company then perhaps having an advertising company assist you is the best move you can make. Having an experienced, impartial and objective partner to help you develop and create a message that truly defines your company and appeals to your customers is an invaluable and powerful tool to have at your disposal.

Welcome to the Allegra Blog

Yes, Allegra now has a blog, and if you’re unfamiliar with who we are and what we do, we’re about to introduce ourselves in a big way! For 24 years, Allegra has provided the Colorado Springs market with quality print, copy and mail services. But now, we’ve expanded our service offerings to include marketing and creative design – all with the goal of providing you, our customers, a full-service, single stop advertising solutions partner!

We can only do EVERYTHING!

Is that statement a big bold? Perhaps. But don’t look at it as a grandiose statement, look at it as a promise and commitment to our customers to provide you with a reliable marketing partner, capable of delivering any marketing, advertising, print, direct mail, sign or copy services you need. We want to enhance the value of your business by offering you a single point of contact to get whatever you need done, done.

Allegra is not just a printer pretending to be an advertising agency. That’s not who we are. We are a marketing solutions provider who happens to own its own presses, copiers and has its own sign and mailing facilities.

We are a company of specialists with decades upon decades of experience in varying fields capable of providing sound advice, timely suggestions and quality results.

We are a local company who sees the value in developing lasting, long-term relationships with our customers through quality service, competitive pricing and an unwavering belief that our commitment to our customers and their success in turn guarantees our longevity.

But enough about Allegra. In fact, this is the one and only marketing message you’ll see from us in this blog. The reason you’ll want to come back again and again is for the free stuff. That’s right, I said free stuff – as in free design tips, free marketing facts and free insight on the latest developments in the marketing and print industries.

We encourage participation, so if you see a post you like, let us know about it. If you disagree with something, tell us.  In fact, go chat amongst yourself and come to your own conclusions. This blog exists solely to help you be more successful at what you do.

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We can only do EVERYTHING!