They started advertising, but it doesn’t work? Let's get it together

Advertising is the most important aspect of the development of any business. Whatever you do, if you want decent earnings, you must definitely turn to advertising. Of course, I read a lot of articles, books, topics on forums where they talked about how to reach a decent level of earnings without advertising. In some cases this is true, but 99% of the business is faced with competition, which can be overcome only by the quality of the services and goods provided, as well as by good advertising.
  But it often happens that advertising does not work. Everything seems to be done right, but there is no return at all. Why? Where were the mistakes made? Something went wrong? Experienced marketers identify five main problems, calling them classic, which is admitted by almost all novice entrepreneurs. Today we’ll talk about them, as well as tell you how to solve this or that situation, which way will be optimal.

  Finding a solution to a problem is not an easy task, but a very important one. If you work on an imaginary difficulty, then the result has not been and never will be. It's like treating a back and a dentist.
  So, what are the main advertising and marketing mistakes most advertisers make?

1. The problem of "invisibility."
One of the very first problems that many entrepreneurs face is the problem of "invisibility." Briefly explain, imagine the situation that your store is located on 19 Balashova Street, building 4 (the one that is the hardest to find), 4th floor (climbing the fire escape), office 54. And here's another thing , the entrance is not through the main doors, but on the side of the house is separate, for offices. And then many are surprised why visitors do not come to us, why many cannot find us. Once I myself came across such a store. It is located in the territory of a plant, and in order to get inside I went through 3 security posts and left my passport data at the checkpoint  If it weren’t for the urgency of the purchase, I would hardly have contacted them.

It is clear that such a room will be several times cheaper, and choosing it, the entrepreneur proceeded from the price per square meter. But if you want to work with people, accept customers, then think about convenience. Of course, you can have an office in such a “nook”, but then you have to invest many times more in advertising.
  The ideal option is to place your store somewhere in a conspicuous place. It can make it smaller in order to save money, but every passerby will know that this is the store, and they can go in, choose the right product, make a purchase.

2. The problem of the "missionary."
  As you already understood, we will consider all problems with “living” examples, so that you can better understand what is at stake. So, the problem of the “missionary” can be described as follows. Imagine a tribe of natives somewhere in the depths of the Amazon. They live in their way of life for thousands of years, and do not know anything else. So the tribe gathered to cook dinner from another person, and at that moment a Christian missionary appears carrying the word of God. He says that it’s not good to eat people, that Jesus bequeathed to live differently, that they all need to repent, pray, stop doing what they are doing. What will the natives do in this situation? Will they listen to him, or will they already have dinner with two people? I am sure that the answer is obvious.

It is precisely such problems that a company is facing, which plans to bring to the market something new, which until today is not known to anyone. She immediately attacks the customer and insists that everything you used before is wrong, but our product is an innovation, a breakthrough, an incredible find that will change your life. It’s clear that people’s reaction is negative, because no one likes to be imposed on them, and even blaming them for not doing the right thing all their life.

If you are going to bring a new product to the market, then do it as carefully as possible. Make presentations, comparisons, various tests and experiments. Cover the product as widely as possible in the media, but do not submit information about it in an advertising spirit.

3. The problem of the innovator
  Imagine a situation when you came to a collector of records who had been listening to their favorite songs on an old player for 30 years. And now you offer him to buy a brand new DVD player, abandoning everything that he used before. You assure that he will no longer need the records, because ten such collections can fit on the player’s hard drive. What do you think will be the answer? Here I am assuming that you will leave with nothing.

This situation is very similar to the previous one, but if the problem of the “missionary” was that you offered people a solution to problems that they didn’t consider at all like that, in fact, you suggested they don’t need a product, then the situation is different. You point out the problem that the buyer is already aware of, but offer to solve it in a new way, although for decades he has been solving it in his own way, is used to it, and is unlikely to refuse.

How to be in such a situation? Choose the right advertising audience. If you sell youth goods, then focus on youth. If your goods are designed for very wealthy people, then do not hang billboards in work areas or when leaving the factory. Advertising of the new Bentley near the entrance of the metallurgical plant looks very ridiculous. Most hard workers in their entire lives will not earn that much, why should they advertise this?

4. The clone issue
  One of the well-known automobile magazines, which annually presented the rating of the best cars, was forced to abandon its rating system, which has been used since the 20s of the last century. As the editor-in-chief wrote: “We must look for new approaches to solving the tasks. Why? Our rating system does not work, because all the cars are good. They don’t do bad things anymore. ”

So you decided to release a new product. This may be a new clothing line, a new dog food, new perfumes or cosmetics. For you it is new, best, innovative. BUT in the store your product will be on a shelf next to dozens of similar ones. And what are you better? How can the buyer make a choice.
  Solution: you need not only to release the goods, but to find a highlight in it, a distinctive feature that can distinguish this product from hundreds of others. Therefore, when you think through your advertising, focus on the features, on what people should notice, why they should choose your product, and your company.

5. Seller problem

In a sense, this is an exacerbation of a previous problem. You do not just trade in products resembling 20 other products from the same category that your competitors sell. You also face the competition of other sellers offering exactly the same product. If a client can buy a Ford car or a Kola bank both from you and your competitor, it’s not enough for you to solve the “clone problem” so that the buyer does not choose Toyota or Sprite - if you do, you run the risk that a potential customer will make a purchase not from you, but around the corner, so that the effort and money invested in his conviction will be wasted.

This happens so often that success stories are more likely to be an exception than rules, if we are not talking about the largest brands, but in general about the situation on the shop floor.

Advertisers are disappointed, cut budgets for advertising, but continue to order it, because they do not see another way to promote their product. At the same time, for some reason it is extremely rare to find a serious analysis of the reasons for the failure of the campaign and a truly thoughtful approach to the next. And here the responsibility lies with both advertisers and advertisers.

The latter can be - no, not justified, but at least understood - someone is simply a "not-very-specialist" and does not know how to do it right, and someone is no longer able to prove his case to the customer and agrees to any compromises, so as not to lose earnings. It’s more difficult for advertisers to understand: they invest a lot of money, spend even more precious time, in the end, to get a mechanism that does not work!

Let's figure out what is going wrong and what needs to be done so that the desired result is achieved.

0. Axiom

The first literally means that when you see your ad, a person will understand what you want to tell him and understand it correctly. The second implies that a person will generally see your advertisement and pay attention to it, which is the minimum necessary for the perception of the message. Generally speaking, this is even more important, because if the announcement is not noticed, then everything is in vain. If you noticed him, but did not pay attention - also in vain, because the message will not be read and accepted for consideration.

1. Old tricks do not work

Times are changing, society is changing very quickly. Take a look around: 15 years ago, many of the things that surround us today either did not exist in nature, or they were dinosaur ancestors of modern objects. Household appliances, electronics, computers. Especially computers.

Lyrical digression

Customers continue to write in their briefs that their target audience is successful people 25–40 years old and advertise on TV. Come to your senses! Many of these people have been using TV for a long time mainly to watch Blue-Ray and video games, and they find news, movies and TV shows on thematic sites on the Internet. And every day there are more such people. The television, of course, is still watched by a huge audience, but in order to stand out there, advertising must have exceptional properties, since over 20 years of advertising on Russian TV, viewers have learned to filter such “information noise”. Moreover, commercial breaks are most often used as breaks in a program or film to escape to the toilet or to the kitchen.

If you want your commercial to really be seen, make or entrust the specialists to make it so vivid, unusual and memorable that it wanders from wall to wall with enthusiastic comments on social and corporate networks, like “Did you see this ?!” With this attitude, you can safely count on loyalty and celebrate the success of the advertising campaign. If, reading this paragraph, you think “well, this is not for me, we don’t need this”, you shouldn’t give video advertising at all - today there are other, much cheaper ways to simply talk about your services, news and promotions.

If your customers can be grouped by interests, find sites and places that accumulate people of certain professions or hobbies, and place your ad there. Arrange with fitness clubs or cafe-restaurants serving business lunch from 12 to 15, if you are sure that the representatives of your audience prevail among their visitors.

Social networks have already been mentioned. The number of people registered in them and at least once a week visiting their page is enormous. They are fueled by countless communities, ranging from various “joint procurements” to large professional interest groups. Look, it's hard to find at least one foreign company that does not have its own Facebook page. They are friends through it with their audience, communicate with her, report on updates and promotions. Create your organization’s page there, attract subscribers - they will learn all about your news from their feed.

Not sure how to attract followers? Organize an advertising campaign on the social network itself - all the mechanisms for this are already in place, and the cost of the campaign can be directly proportional to group visits; make the action "we are playing the iPhone" among subscribers who reposted a message on their wall - that’s the audience. At the same time, you spent only on the iPhone and the necessary costs.

Another “wonderful” advertising mechanism is flyers and flyers. If these pieces of paper do not allow you to get a discount or do not represent any other value for a person (put a calendar there or print a pizza recipe), how long will they stay with a person from the moment of delivery? Right, until the first ballot box. Almost all the money that was spent on printing them, on work to distribute to people, goes to the trash. And many take them out of politeness and throw them out without even reading.

Why not invest the same money in mechanisms that are at least more likely to work? Self-deception, like, “Well, we did something,” will not be of any use to the cause, because this “something” actually means “nothing.” Make a cool bright announcement with the same message on the bus, transforming it beyond recognition - you will receive your advertising contacts and save a couple of trees.

You can give other examples, but it all comes down to a simple truth: for an advertising message to be seen, it needs to be placed where it is more convenient for your audience, and not where it is more familiar to your advertising department. The world is changing, it is in constant motion - you need to monitor these changes, learn to feel trends, at least to understand how best to communicate with your audience now, and ideally have an idea of \u200b\u200bwhat this dialogue will be like tomorrow .

2. “Not Ice”

Imagine a bulletin board with 50 flyers of about the same size. The board itself is standing in the stairwell, you are waiting for the elevator and look at these ads simply because there is nowhere to look. You see them all. But so far not a single message has been read - this is a fundamental difference. What 3, 4, 5 pieces of paper do you read before the lift arrives? These will be the ones that are different. Moreover, they differ precisely from those around them at the moment: color, letter size, sheet shape. The meaning of the written, the beauty of the syllable, the benefit for you personally - yes, that's fine, but if the piece of paper on which it is all is unremarkable, then it will remain unread, lost in the gray mass.

So today there is a lot of advertising. Inside any type of promotional product, there is a huge mass of units that are initially equally uninteresting to the consumer. Remember: competition does not begin between goods or services (this is the second stage) - competition begins with the struggle between advertising messages for the right to attract attention. Let your product be a thousand times better than that of a competitor. But if his sign attracts more attention, if his image is more consistent with the ideas of the target audience, first the buyer will go to him.

Therefore, in order to attract attention, an advertising message should cause an emotional reaction of the viewer, reader, listener - surprise, tear it out of everyday life, shock - take a walk on sites devoted to world advertising - they contain huge collections of the brightest examples of advertising campaigns that cause genuine interest to the presented products. This one works. And it’s not necessary to say that some of these videos or posters were made not for real campaigns, but for festivals - this fact, together with the success of the advertising product, only proves the short-sightedness of the people responsible for making decisions.

Are you afraid that they will not "understand" you? Regions or who else is there? ..

Better ask yourself, will your message be noticed at all, before you try to understand it? To distinguish oneself, to stand out, to draw attention to oneself is the primary task of an advertising product. This is not to say that it is much more important than delivering a message, but if it is not resolved, then the rest is pointless.

Trying to stand out, you should always remember three things: a board with pieces of paper (if all the other pieces of paper around you also become similar, then it's time to look for some new shape); that old tricks do not work (people get used to them and what used to be surprising, becomes ordinary, and sometimes it makes you bored - it's like a joke told in the fifth round); and about social responsibility (immoral advertising offends the viewer and society, causing moral harm to all of us - it’s better to try to find a solution in a positive, broad sense of the word).

3. Quality

Advertising should be of high quality. Is always. Today we see a lot of high-quality (at least technically) cinema, equipped with first-class sound and accompanied by excellent posters. There are many examples on the net and on television that are amazing in the quality of performance of videos, screensavers and presentations. All this is in a single information field. Ask a question: if your advertising products will seriously lose to the standards, who will believe that you have a solid company, and not another Sharashkin office?

This is not a call to spend more - it is a call to spend wisely. Yes, quality is expensive. Always expensive. Therefore, it is better to do it once well than to redo it many times; it’s better to make fewer posters, but make them cool, one video instead of five, but which will not be embarrassing to review in five years.

Of course, the quality of an advertising product is not only external execution, but also an idea that we talked about in the previous section, but any idea can easily be killed by poor execution. No need to console yourself with the fact that poor performance is the fault of the performer. This is primarily the customer’s fault - you could not formulate the task, you did not provide the conditions for its implementation. The contractor is dependent on your decisions, terms and budgets: extended with the decision - it means the work will be done later and in a different way (for example, a full-scale summer survey was supposed, which became impossible due to the winter), cut the budget by 10, and even by 5% - the performer was not able to use technologies that would provide the best result, reduced the time - there was no time left to polish the work to a shine.

Find yourself a good design studio, radio station, video production team, advertising agency whose opinion you will trust - and trust them in their work. They made as many videos, posters and conducted as many promotions as you can never order for the entire duration of your business, which means you will never know this business better than they do. They have experience, they know how to work correctly, just like you know everything about your business.

4. Fears

The first type of fear is the fear of loss. This type of fears a person develops in himself. In the vast majority of cases, it is expressed in the fear of losing precisely money.

It is characteristic for both customers and performers. At the same time, for some reason, those and others are much less likely to be afraid of losing time or reputation. Indeed, the loss of time for both means missed opportunities, and the loss of reputation can further aggravate this effect: the performer is rude to the customer, throws him and seriously expects that no one will know about his “quality of work”? Does the customer work on the principle “I am the boss, you are a fool”, clamps down the deadlines and cuts off financing (if you do not withdraw money), and really thinks that this information will not be distributed in professional circles? Losing money is unpleasant, very noticeable at the time of loss. But often in the end it’s not as scary as the loss of reputation and time. This is not so noticeable. Exactly until others suddenly stop working with you.

The second type of fear is fear of responsibility. He comes from outside. Performers are predominantly afraid of an answer to the customer in the event of a dispute, which leads either to bulky paper fraud with seals at each step, or to inexorably shaky nerves. It is difficult to argue with the fact that thoughts like, “what to do if you mess up” rarely contribute to productive work. Against the background of this fear, such a real one, constantly floating in the air, other fears of the same nature - such as social responsibility ("and if children see it"), administrative (advertising compliance with the law) - often go by the wayside, which may ultimately go sideways all participants of this event.

For the customer, this fear has a slightly different form. The prevailing problem is: “What if I don’t look good, what if they think something about me, consider it an upstart?” Here, with the same wording, fear looms and try something new and non-standard. Although one should focus on the problem of the quality of manufactured goods and services - if they are unsatisfactory, then they will think about it.

They will think badly if you sell shit in a beautiful wrapper and coolly advertise it. And if your product is good, no advertising will spoil it. This absurd desire to seem better than you are will not impress anyone. Today, sincerity and ease of communication work - do not miss the opportunity to be yourself, talk to people in a simple language and demonstrate a sense of humor (naturally, within reasonable limits).

Have you noticed these posters in the departments of well-known companies, where beautiful smiling girls in uniform inform that they are happy and obliged to do their job well? And what is the reality? And how are the sensations as a result? That's it.

Fears adversely affect the outcome. The stronger they are, the less productively the work is built, the worse the result will be. However, most of the fears can be dispelled by the parties themselves - even if the temporary collective “executor - customer” will be a team, and not a camp of internecine wars. You are doing one thing - help each other do it well, because all participants are interested in this, no matter what they think.

5. Priorities and the vicious cycle

The most important thing is to determine what goal you want to achieve with your campaign. If you just decided to “make a video and watch it on TV”, then think about what you are achieving? This action may be aimed at creating a certain image, or a story about a service. Think about the audience - who will watch it, to whom you want to show your message. Once you decide on this, it will immediately become clear how to set the task and according to what criteria to evaluate the work of specialists - to ensure that the advertising product clearly and interestingly conveys the message, and not to the presence of a mole on the model, without which you personally would like it more. Track what's really important, delegate the rest to the appropriate professionals.

Why is it important? Incorrectly set priorities, an attempt to get into the work of specialists, showing that you are the smartest and know everything (which is basically impossible for any person), incorrectly formulated tasks and requirements lead to the creation of a product that does not work as expected. If you want a car, but ask the performer to arrange a “four-wheel drive vehicle” for you, allocating only a third of the cost of the cheapest car, don’t be surprised at the wooden carriage with an old nag - the task is solved, the costs are minimized, you can only kick yourself for incorrect wording.

This phenomenon has another negative consequence, reflected in the advertising market, and therefore in all its participants: disappointment. As already mentioned at the very beginning, if advertising does not work, its budgets are cut. We saw that often advertising does not work not by itself, but because of incorrect decisions. However, if this is not recognized, it is considered that advertising does not work at all. Further budget cuts only exacerbate the effect: fewer messages, lower quality, worse effect.

This is the same vicious circle in which you must try not to get into. And in order to try to figure out how to avoid this, where to look for the roots of problems and ways to solve them, this article was written.

6. Instead of summing up

Everything said in this article is not a revelation at all. One way or another, such thoughts can be gleaned both from books and from conversations with any specialist in the field of advertising and business promotion. Many things are generally built on worldly logic. But at the same time for some reason they are constantly forgotten. The purpose of this article was precisely the desire to remind, re-illuminate some aspects of the advertising.

The article was written on the basis of personal experience and, of course, does not claim to be the ultimate truth. This is the point of view that it is proposed to supplement, revise, rethink, so that one fine day not individual units, but the vast majority of advertising products and campaigns become effective and responsible tools for promoting the product, for which we would no longer be ashamed.

This happens so often that success stories are more likely to be an exception than rules, if we are not talking about the largest brands, but in general about the situation on the shop floor.

Advertisers are disappointed, cut budgets for advertising, but continue to order it, because they do not see another way to promote their product. At the same time, for some reason it is extremely rare to find a serious analysis of the reasons for the failure of the campaign and a truly thoughtful approach to the next. And here the responsibility lies with both advertisers and advertisers.

The latter can be - no, not justified, but at least understood - someone is simply a "not-very-specialist" and does not know how to do it right, and someone is no longer able to prove his case to the customer and agrees to any compromises, so as not to lose earnings. It’s more difficult for advertisers to understand: they invest a lot of money, spend even more precious time, in the end, to get a mechanism that does not work!

Let's figure out what is going wrong and what needs to be done so that the desired result is achieved.

0. Axiom

The first literally means that when you see your ad, a person will understand what you want to tell him and understand it correctly. The second implies that a person will generally see your advertisement and pay attention to it, which is the minimum necessary for the perception of the message. Generally speaking, this is even more important, because if the announcement is not noticed, then everything is in vain. If you noticed him, but did not pay attention - also in vain, because the message will not be read and accepted for consideration.

1. Old tricks do not work

Times are changing, society is changing very quickly. Take a look around: 15 years ago, many of the things that surround us today either did not exist in nature, or they were dinosaur ancestors of modern objects. Household appliances, electronics, computers. Especially computers.

Lyrical digression

Customers continue to write in their briefs that their target audience is successful people 25–40 years old and advertise on TV. Come to your senses! Many of these people have been using TV for a long time mainly to watch Blue-Ray and video games, and they find news, movies and TV shows on thematic sites on the Internet. And every day there are more such people. The television, of course, is still watched by a huge audience, but in order to stand out there, advertising must have exceptional properties, since over 20 years of advertising on Russian TV, viewers have learned to filter such “information noise”. Moreover, commercial breaks are most often used as breaks in a program or film to escape to the toilet or to the kitchen.

If you want your commercial to really be seen, make or entrust the specialists to make it so vivid, unusual and memorable that it wanders from wall to wall with enthusiastic comments on social and corporate networks, like “Did you see this ?!” With this attitude, you can safely count on loyalty and celebrate the success of the advertising campaign. If, reading this paragraph, you think “well, this is not for me, we don’t need this”, you shouldn’t give video advertising at all - today there are other, much cheaper ways to simply talk about your services, news and promotions.

If your customers can be grouped by interests, find sites and places that accumulate people of certain professions or hobbies, and place your ad there. Arrange with fitness clubs or cafe-restaurants serving business lunch from 12 to 15, if you are sure that the representatives of your audience prevail among their visitors.

Social networks have already been mentioned. The number of people registered in them and at least once a week visiting their page is enormous. They are fueled by countless communities, ranging from various “joint procurements” to large professional interest groups. Look, it's hard to find at least one foreign company that does not have its own Facebook page. They are friends through it with their audience, communicate with her, report on updates and promotions. Create your organization’s page there, attract subscribers - they will learn all about your news from their feed.

Not sure how to attract followers? Organize an advertising campaign on the social network itself - all the mechanisms for this are already in place, and the cost of the campaign can be directly proportional to group visits; make the action "we are playing the iPhone" among subscribers who reposted a message on their wall - that’s the audience. At the same time, you spent only on the iPhone and the necessary costs.

Another “wonderful” advertising mechanism is flyers and flyers. If these pieces of paper do not allow you to get a discount or do not represent any other value for a person (put a calendar there or print a pizza recipe), how long will they stay with a person from the moment of delivery? Right, until the first ballot box. Almost all the money that was spent on printing them, on work to distribute to people, goes to the trash. And many take them out of politeness and throw them out without even reading.

Why not invest the same money in mechanisms that are at least more likely to work? Self-deception, like, “Well, we did something,” will not be of any use to the cause, because this “something” actually means “nothing.” Make a cool bright announcement with the same message on the bus, transforming it beyond recognition - you will receive your advertising contacts and save a couple of trees.

You can give other examples, but it all comes down to a simple truth: for an advertising message to be seen, it needs to be placed where it is more convenient for your audience, and not where it is more familiar to your advertising department. The world is changing, it is in constant motion - you need to monitor these changes, learn to feel trends, at least to understand how best to communicate with your audience now, and ideally have an idea of \u200b\u200bwhat this dialogue will be like tomorrow .

2. “Not Ice”

Imagine a bulletin board with 50 flyers of about the same size. The board itself is standing in the stairwell, you are waiting for the elevator and look at these ads simply because there is nowhere to look. You see them all. But so far not a single message has been read - this is a fundamental difference. What 3, 4, 5 pieces of paper do you read before the lift arrives? These will be the ones that are different. Moreover, they differ precisely from those around them at the moment: color, letter size, sheet shape. The meaning of the written, the beauty of the syllable, the benefit for you personally - yes, that's fine, but if the piece of paper on which it is all is unremarkable, then it will remain unread, lost in the gray mass.

So today there is a lot of advertising. Inside any type of promotional product, there is a huge mass of units that are initially equally uninteresting to the consumer. Remember: competition does not begin between goods or services (this is the second stage) - competition begins with the struggle between advertising messages for the right to attract attention. Let your product be a thousand times better than that of a competitor. But if his sign attracts more attention, if his image is more consistent with the ideas of the target audience, first the buyer will go to him.

Therefore, in order to attract attention, an advertising message should cause an emotional reaction of the viewer, reader, listener - surprise, tear it out of everyday life, shock - take a walk on sites devoted to world advertising - they contain huge collections of the brightest examples of advertising campaigns that cause genuine interest to the presented products. This one works. And it’s not necessary to say that some of these videos or posters were made not for real campaigns, but for festivals - this fact, together with the success of the advertising product, only proves the short-sightedness of the people responsible for making decisions.

Are you afraid that they will not "understand" you? Regions or who else is there? ..

Better ask yourself, will your message be noticed at all, before you try to understand it? To distinguish oneself, to stand out, to draw attention to oneself is the primary task of an advertising product. This is not to say that it is much more important than delivering a message, but if it is not resolved, then the rest is pointless.

Trying to stand out, you should always remember three things: a board with pieces of paper (if all the other pieces of paper around you also become similar, then it's time to look for some new shape); that old tricks do not work (people get used to them and what used to be surprising, becomes ordinary, and sometimes it makes you bored - it's like a joke told in the fifth round); and about social responsibility (immoral advertising offends the viewer and society, causing moral harm to all of us - it’s better to try to find a solution in a positive, broad sense of the word).

3. Quality

Advertising should be of high quality. Is always. Today we see a lot of high-quality (at least technically) cinema, equipped with first-class sound and accompanied by excellent posters. There are many examples on the net and on television that are amazing in the quality of performance of videos, screensavers and presentations. All this is in a single information field. Ask a question: if your advertising products will seriously lose to the standards, who will believe that you have a solid company, and not another Sharashkin office?

This is not a call to spend more - it is a call to spend wisely. Yes, quality is expensive. Always expensive. Therefore, it is better to do it once well than to redo it many times; it’s better to make fewer posters, but make them cool, one video instead of five, but which will not be embarrassing to review in five years.

Of course, the quality of an advertising product is not only external execution, but also an idea that we talked about in the previous section, but any idea can easily be killed by poor execution. No need to console yourself with the fact that poor performance is the fault of the performer. This is primarily the customer’s fault - you could not formulate the task, you did not provide the conditions for its implementation. The contractor is dependent on your decisions, terms and budgets: extended with the decision - it means the work will be done later and in a different way (for example, a full-scale summer survey was supposed, which became impossible due to the winter), cut the budget by 10, and even by 5% - the performer was not able to use technologies that would provide the best result, reduced the time - there was no time left to polish the work to a shine.

Find yourself a good design studio, radio station, video production team, advertising agency whose opinion you will trust - and trust them in their work. They made as many videos, posters and conducted as many promotions as you can never order for the entire duration of your business, which means you will never know this business better than they do. They have experience, they know how to work correctly, just like you know everything about your business.

4. Fears

The first type of fear is the fear of loss. This type of fears a person develops in himself. In the vast majority of cases, it is expressed in the fear of losing precisely money.

It is characteristic for both customers and performers. At the same time, for some reason, those and others are much less likely to be afraid of losing time or reputation. Indeed, the loss of time for both means missed opportunities, and the loss of reputation can further aggravate this effect: the performer is rude to the customer, throws him and seriously expects that no one will know about his “quality of work”? Does the customer work on the principle “I am the boss, you are a fool”, clamps down the deadlines and cuts off financing (if you do not withdraw money), and really thinks that this information will not be distributed in professional circles? Losing money is unpleasant, very noticeable at the time of loss. But often in the end it’s not as scary as the loss of reputation and time. This is not so noticeable. Exactly until others suddenly stop working with you.

The second type of fear is fear of responsibility. He comes from outside. Performers are predominantly afraid of an answer to the customer in the event of a dispute, which leads either to bulky paper fraud with seals at each step, or to inexorably shaky nerves. It is difficult to argue with the fact that thoughts like, “what to do if you mess up” rarely contribute to productive work. Against the background of this fear, such a real one, constantly floating in the air, other fears of the same nature - such as social responsibility ("and if children see it"), administrative (advertising compliance with the law) - often go by the wayside, which may ultimately go sideways all participants of this event.

For the customer, this fear has a slightly different form. The prevailing problem is: “What if I don’t look good, what if they think something about me, consider it an upstart?” Here, with the same wording, fear looms and try something new and non-standard. Although one should focus on the problem of the quality of manufactured goods and services - if they are unsatisfactory, then they will think about it.

They will think badly if you sell shit in a beautiful wrapper and coolly advertise it. And if your product is good, no advertising will spoil it. This absurd desire to seem better than you are will not impress anyone. Today, sincerity and ease of communication work - do not miss the opportunity to be yourself, talk to people in a simple language and demonstrate a sense of humor (naturally, within reasonable limits).

Have you noticed these posters in the departments of well-known companies, where beautiful smiling girls in uniform inform that they are happy and obliged to do their job well? And what is the reality? And how are the sensations as a result? That's it.

Fears adversely affect the outcome. The stronger they are, the less productively the work is built, the worse the result will be. However, most of the fears can be dispelled by the parties themselves - even if the temporary collective “executor - customer” will be a team, and not a camp of internecine wars. You are doing one thing - help each other do it well, because all participants are interested in this, no matter what they think.

5. Priorities and the vicious cycle

The most important thing is to determine what goal you want to achieve with your campaign. If you just decided to “make a video and watch it on TV”, then think about what you are achieving? This action may be aimed at creating a certain image, or a story about a service. Think about the audience - who will watch it, to whom you want to show your message. Once you decide on this, it will immediately become clear how to set the task and according to what criteria to evaluate the work of specialists - to ensure that the advertising product clearly and interestingly conveys the message, and not to the presence of a mole on the model, without which you personally would like it more. Track what's really important, delegate the rest to the appropriate professionals.

Why is it important? Incorrectly set priorities, an attempt to get into the work of specialists, showing that you are the smartest and know everything (which is basically impossible for any person), incorrectly formulated tasks and requirements lead to the creation of a product that does not work as expected. If you want a car, but ask the performer to arrange a “four-wheel drive vehicle” for you, allocating only a third of the cost of the cheapest car, don’t be surprised at the wooden carriage with an old nag - the task is solved, the costs are minimized, you can only kick yourself for incorrect wording.

This phenomenon has another negative consequence, reflected in the advertising market, and therefore in all its participants: disappointment. As already mentioned at the very beginning, if advertising does not work, its budgets are cut. We saw that often advertising does not work not by itself, but because of incorrect decisions. However, if this is not recognized, it is considered that advertising does not work at all. Further budget cuts only exacerbate the effect: fewer messages, lower quality, worse effect.

This is the same vicious circle in which you must try not to get into. And in order to try to figure out how to avoid this, where to look for the roots of problems and ways to solve them, this article was written.

6. Instead of summing up

Everything said in this article is not a revelation at all. One way or another, such thoughts can be gleaned both from books and from conversations with any specialist in the field of advertising and business promotion. Many things are generally built on worldly logic. But at the same time for some reason they are constantly forgotten. The purpose of this article was precisely the desire to remind, re-illuminate some aspects of the advertising.

The article was written on the basis of personal experience and, of course, does not claim to be the ultimate truth. This is the point of view that it is proposed to supplement, revise, rethink, so that one fine day not individual units, but the vast majority of advertising products and campaigns become effective and responsible tools for promoting the product, for which we would no longer be ashamed.

- Say, do you need advertising? This is you at! What are you promoting there? Italian shoes? So this is our topic - we ate a dog on these shoes! Now we have a whisker and make out! The main thing is to "recreate" the idea, so that UX!
  Is there a syllable? We’ll come up with a slogan! Now, now ... "We will shoe the whole country!" Well, the class, in kind ?! It really works!
Text? What text? Ah, the text ... Do not worry, we have a copywriter with experience - all my life in sales. We noticed it at the Hot Pies kiosk near the office, so we immediately put it on our copyrights. Now she gives us texts instead of pies - 20,000 characters per hour!
  Picture? Wow, a picture is needed. Where is it without a picture ... Oh, and our Tanya-cleaner yesterday on Instagram from the dressing room checked in as she felt. What do not you understand? And then, Tanya, don’t you understand? Exclusive, I say, a picture in the style of luxury we are making up for you. Note the bonus!
  And the background is brighter. Red must immediately rush into the eyes! It really works! Corporate color is green, you say? So we will write the text in green, and the background is sure to be red!
  Well, almost done. Now we’ll reduce the font so that the text fits ... What does it mean, the text is unreadable? Whoever needs it will make out. But in general, let’s better look at Tanka - a valid self-test with a little girl happened ...

“Oil painting,” the well-known hero of the film actor Mashkov would say. Say, exaggerate? Well, except in the details. But in general, this is a very ordinary sketch from life. It’s even worse! It’s interesting, someone in our country tried to calculate how many different kinds of advertising specialists are per capita today? It feels like everyone is engaged in advertising today. Former sellers, doctors, builders, janitors and even professional parasites.
  Well, judging by the above, neither a mind nor a lot of body movements are needed for this. Sit yourself riveting pictures with the syllableAnami, hang noodles on customers ears about "it really works" and crunch banknotes. And the client doesn’t even think anything at all in advertising, he won’t go to these “specialists” for the second time, because he knows how to count his money and will not want to repeat the experience with the illusion of “grandma.” There will be others. And our businessman will also go looking for others who “certainly know” THAT “really works”.

So they go around in circles. The number of various creative agencies, copywriting bureaus and design studios is growing by leaps and bounds, despite any crises and ruble collapses. And the amount of good, truly selling advertising, as it was negligible, remains.

But if, from what you read, you conclude that the fault of the general lack of professionalism of the advertisers is to blame, I will disappoint you. This is not true. The stick, as they say, is about two ends. And very often in place of the main character of the plot described by me above, it is not the impudent advertising profane, but an uncompromising ignorant client with a firm conviction in his marketing talent. And then even the most intelligent specialist has to make a choice: either send such a client to the forest, or embody the ideas of his inflamed brain in green and red with a heifer in the right side.

The Bible says: “If a blind man leads a blind man, then both will fall into the pit.” In my opinion, it very vividly describes what is happening in our advertising market. And therefore, I am simply convinced that both the advertisers and the advertisers should know the basics, to understand the elementary laws and rules of marketing communications. The latter may object, they say, we do not study surgery when we go to the hospital for an operation, and it would never occur to anyone to sign up for pilot courses before flying on vacation - everyone should do his own thing. Of course. But, excuse me, surgeons and pilots “specialists” do not work with builders diplomas ...

Do you know what the entrepreneurs who go to my intensive business copywriting say? Yes, this banal phrase: tired of throwing money away. Moreover, not all of them are directly ready to make advertisements on their own, write sales texts. They just want to understand what to demand from performers. The most common mistakes that lead to the fact that ads do not sell, I collected in my small book-manuals   “Really DOES NOT work. 33 Tips for Avoiding Advertising. You can download it. And if you are used to receiving and digesting information in batches, subscribe to blog updates: from time to time I will publish some of its parts. And I’ll start right now with the first and very grave mistake of selling everything that is in advertising right away.

All at once means nothing

Have you ever been to a flea market? I do not mean a bulletin board on the Internet with the same name, but a real city flea market, where heaps of overt rubbish are laid out on uncomplicated counters of cardboard and newspapers. Such folk flea markets, probably, are in every city in the post-Soviet space. For example, in Yekaterinburg the famous Uralmashevskaya flea market has been living and living since the 30s of the last century.

I have nothing against this method of private trade. Flea markets really help people who find themselves in difficult life situations, and in times of crisis for some they become the only salvation. I'm talking about something else. About associations. These sad rows of all kinds of stuff, where, next to worn boots, gypsum busts of leaders of the people, books yellowing from time to time and blue-eyed baby dolls without limbs are waiting for their buyer, stand in front of me whenever I see an advertisement in which they are trying to sell everything at once.

Any number of examples. Just yesterday on the radio: “The company“ Horns and Hooves ”offers the public safe doors of special reliability, as well as glazing balconies, loggias and terraces. Installers with experience are required. The salary is high. Phone ... ”It feels like the company is participating in a competition for the most mediocre way to lower its money into the pipe.

Or one more thing. One of my clients came up with a problem: in his car service, demand for seasonal undercarriage repair work suddenly fell. Always, he says, by the summer of recording, the queue was collected, and here May in the yard - and silence. We develop a stock, determine the carriers. And then he gives me: “And let's write in a leaflet that we are still repairing engines, we have a tire fitting and a car wash in July. Since spending money, you need to fully advertise. ”
  It is in this “fully advertised” that lies the main root of evil. It seems to the advertiser that he is saving, and to the potential client - that they are trying to discard "everything that is, and what not to eat."

To advertise and sell is not the same thing. If you want to show yourself to the world so that you can see who you are and what you are selling, there is no problem - tell, show, print lists and price lists. Want to sell - do targeted advertising. One advertisement - one product, one service.

By doing otherwise, you do not “save” your advertising budgets, but only spray your efforts. In addition, turning your advertising into a banal flea market, you risk not only sales, but also your own image. Well, what can you think of a company that, instead of building a competent marketing strategy, stupidly tries to sell everything at once.

Let me remind you that the remaining 32 tips on how not to do advertising can be obtained