One of the great lies of advertising is "Get your name out there and run some ads." This lie was the key reason for the big DOT.COM crash in 2000.



Here is a top secret tip. The ad agencies and newspaper reps don't know how to advertise! I'm serious, ad reps and ad agencies haven't got a clue how to advertise effectively. Sure they'll create great looking ads, with nice images and cute headlines but guess what?

Ads that win awards rarely generate sales and ads that sell rarely win awards.

The only type of advertising you should use is direct response advertising. The only purpose of direct response advertising is to produce a clear measurable response.

If you want to save yourself a fortune in business then remember this - All advertising MUST do one of two things:

Generate Sales......... or......... Generate Sales Leads

By doing this you can instantly tell if this ad, newspaper, banner, campaign is working!

Your 'branding' and 'image building' is a secondary benefit of direct response advertising.

Here are the 3 fundamental reasons why most corporate advertising doesn't work:

1. No attention grabbing headline (Business name, location doesn't work)

2. No reason(s) or USP (Unique selling point) to choose you over other ads

3. No compelling offer or call to action

The trick is to get people to send you their contact details in exchange for a free offer, report, guide or DVD. If you have a larger business, you may even want to set up a separate phone line with a number that only appears in your ad.

If you're directing people to a website, you may want to set up a special web page that also only appears in your ad. This will ensure that you can clearly identify who, if anyone is responding to your advertising.

Another cheaper system to track offline advertising is to list a different contact name in each offline publication which will be relevant to each advertising campaign. So 'Call Steve', Mary, John etc will be the contact listed on each ad campaign and this first question your sales staff should ask for and take note.

Tell this to your ad agency or newspaper rep and watch them get angry, go red in the face and start stamping their feet.

Then you'll know you're on the right track.