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What Is Your Advertising Supposed To Do Anyway?

Ever ask yourself why you advertise?

There is a reason to do it, you know. But it's not likely to be the reason or reasons you've been brainwashed to think it is.

The most common reason for advertising I hear among small business owners is, "to get my name out there."

Ask someone more sophisticated maybe somebody with an MBA or somebody who works in an advertising agency and you're likely to hear it said differently. "To create awareness," or "to build my brand," or "to make sure I'm at the top of the prospect's mind when he thinks of my category."

Poppycock!

Look, you want to build awareness? Here is PRECISELY how to do it. Run a single, full page ad in the newspaper. You'll only need to do this one time, I promise. Use the headline "I'm a crook." Then explain in the body copy how you routinely over promise and under deliver. Talk about your terrible customer service, your deliberate attempts to mislead customers and prospects. Finally explain your bait and switch tactics, how you knowingly charge far more for your products and services than they are worth, and how you laugh all the way to the bank every time another sucker graces your doorstep and forks over their hard-earned cash.

You follow those instructions to the letter and I absolutely GUARANTEE more awareness than you'll know what to do with. I am willing to bet that if you run that ad, you'll not only be written up in the local press for FREE, but I can just about promise you'll also be able to land appearances on Oprah, Leno and Letterman, the Today Show, and hundreds of radio and television talk shows all over the country. In addition, we'll see your face on the cover of the National Enquirer, People Magazine, and maybe you'll be named Time Magazine's "Man of the Year." For the cost of a single full page newspaper ad it can even be a weekday edition in the lowest circulation newspaper around your area you'll get literally millions of dollars worth of big-time, awareness-generating publicity, all for FREE!

Oh, you'll have awareness all right. But what do you suppose it will do for the sales curve?

And as for being at the top of the prospect's mind at buying time mostly a myth. There are exceptions, but they are relatively rare. So rare, they don't merit mention here, because odds are long indeed that they would not apply to you.

So what is the case for advertising, if not all this high falutin' and suspiciously difficult to measure reasons to do it?

Simple. To

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