Three Questions to Answer BEFORE You Spend One Cent on Advertising

I worked my way through college employed at a termite and
pest control company. Pretty humble beginnings for an
aspiring leader!

In California, where I lived, a home cannot be bought or
sold without a clean bill of health from a termite and pest
control company. As they look for these wood eating
insects, termite inspectors also report any dry rot and
structural flaws in the property.

Which is how I spent a month one summer in Redwood City.

Our company had inspected an imposing turn-of-the-century
home that was being put on the real estate market for the
very first time in its storied history. The home rested,
not on a foundation, but on a dozen or so stacks of
concrete block. We had been contracted to bring this
building into the 20th century by putting a suitable
foundation underneath it.

The crew I worked on jacked up the house with a house jack,
cut the floor joists from the posts that rested on the
concrete blocks, dug a trench around the circumference of
the house, poured concrete, and lowered the house onto its
new foundation. What an ordeal!

It is far easier and less time consuming, to put a
foundation in first, and then build a house.

When it comes to advertising, most small businesses are
like this old house. Instead of doing the groundwork
necessary for success, they go out and build their
building: advertising here, advertising there, with varying
degrees of success. Thousands and thousands of dollars
later, most small business owners have no idea if any of
this expensive advertising had any impact at all.

Time spent on your foundation can solve this problem. Here
are three questions to answer BEFORE you spend one cent on
advertising:

1. Who is your target audience?

Who is the person most likely to use your products or
services? This is a counterintuitive practice called
narrowcasting. Instead of trying to reach everybody,
narrowcasting aims at a very specific, identifiable group
of people. Narrowcasting is essential for success in
today's crowded marketplace. If you are everything to
everyone, you are nothing to no one.

Take the time to know EXACTLY who you want to reach and
learn everything about him or her.

One of my small business clients did this by tracking all
the people who came into his store during a typical week.
From that exercise he was able to determine the age range
and gender of his primary target, professional women in
their late 30's and early 40's. This group comprised almost
two-thirds of everyone who came into his store.
Surprisingly, he also learned who was NOT his primary
target, young males 18-30, who comprised less that 5% of
foot traffic on a given week.

Then he went one step further. This small business owner
took 10-15 minutes with 25 of the women in his target and
asked them a dozen questions. From their responses he was
able to craft a profile of his target complete with likes,
dislikes, buying motives, children's ages, daily habits and
shaped his advertising by it.

2. What does your target audience read, listen to, or watch?

One of the questions you MUST ask your target audience is
what media outlets they read, listen to, or watch. Without
knowing this information, your advertising odds are no
better that the lottery's.

The dirty little secret in advertising sales is that most
buys are ego buys and have nothing to do with targeting. A
business owner likes the radio station, or drinks beers
after work with the ad rep, or wants to be a TV star in a
funny commercial.

If you want to be a star, go to open mic night and the
nearest comedy club. Don't gamble away your hard-earned
dollars on speculative advertising. Again, find out EXACTLY
what your target audience reads, listens to, or watches and
place your advertising ONLY on those mediums.

Here too, though, you must be strategic. Don't do something
one month in the newspaper and switch to the radio the next
month and then try a direct mail coupon book. Dominate a
medium that connects with your target.

If there is one secret to successful advertising, it is
this: repetition.

This means having your advertising run and run and run on
one medium so that it appears like you own that medium.
When you are sick of seeing or hearing your ad, GREAT, your
prospects are just now noticing it. Once you have dominated
a medium in this way, add a new advertising medium only
when you can dominate it as well.

3. What is your compelling benefit?

What do you say in your advertising now that you've defined
your target and are ready to dominate a medium that speaks
directly to them? Here, too, is where small businesses go
awry.

Recognize any of these words?

- Quality service
- Lowest price
- Serving the state since 1982

These slogans, and hundreds like them, mean nothing because
they don't say anything. A compelling benefit, however,
grabs your prospects by the throat and demands their
attention.

To craft your compelling benefit, you must first know your
competitive advantage. What do you do better than anyone
else in the business? Focus on that one thing and state it
in a powerful, succinct way. Sure you do other things, and
people will get to know that in time, but first you need a
clear, simple focus to your messaging.

Now take your competitive advantage and state specifically
how you will make a person's life different when they
experience it. Will you make them money? Keep them safe?
Bring greater health? Increase quality of life?

Here are two examples:

The Kingston Training Group specializes in teaching sales
people how to set first appointments. Their six word
slogan, all beginning with the letter M, is this: Make More
Meetings, Make More Money. Note the competitive advantage,
setting appointments, and the compelling benefit,
increasing income, stated in a memorable way. Perfect!

The benefit statement I have for my business is this: A
BETTER Business, A BETTER Life. I specialize in helping
small business owners build their business in a systematic
way that allows them to live the life they wanted when they
started it in the first place. Again, stated in just six
words.

This best part about this tool is that it is absolutely
free because words are free. Work on your words. Make them
simple, short, and powerful. Then build all your
advertising around them.

----------------------------------------------------
Bill Zipp, President of Leadership Link, Inc., is a
seasoned small business specialist. Bill has spent
thousands of hours working with hundreds of business
leaders, and his proven program, The Business Fitness™
System, provides a step-by-step plan for building a strong,
self-sustaining small business. For a FREE Special Report,
The 3 Biggest Killers of Small Businesses Today (And What
YOU Can Do About Them!) visit http://www.LeadershipLink.net
.