Marketing Tips From The Guru

By Warwick Reader
Profit Growth Systems, Thirroul

"Don’t try to be creative or original"

Pretty ads don’t sell products. The most appealing (to look at) and artistic ads seldom make people buy the products they are supposed to be selling. The ads that win awards for the advertising agencies who create them rarely win sales awards for the clients! During a well known survey of ads that won an award, it was found that an agency that won four of the awards actually lost the clients business… Another client refused to even run his ad and… of 80 TV classic ads nominated for an award, 36 of the business owners involved had either sacked the agency or had gone broke.

Not a real good record, is it?

In fact, the owner of one of the biggest direct response advertising agencies once said to a client… “Do you want creativity and originality? Or, do you want to see the darned sales graph going up? Because you sure as heck ain’t going to get them both!”

In fact research clearly shows that ads that look like editorial articles get 500% more readership than ads that obviously look like ads.

I’ll explain a little. People don’t buy magazines or newspapers to read the ads do they? Of course not. You, I and everybody else, buy the papers, the magazines or watch the TV for the stories. By making your ads informative and making them look like the stories in the publication, you’ll get more sales.

When writing your ad, pretend you are the editor of the magazine writing about your company or product.

I guess the point I am making, is don’t be creative for the sake of being creative. Finding a new twist for a proven sales approach is fine, but only as long as it works better than the previous one. Let your sales graph be the judge.

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