{"id":36,"date":"2005-07-24T11:44:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-24T18:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fishingforcustomers.com\/bad-seduction\/"},"modified":"2017-06-04T16:54:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T23:54:14","slug":"bad-seduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/bad-seduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Seduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I just read some advertising suggestions on an Internet marketing site that are beyond annoying. They are flat-out bad advice.<\/p>\n

They illustrate a complete lack of understanding of the whole persuasion process.<\/p>\n

First, small business owners are told that advertising often has a cumulative effect, so ad-driven sales may not be immediate. Then, they\u2019re told how to measure and track the immediate response of their advertising.<\/p>\n

Reading past that little dichotomy, some of the suggestions included:<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Use magazine response cards. Remember to code the cards if you use multiple publications.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Use a coupon in your newspaper ads. Code the coupons so that you can tell which publication generates the most sales.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Put a line in your radio scripts to “Mention this ad and get a 10% discount.”<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Ask all new customers how they heard about your business.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Make no mistake. These are all bad suggestions. Very bad. In addition to being very poor persuasion, each of these strategies assumes that your prospective customers are paying very close attention to your ads.<\/p>\n

Trust me, customers don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Good Advertising is Seduction<\/h3>\n

Pretend with me for a minute that all advertising is an attempt to get a “date” with your prospect.<\/p>\n

How do these recommendations hold up under that scenario?<\/p>\n

Would you, for instance, send a response card to anyone you could possibly be interested in dating, which says “If you\u2019d like to learn more about me, fill out your name, address, and your specific areas of interest in me, and apply your own postage to return it to me?<\/em>”<\/p>\n

No, I didn\u2019t think you would.<\/p>\n

The advice contained in these recommendations also suffers from major misunderstandings in the motivations of customers.<\/p>\n

Coupons Assume That You Have Nothing to Offer but a Better Price<\/h3>\n

Think about the implications of that for a moment. It suggests that after you\u2019ve spent the money to advertise your discounted (and minimally profitable) price, that the customer has no reason to ever come back to do business with you again. Or at least, until you drop your price again.<\/p>\n

Mention this ad? In three decades of mass media experience, I\u2019ve never heard of a single person saying “I heard your ad. Give me the discount<\/em>.” Smart radio stations will never allow this on their air. Does that mean people don\u2019t respond to advertising? No, it doesn\u2019t mean that at all. It means that they won\u2019t embarrass themselves by parroting your line. Not surprising, is it? Most people won\u2019t admit that advertising affects them in any way.<\/p>\n

Ask new customers where they heard about you?<\/p>\n

Customers Don’t Know Where They Heard About You<\/h3>\n

Oh, they\u2019ll try to give you an answer. Really though, your advertising isn\u2019t important enough for them to remember exactly what they learned about you, let alone the source of that information. But because they\u2019ll want to be helpful, they will guess. They\u2019ll usually guess wrong.<\/p>\n

There are two major problems with any of these “track your response” strategies.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 They provide bad information. Bad information is worse than none at all. It gives you a distorted view of reality. Which leads to the second problem:<\/p>\n

\u00b7 You\u2019ll be tempted to make decisions based on this bad information. You will frequently make the wrong decisions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Consider this, instead. Send the object of your affection an “I love you” message.<\/p>\n

Does it matter whether your “I love you” comes in a telegram, an e-mail, a card, or over the phone? Or is the expression of love the most important consideration?<\/p>\n

Does it matter whether your ad message is delivered in the newspaper, over the radio, on cable TV, or by direct mail? Or is the message the critical part?<\/p>\n

Your advertising will improve by orders of magnitude when you spend less time attempting to find the most effective medium, and more time searching for the most effective message. Consider the message to be the bait you use when you\u2019re fishing for customers.<\/p>\n

Your Guide,
\nChuck McKay<\/em><\/p>\n

\"MarketingYour Fishing for Customers guide, Chuck McKay<\/a>, gets people to buy more of what you sell.<\/p>\n

Got questions about tracking your advertising? Drop Chuck a note at ChuckMcKay@ChuckMcKayOnLine.com<\/a>. Or call him at 760-813-5474.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good advertising is seduction. Send the object of your affection an \u201cI love you\u201d message.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[107,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","category-advertising-101"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4136,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/4136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}