5 do-it-yourself marketing mistakes

In the 16 years I’ve been in the design/marketing biz I’ve seen my share of odd marketing messages and client requests from small businesses.  Though large, national companies are not immune to the items on this list, more often it’s the local, “mom and pop” shops that tend to be the biggest offenders — small companies that do their own marketing and do no solicit outside professional marketing help. Small businesses also tend to be more results focused (i.e. get the cash register to ring), and don’t tend to do branding/image advertising with any great frequency as they need to get the biggest results from their marketing budget–that means delivering some sort of benefit statement with appropriate call to action directly to potential customers.

Here’s a list of my top 5 head-scratchers — then, next time you’re reading your local paper, or watching your local morning newscast, see how many of the below items you can spot.

“The Cram:” Easily identified in print by the lack of white/null space. Design and copy flow are irrelevant — if the client is paying for the ad space, every square inch will be packed full of information, graphics and (gasp!) starbursts! The assumption on the part of the advertiser is that the reader A) wants to know everything about the business and B) reads every ad completely before moving on to the next.

Reality check: Pick the single most important messaging point, discuss it briefly and instruct the reader what to steps to take to get more information (call, click or come in). Too much information does nothing but confuse the advertiser and dissuades them visually from investing the time to learn more about the offerings.

“The Errant Call:” The advertiser has the wrong type of call-to-action in the advertisement.  For example, a restaurant tells the reader to visit their website, or a car dealer promotes the phone number rather than the showroom address. Neither of these two examples have a proper contact source for the type of business.

Reality check: Pick a good call-to-action that directly corresponds to the action the business desires of its client.  For a restaurant, in most cases the best call-to-action would direct the reader to the restaurant location so that they can order some food. It is NOT the website or even their phone number (unless reservations are required). Do not count on the advertisement to handle the pitch and close the sale. An advertisement is little more than a handshake; and introduction of the business or service to the customer. The goal of any advertising is to the customer into the place of business (be it a brink and mortar or virtual) so that the staff can close the sale. To direct the reader to another point of contact which would only ad another level of pitch, rather than position them for a sale, just makes the advertising less cost-effective and less efficient.

“The Technicolor Yawn:” Odd or random use of color or text size/styles in copy. Often you’ll see advertising that uses random color or text attributes (bold, italics, underline), or font sizes to highlight key words.

Reality check: The simple truth is that just because you can add color or change the size of a font mid-sentence, doesn’t mean that you should. The human eye is a wonderful thing, but the more you ask it to refocus or distinguish different color, you’re asking it to do more work than is necessary. Doing so not only detracts from the presentation of your information; turning the ad into a veritable pool of chunder-inducing chunks of color, but it also requires the reader to invest more time interpreting the information. You want your message to be smooth and easy to digest, not a chunky mess of odd size, colorful bits of information. Keep it simple. Keep it easy. Let the design complement your brand and portray your business in a positive way — a jumbled, non-cohesive ad does nothing more than tell the reader that your business is jumbled and non-cohesive; hardly the image you want to portray to the public.

“Ignoring the Call:” Similar to the ‘errant call,’ but worse, is ‘ignoring the call.’ Ads without a strong call-to-action greatly diminish the effectiveness of the advertising as it leaves the reader without the final critical piece of information they need to take the next step in responding to the advertisement.

Reality check: A strong call to action does four things: 1) it summarizes the entire ad, 2) it ties up the message in such a way that provides the reader with a tangible relevant benefit for the product or service for the reader, 3) instills a sense of urgency and 4) give them the best point-of-contact to make them to obtain the product or service in question. An example of a strong call to action (for example’s sake let’s say this is for a weight loss service) would be something like this: “To lose weight now and sign up for Penny Graig today by calling (800) 555-5555.“  Dissecting that call to action you find all four steps: “To lose weight now” – Sums up the purpose of the ad and relays a relevant benefit; “sign up for Penny Graig today by calling (800) 555-5555” – instills a sense of urgency (when to sign up) and tells them what to do to achieve weight loss (call 800-555-5555).

“Bubby the dog-faced boy:” Identified by the inclusion of the random photo of the business owner’s kid or pet.

Realty check: Unless the dog or the kid can speak intelligently about the product or service in question and then ultimately sell it to me, DO NOT put it in the advertising. As referenced in earlier topics, keep your advertising clean and on topic. Any element that has no direct bearing on the product or service, has no business being in any marketing materials. The customer simply doesn’t care and you’re wasting valuable messaging or design space by including it as an element. Remember, the goal of any advertising is to position the business as an authority or reliable place of business–if it has to resort to a gimmicky, yet meaningless photo of a kid or a dog to get noticed (doesn’t directly speak to the benefit of the product), the reader can pick up on that and it diminishes the strength of the public perception of the company.