Advertising tricks and techniques

They never make up for a lack of trust and perceived value in the consumer’s mind.

Most business owners and marketers, maybe even you, have been conditioned to try to learn little advertising tricks and techniques … mainly because that’s the only thing taught in any school. I’ve heard many people mistakenly say “teach me the tricks of the trade.” This is sad because they actually need to learn THE TRADE … in other words, the principles of successful advertising, rather than just learning the TRICKS. There is good reason why all good marketing and advertising teachers follow all the principles-based strategies before moving on to the techniques and tips.

Let me tell you, I have a big problem just teaching techniques. Let’s look at a quick story to illustrate why. My oldest son’s name is Joe, and sometimes we go to the local fast food chain drive-in movie theater and buy French fries. When Joe was very young, like 2 or 3, sometimes the fries were too hot for him to eat, so he would ask me to cool them down. Well, how do you cool some hot fries when you’re in the car? You hold it against the air conditioning vent and run it for a few seconds until it cools down!

We call this technique the “fast food cooling technique.” I know you have done this! Well my son, being smarter than most (at least that’s what most parents always say, right?), He could do this technique on his own, even at a very young age. So I remember one time, I looked at Joe, and he was doing the fast food chill technique and I didn’t tell him to do it or remind him to do it or anything. I was just doing it. And I was thinking, “Wow, he’s really pretty smart.” Then I took a closer look, and actually had to do a double take. I realized there were two problems: first, the fries weren’t hot, and second, the air conditioning wasn’t even on. Joe was executing the technique to perfection; it’s just that the situation was totally wrong; he couldn’t understand what conditions had to exist before that technique worked. What I had was a little boy executing a technique to its absolute perfection without any understanding of the principles that made that technique work in the first place. He didn’t understand the principles, just the technique.

And so it is with sales techniques and marketing techniques and advertising techniques. Let me give you an example, direct mail. In the 1970s, kids started learning carpentry techniques to trick people into reading their junk mail. They teach you to send your sales letter in a plain white regular-size envelope with no return address with a first-class stamp and a handwritten address. People understood it and said, “Wow! A letter from someone who forgot to write its sender! I wonder who it is.” Then they would open it. To do you What to do when you receive a blank handwritten envelope with no return address? Your pitch it without even opening it! You know it’s garbage. You know it’s a waste of time. But people are still using that technique, like a 3-year-old holding a cold potato chip in an air conditioning vent that isn’t even turned on!

Here’s another publicity stunt used by car dealerships. They are known for using gimmicks because they have not yet innovated their business enough to be perceived as different from their competitors. They don’t have a good internal reality, so they try to fool you into thinking they offer better value. I won’t even talk about the loss leader trick, where they put a simplified, low-priced model in their ad that lures you into the lot only to find that such a model doesn’t exist. No, that is too obvious. Everybody knows that trick. What about this one? I saw an ad with the headline “Don’t Pay Tax on All New Models.” You look at that and you instantly come to the conclusion that you won’t have to pay sales tax, which on a $ 25,000 vehicle could save you a couple thousand dollars. I saw it and said, “Wow, it’s a great value … don’t pay taxes.” Then I saw the tiny type at the bottom of the page. It said: “The dealer will pay the INVENTORY tax on the vehicle, the customer is responsible for all state and local sales taxes.” Now he had just recently bought a new car and remembered seeing “Inventory Tax” on the final invoice. It was something like $ 55. Well, whoop-dee-do. A $ 55 savings. Nice trick, guys. Now tell me: Does that kind of trick generate trust and confidence … or does it generate what we call contempt and hatred?

But that’s what most advertising and marketing programs teach you to do: implement a bunch of little techniques to trick people into believing that there is some kind of value in doing business with you. Techniques, I must add, that often don’t work when you’re trying to use them in the real world. You can’t just rely on tricks and techniques. You have to build the internal reality of your business so that external perception has a chance to be honestly good. Hey, if your internal reality is poor, or even if it is almost the same as that of others, what do you think the external perception of your business will be? Regular at best, right? On the other hand, if you focus all your efforts on “inner reality” but can’t advertise very well, you’re setting yourself up for frustration. You will be pulling your hair out trying to figure out how someone could be so foolish to do business with the competition when your business obviously offers superior value. Well maybe it is NOT that obvious.

The discovery: most companies could improve in both areas, but they are the ones that struggle the most with “external perception” or, in other words, with all the competition that exists, due to the trust gap, they have problems differentiating themselves . in the market. Regardless of your situation, or where you are now, that’s what these tips are all about: improving the internal reality and external perception of your company. It’s best to spend time talking about innovation and how to make your business competitive from a management, operations and product point of view, and then spend most of your time talking about how to effectively advertise your business. look like a cutout. over all competitors.

Can you see why it is imperative that these two factors, internal reality and external perception, be considered at the same time? Simply innovating leaves you with a really solid company that no one knows about. On the other hand, the simple act of learning sales, marketing or advertising will boost a business that will not be sustained if there is no higher value. You have to consider both inner reality and outer perception. First you have to have something good to say and then say it well.