Vampires: Your Ads Are Sucking the Life Outta Me

You likely own a business. You likely do your own advertising. You are likely driving me nuts with your crap ads. What is a crap ad you ask?

A crap ad is a sales letter, postcard, website, flyer, banner towed around by a plane or any other device shoved in my face without meaning.

You spend money to bother me and all I get to see is crap.

Do you know why you bug me? Because you don't spit out anything I care about. I have posted in my blogs many times about not generalizing and realizing what your service is not what I want to buy, the result is.

Do you listen? Why do I still get business owners who read this still sending me scratchy toilet paper? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

(deep breath) It's okay, you can still change your blasted ways quite easily. I will take you by the hand and walk you through a basic concept.

Let's say I hire you to do whatever it is you do. You show up and do it very well. Now tell me what the customer is seeing/thinking/feeling after you're gone.

Have you ever really thought about what happens once you are out of the picture? There is no doubt you focus on things like doing a great job or having integrity and pride with what you left behind... that is not what they are feeling. They likely are not thinking about you at all if you did well.

They are in the moment. They are enjoying the fact that their carpets don't smell like dog. They feel more comfortable financially after meeting with an adviser. They love that their lawn is plush and greener than their neighbors.

They are not thinking about you, but that is good. What they will do is connect that plethora of positive emotion to what you did for them. Those are what you use in your ads. Take the focus completely off of your company.

I am not saying don't mention any specifics about your company but you need to get them emotionally involved with your ad first. Get them to want to know who you are.

When your ad shows up NOBODY wants it. They were not getting ready to contact someone offering your service on the way to the mailbox. Simply announcing you and your service will waste massive amounts of possible revenue over time.

You know the processes of your business very well and that is why you normally focus your ads on that. Nobody cares at first about how you do whatever you do, they care about what they get from what you do.

You need to convey that IMMEDIATELY. 80% of people read the top of an ad without reading the rest. If that headline, caption or image does not connect, they are gone.

If you are not quite sure how people feel about what you do, find out! ASK THEM. I know it is a strange concept but if we don't take in new information we don't learn.

Simply ask your customer/client what they liked about your service. Try to get as many as possible and then start creating your ads using those insights as the theme.

Keep in mind if you are using images; make sure they convey the same emotional connection as the rest of the ad. If you do a home service don't plaster a picture of a home as that is meaningless. If they feel it is meaningless what happens? Yep, they're gone.

Once you start to know your customers this process becomes easy and you make more money.

Here is a final mental image I wish to leave you with-

You are asleep in your coffin in cold dark cellar. You wake to hear creaking boards but know that no one dare challenge you. The creaking stops and total silence once again puts you at peace.

WHOOSH! the casket flings open to see me standing over you. You mutter "Paul Van Helsing!" and I yell "TO HELL WITH YOU IRRITATING DEVIL! I'LL FINALLY BE RID OF YOU ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

Before you can react my stake centers over your heart, with a massive smash of my mallet I drive it into you.

Go get some


Paul