Aaron J. Crowley

Owner, Crowley’s, Granite Concepts

Companies make all kinds of claims about their products and services. 

Your dishes will be “spotless.” Your hybrid will get “50 gallons per mile.” Your teeth will be “5 shades whiter.”  Or how about this one? Your CNC will “knock out 2 kitchens per day…easily.”

Sometimes the claims are true, as advertised.  Sometimes you have to read the fine print to understand the absurd conditions under which the claims were made.  And with the others, they are simply false to begin with.

But with any of the above claims, they can at least be measured against reality.  

And thus the possibility for outrage exists when you can prove that the dishes still have spaghetti on them, the car only gets 25 miles per gallons, or that the tobacco and coffee stains remain.  (I’ll leave the claims about CNC productivity for another article!)

But what about the claims that agencies, radio stations, and magazines make about the effectiveness of their advertising?  

Have you ever bought advertising then wondered if it was money well spent?  What happens when the sales results don’t quite measure up to the claims?  Can you even effectively measure it?  

The fact is this: measuring the true effectiveness of advertising dollars is not easy. But there are ways to do it (which also can be covered in a future article). One way to measure effectiveness is by adding an offer code to your ad. Will all customers use it? Only if it is in their best interests, and sometimes not even then. 

So how do you make your ads effective? The fabricator who wants to make the most of their advertising dollars must understand and use proven principles before the advertising decisions are made, instead of trying to determine after the fact whether it was a good investment or not. 

The following 4 principles are worth considering if you are considering an ad campaign anytime soon.

  1. Know Your Customer:  As simple as that sounds, DO NOT discount this “first principle!” Before you can select the best ad medium for you (meaning type of advertising – print, internet, radio, etc.) to reach “your” customer, you must know who your customer is. You should understand them well enough to define them in measurable terms.
  2. Achieve Concentration:  Once you have a clear profile of your customer, then you can begin to evaluate the many options available for reaching them.  All advertising providers will have demographic statistics for their audience. Finding the right medium to reach the highest concentration of your customers will enable you to focus your advertising. It will maximize your advertising efforts and dollars.
  3. Commit to Consistency:  You cannot convince your customer to buy new counters if they are not in the market for new counters. What you can do (and what you must do) is keep your message in front of them long enough so that when they decide they are in the market, you are the first and only countertop company that comes to mind.   A single ad in a magazine, a one month internet promotion, or a 3 month radio campaign are a waste of money.  Do it for the long haul or don’t do it at all.
  4. A Call to Action: An ad must have an offer that is limited to a deadline. An offer code is also a good idea. I’m no psychologist, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that ads containing a limited time offer (or call to action) will be more effective.  There is something about the fear of loosing out on a deal that will nudge an interested customer to making the call to get a quote.

If you are of the mind to advertise because you need more customers, or you suspect that it’s just good business, or believe that your company has claims so great that they simply must be made to the public, please consider these 4-Cs of advertising.

“They are guaranteed to produce superior results!”

How’s that for a claim?