Are You Marketing Or Advertising With That Cool Website?

Marketing and Advertising are two terms most small business owners interchange.  They don't really understand the difference, and it does make a big difference to your business.

The cost of creating a cool website today really isn't much when you look at the overall cost of running a business.  Better yet, the cost of advertising online  and putting your business name and logo in front of millions of people every day is now possible for less than 1 seconds worth of the time a Super Bowl ad runs.

So why do companies run Super Bowl ads?  For Budweiser the answer is simple.  The Super Bowl ads have moved from advertising to marketing.  Their customers expect it and for them the return is measurable.  Most of the rest of the companies are just advertising, plain and simple.   

Advertising is simply getting your name in front of people with the "hope" that they remember who you are at the right time.  The real truth is the brain doesn't quite work that way.  We are much more abstract than that.  If I ran an ad for Scotts' Best Chocolates often enough, the most likely thing that will happen is people will want  chocolate and then buy their favorite chocolate, or the best packaged chocolate on the shelf when they decide to buy.  

That packaging by the way is marketing, not advertising, and here is why.  Advertising is the initiator that starts someone in a direction.  It is extremely expensive to do.  TV ads, blind ads online, billboards and bus stops are all advertising.  Your message gets to the most people regardless of whether they are ready to buy or in a buying mood.  Marketing is grabbing their attention any time they are in the sales funnel.  Standing at the candy counter is definitely in the funnel, and the packageing might be just the thing to get them to buy one chocolate over the other.

Some well done ads can have a media or subliminal effect.  Food and Beverage ads are the best at that.  My wife says she can tell if I see a Diet Coke, Coke or McDonald's ad because of my Pavlovian response and need to get a Diet Coke.  She once joked that my response was so strong, I will signal to enter McDonald's while driving down the road with a Diet Coke in my hand.

For most small businesses, advertising is a waste of time.  You advertise because everyone else is and you feel like you have too.  Well the truth is you don't.  It is possible to do very little advertising and a lot of marketing and do just fine.

There is a difference based on the size and the age of a business.  It is possible after 10 years of advertising  in a specific neighborhood, that an insurance salesman's' ad becomes his marketing.   Some changes will naturally occur, or he will gently move from advertising to marketing if he is listening to the market and might not even know it.

So what is the difference between Marketing and Advertising?

Marketing is the act of reaching customers who have entered the sales funnel for your product.  If you advertise often enough and consistently enough, you might start getting people in your sales funnel.  

This method works for local service companies like auto repair, insurance and real estate agents.  The expense of doing it is why many people in those industries fail.  The trick is to Someone else's advertising might have done it and you don't care.  The small business owners mission as it pertains to marketing is simply to be in front of them in some form when they are ready to buy.

When long term advertising turns into marketing, competition is effectively locked out, so it is important to start a small and consistent ad campaign

Marketing and Sales go hand in hand.  Their combined purpose is to get your product or service in the hands of your customer and the customers money in your bank account.  Plain and simple.  Every step of a sales funnel is geared this way, and every "Ad" used in marketing should be geared this way.

Small business owners have a love hate relationship with a little split test we do.  A split test is where you create two chains of events and change just one thing to see what happens.  The thing I like to change is the website.  If they have a super fancy website with lots of flash graphics and video, the owners are like a proud papa, and love showing it off.

Over the years I have had to tone down my approach because being "right" doesn't always get me more customers.  Early on I would proudly bet the customer I could improve internet presence and marketing performance with a more simple website.  I don't mean plain, boring, I just mean more simple.  Then I would run the exact same ads, and link them to the two sites, each with a different phone number to see how many calls we get.  After all as a marketer for a service business, all I can do is get them to call.  The last step of the sales funnel is up to you to get them in the door with their wallets open.

Lately, I have had to really back off the presentation and directness of my approach.  Business owners don't like to be shown they are wrong, they want to learn a better way.  Learning takes time, and it has taken me several years to understand that.  I have always felt that as their marketing consultant, my job was to give them the best bang for the buck period.  It turns out that isn't what any business owner really wants.

These days my approach is very different and much more effective at catching and keeping new clients.  The end result is the same, it just takes longer and yet customers are happier because they truly understand.  Many times they end up telling me the right things to do just from observing the changes we make for them online and what happens with those changes.

The back end of my approach is still the same.  After understanding the client and their customers, I build a target schema.  I then gently try to work a little more of the target into the marketing instead of letting them run shotgun style all over the place.  Over time, it becomes obvious what the business is really good at and what the customers really want from them.

The entire mission of small business marketing, or any business marketing for that matter is about connecting with potential new clients, staying connected with current clients and re-connecting with old clients.  Being cool online is just being cool, and doing both is expensive.

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Every day I meet with people who own or run a business.  I don't spend a lot of time in government offices now that I am retired from the Air Force Reserves.  I like meeting and talking with business owners and leaders because they all understand the concept of "Mission".

My wife is a real estate agent, actually a Realtor (tm), and for the first time since I have known her, she now has a sense of "Mission".  Gaining the sense of mission is one of the fastest and least expensive changes you can make in your life when it comes to achieving success at any level.

Let's say I want to lose weight, and get down to 180 pounds.  Everytime I pass an ice cream store, I ask the question of mission.  Will this ice cream cone help me lose 180 pounds?  If it hasn't, and I am taking it as a luxury, have I done the exercise to add it today?  The key difference between someone trying to lose weight and being on a mission to lose weight is the work to lose weight is done first.  If I plan to be at 180 by June and I am on track and ran an extra mile today to earn the luxury of the ice cream, I can treat myself.  Otherwise I have to keep walking.  Today I kept walking.

Business is no different.  If you want to make $100,000 this month in whatever you do and you make it a mission, decisions are much easier.  When your buddies call to go to the ball game, you can look at your numbers and know that you are ahead of track or behind.  If it is the 15th and you have already made $90,000.  You can either work on the last $10,000 or go to the ball game.

On the 25th of the month and if you are at $90,000, your actions will tell everyone including the universe itself if you are on a mission or just set a goal.  The person with a goal, will say "$90,000 is close enough." and go to the game.  The person on a mission will stay and work.  There is no "close enough" when it comes to real missions in real life, only success or failure.

Learning to accept the concept of mission is one thing, disciplining yourself to live it is another.  The right side of my white board in the office has initials for several goals I have currently.  Together they spell out the focus of my mission.  I look at it several times a day and it makes me thing smarter about decisions.  My goals cover a few areas today, and I highly suggest that you start out with just one target at a time for your mission.  As you get better at hitting targets, then you can add more targets to shoot for simultaneously.  The worst thing you can do is list to many targets and not hit any.

What is your first target?

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Last night a good friend of mine lost his job.  He asked me what he should do next.  Of course I said "Read my book."  I knew he already had a copy, so buying the book wasn't a problem.  Buying the book isn't the best business improvement program for $200, but it might be the best one for $15 even if the cover is goofy.  (A free signed copy to anyone with a better cover idea that I use.)

Losing a job can be an amazing experience and opportunity if you look at it the right way.  He did.  He hadn't read the book, but he did skip ahead to the next book which I haven't even written yet.  He just knew what to do because we have worked together for a long time and he knows how I think.  I think everyone should act like they are their own business.

What I am going to give you today is the best trick I have learned in helping people improve both their personal life and business life.  If you hire me to work with you on this it is going to be thousands of dollars, and I am giving it to you free.  Why?  Let's be honest, if it works for you and your business grows, I hope you'll hire me as your virtual Chief Marketing Officer or The Bourquin Group as your online marketing agency and SEO