The biggest mistake in advertising is the misuse of iconic and echoic advertising.
Iconic advertising (images) is advertising with pictures or text alone, like Newspaper, Magazines, Flyers, Mailers, or to a certain extent Internet and TV banners.
Echoic advertising (sound) is advertising with audio like Radio and Television.
First you must know the basics, who exactly each type of advertising is reaching. To do that, you have to understand two basic elements of memory: echoic and iconic.
Iconic Memory in advertising:
Reaching the people who are in the need for your product or service today, or the day you run your ad. Much harder to accomplish branding. But much easier to attract people quickly.
Only those in the need today will notice your ad. If they are not in the need for you, they likely won't see you. It's how images work in the mind.
Alright, a little on branding: branding is not making sure your ads all look the same or your colors in your ad match the colors on your building, or match the colors on your office letterhead and your vehicle wrap. BRANDING is attaching a stored emotion, a feeling, within your customer to your business whenever he or she thinks of your business category. Something that can not be built with iconic advertising.
One part of iconic advertising that I sometimes overlook is targeting. Newspaper ads offer very little targeting. Magazines a bit more, because of the subject material. Advertisers can target a particular demographic, increasing the chances of reaching the right audience at the right time. Also, targeted iconic advertising isn't always seen as advertising. If the reader is interested in the advertised product, he or she views it as valuable information.
Websites offer the greatest targeting ability. The more data a company has about us, the better it can target its online advertising. But it's still iconic.
Echoic Memory in Advertising:
Whereas an iconic ad attempts to reach those "in the market today," an echoic ad delivers a message over time and waits for the consumer to be ready for the product. Echoic ads let the consumer decide when she is ready. This is because we remember sounds more accurately and for a longer duration than we remember images.
In most business categories, those "not in the market today" is a large majority. After all, how often do you need new tires? A new car? Or insurance? A lawyer? Or heating and air conditioning repair? Those businesses would be better off branding themselves over time. Or making sure they're coming up locally on Google.
Echoic ads should be written with the consumer in mind-- what matters to him or her. Not how many customers you serve, or years you've been in business, or "highest quality at the lowest prices." What actually matters to him or her. There's no magic formula for this. It takes actual thought and a little writing ability. Too often, advertisers focus more on the medium (that may very well reach "the right people") and completely neglect the message. Well, here's a little secret: it's a lot better to reach the "wrong people" with the right message than to reach the "right people" with a pathetic ad.
Before you advertise, you should at least know the basics of iconic and echoic advertising. The only problem is, most of the sales reps pitching this stuff don't even know it.
No matter what anyone tells you, all advertising works. But it works in very different ways.
And using it incorrectly is a serious waste of time and money.
