You’re Not Apple, McDonald’s Or Coca-Cola – So Don’t Emulate What They Do

The Key To Their Success isn’t necessarily based on how good they are (Inside Reality), but rather on massive advertising repetition. Apple, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola advertise for the sole purpose of building distribution and BRAND awareness. They do Image Advertising. Their ads attempt to marriage a lifestyle feeling to their product so you’ll get that same feeling when you buy.

For example, in 1997, Pepsi spent $1.24 billion in advertising, while Proctor & Gamble spent $2.743 billion. McDonald’s spent $1.041 billion and General Motors spent a whopping $3.087 billion! That’s why Chevy could hum the tune “like a rock, like a rock, like a rock” and it worked. If you spend over a BILLION dollars, you’ll get stellar results too! Here’s a stat that might surprise you: Do you know how many billboards Coca Cola had along American Roads way back in 1930? A thousand? 10,000? 100,000? Try 300,000! That same year they also had over 20,000 building walls painted with their logo, over 5 million soda glasses with their name printed on them, and over 400 million newspaper and magazine advertising impressions…in 1930! See, it takes time and money to really build that kind of brand awareness and it can work great for your advertising and marketing if you are fortunate enough to have a marketing budget of over $100 million a year.

99% Of Most Advertising Is Nothing But A Huge Jumble Of Hyperbole, Fluff And Unbelievable Platitudes With Black-Hole Nothing Words!

You’ll hear words like: best service, biggest, most professional, highest quality, most reliable, speedy, convenient and lowest prices. And you’ll hear phrases such as: “We’re number one”…well, Whoop Dee Do. Number one in whose eyes? These mindless words and phases do absolutely nothing to communicate why you’re the best deal. Why you’re an exceptional value. Why or how you solve the problems that nobody else solves.

But most businesses go on year after year yawning these verbal platitudes that do nothing more than get their name out there, if that. Why would anyone want to waste marketing dollars that hardly says anything to anyone? It’s because the majority of us have been obediently trained (from the wrong sources) on how to advertise.

In the past 50 years, providing for the needs of people has been split into three groups. We now have three types of businesses that give people what they want.

Level ONE Business, surprisingly, is the biggest provider of services and products in this country – our government. Some of us would adamantly argue that our government has taken over our education system, transportation, safety & protection, our savings for retirement and distribution of food and clothing for over 15% of our population. Even many of the medical and legal services are closely controlled/provided by our government. Average business owners cannot compete in these markets, which control as much as 40% of our gross national product.

Level TWO Businesses are what we call the Fortune 500, which includes the top 1 to 5 thousand companies in the country. They’re comprised of premier global majors with diverse growth portfolios such as General Motors, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, etc. Some of the top Fortune 500 companies have portfolios of high quality assets and capabilities, and financial strength to generate enhanced value for their shareholders. We’ve been indoctrinated by years of advertising and social acceptance to buy from these companies. Any product or service that can be standardized and distributed to 80% of the population without changing the design or concept has been converted to a national brand name over the last 50 years. They have the financial resources to advertise all over the place; a million dollars here, half a million there. It takes a lot of money and time to build that kind of brand equity.

Level THREE Businesses include everybody else. Everything from start up businesses and mom and pop’s, all the way up to companies that do hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales. Level 3 companies cannot rely on broad based repetition-oriented advertising that builds brand awareness. It’s not that Level 3 businesses can’t or shouldn’t build brand awareness. And it’s not that they can’t spend a lot of money on advertising. They just can’t do it nationally on Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS at $50,000 to $500,000 per 30-second spot. Level 3 businesses need to be more frugal with their marketing budget in order to create successful action-oriented advertising.

Because of the integration of advertising into our daily lives, we are constantly exposed to Level 2 advertising. And everyone assumes, based on years of passive observation, that’s how marketing and advertising is done. That probably explains why so many people consider themselves advertising experts. People say, Hey, I’ve been submersed in it my entire life, so I certainly must know something about it. If you go to college and learn how to do advertising, you will be taught Level 2 advertising. And that’s fine if you’re working for a Level TWO business.

But Here’s The Problem: most of the students who graduate with all these degrees in advertising and marketing don’t know how to make money in the real world. You stick them in a Fortune 500 company’s marketing department, and they might do okay, but if they don’t have the 20, 50, or 100 year history of the company backing them up, along with the multi-million dollar or billion dollar advertising budget, it’s more of a challenge for these young graduates to make money for the company. They don’t know how to attract prospects in such a way that they take action. And that’s crucial in getting the prospect to crossover the “Confidence Gap.” They need to realize you offer a superior value. You need to make them come to this one conclusion,”I would have to be an absolute fool not to do business with anyone else but you regardless of price.”

You Need To Be Able To Craft Your Business, And Then Advertise Where Prospects Can Take Action That Will Lead To A Purchase.

That action could be anything – maybe it’s to call in and place an order or to request an information kit. Maybe you want the prospect to send in a reply card, or call a toll-free hotline, or visit your website. That’s different than Level 2 advertising, where you’re trying to create a feeling/a lifestyle and attach it to your product. You’ve got to manipulate your advertising so the prospect will take ACTION!

The Bottom Line Is that you have to spend your marketing dollars more intelligently whether it’s hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars – more wisely than the Level 2 businesses. The way you do that is by using action-oriented advertising. There are many benefits of action-oriented advertising. The main one is that you know almost instantly how profitable or unprofitable your ads are…based on the number of inquiries, orders, hits, or leads you receive, DIRECTLY from the ads. You’ll hear a lot of people in the advertising industry say you can’t quantify the results of your advertising like that and in some cases they’re right. But that’s only because many businesses don’t understand the fundamentals of how to make their advertising make money. Some people will bark that you can’t do action-oriented advertising in certain media. Again, you can, if and only if, you know how to do it properly. There are a lot of factors and components that will affect your response. Again, you’re not Apple, McDonalds, or Coca-Cola, so don’t emulate their advertising. Spend your dollars more intelligently.

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