There are different ways to evaluate your advertising. This is one of the easiest evaluations to do, and possibly one of the most revealing. Look at a copy of one of your advertisements. Now, cross your name out everywhere it appears in the ad and write in the name of one of your competitors. Here's the important question: With your competitor's name in the ad, does the ad still read accurately? If it does, then you fail the evaluation.
Yellow Pages ads are notoriously bad for having identical-looking ads. Frequently, all of the Yellow Pages ads in a given section all look very similar. Let's take a section for an example. How about attorneys...you would think that an attorney would be fairly proficient at building a case for his or her services. After all, that's what attorneys do, right? In the Dallas phone book, there are exactly 101 pages of attorneys' advertisements. They all look exactly the same. The only thing that differentiates them is their specialty in law. They all fail the Cross Out Write In Evaluation. Let's look at a couple of these ads.
Okay, first ad is for a law firm that specializes in Bankruptcy. The headline reads "Bankruptcy", and then there's a picture of a guy sitting there in blue jeans and a Dallas Cowboys jersey with his face buried in his hands like he's really sad or something. Next to this sad picture is a red stop sign, and it says, "Federal Law May Allow You To Stop Foreclosures, Bill collectors, repossessions, IRS seizures, lawsuits, and Chaper 7 & 13" Then there's a picture of a nerdy looking attorney, a distinguished looking attorney, and a pretty female attorney. "Phone answered 24 hours, Hablamos Espanol" then the phone number and their name. That's it. A full-page ad at a cost of $71,160 a year! Do you think you could take out the name of this law firm and stick in there the name of any other law firm and the ad still be accurate?
Now, by way of comparison, let's take a one of their competitor's ads and see what it says. One page over there's an ad that says at the top really big, "Bankruptcy". This time there's no guy in a football shirt, but there is that familiar stop sign again! Stop foreclosures, repossessions, IRS garnishments, blah blah blah blah blah. Different Ad, Same Stuff. This guy has his picture, and he looks pretty friendly. Do you think you could cross his name off this ad and put a competitor's name and the ad still be accurate? Of course.
Why is it so important that you pass this evaluation? Because you should be building a case for your business that definitively and conclusively allows the prospect to draw the conclusion that we've talked about over and over in this program. "I would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you...regardless of price." If you build that case, then there's going to be things that you do that are unique, that are different, that are better...that your competitors just couldn't and wouldn't say. In other words, it needs to express your company's "inside reality." The inside reality, if you remember, has to do with all the things your business does that actually makes it valuable to your customers.... From a product, operations, and management standpoint. It's what gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It's the instantly recognizable things that make your business great. In other words, it's your "something good to say." If you truly have something good to say, and you can say it well, then there's no way you'd be able to fail this writing evaluation.
© 2005 Rich Harshaw | May Not Be Used Without Permission
By Rich Harshaw
