Most advertising sucks. Yes I said sucks. It sucks money from your wallet like a saliva ejector sucks spit. The saddest part about this is that most are unaware of it. Business owners know they have to advertise because that’s what the experts have said, and all there competition is doing it, so they let a slick salesman sell them media.

When it comes time to writing an ad, they look at what everyone else is doing, and follow the lead. They add a twist of their own and are careful not to exclude anyone. This is where the biggest mistake is made. An effective ad will exclude most of your audience, but if targeted well, will out pull a general ad by as much as 4 fold.

Most advertising takes what I call a shot gun approach. A non-customer of yours is like a target 300 yards away. A shot gun blast might hit them but only with a couple of tiny bb’s that will bounce off without incident. An ad designed to appeal to everyone “Family Dentistry- $49 Exam and X-ray” will be utterly ineffective. However an ad written to cure a specific need “Does it hurt to chew your food?- $49 Exam and X-ray” is like firing a deer rifle. At 300 yards the target is still hard to hit, but if it does, it can be lethal.

I’m itching to give some strong examples but you might be in a market where I have a client. So try to understand the “why” of what I am saying. By understanding why it is important to make an ad more specific, you can begin to learn the “how” that will give your advertising results a huge boost.