I find too many business owners that fail to grow because they are cautious of overspending. That last sentence may not make any sense until you consider this. Advertising should not be an expense. It should be an investment. If your advertising is not bringing you 5 times the cost of the ad in new business, you have two potential challenges. One, your ad was poorly executed. Two, you did not perform on the calls received.

The biggest challenge is that most small business owners can’t tell me what the response rate is to an ad, nor can they tell me what their sales ratio is. So the ad designed for them by the newspaper or billboard company pulled half as much as it could have, and the customers they paid to have call or come in as a result of that ad, were put on hold too long or were never seen by a sales person.

Measure your performance and review it no less than once a week. Write ads that stand out from the noise of your competitors and learn how to better communicate the importance of your recommendations.

When you are capturing above industry standards in areas of call taking or sales closing ratios, you should start to see things in a different perspective. You won’t be asking what if it fails, you will be asking how do I find more people.

“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time”

If you want more business you need to go out and get it. I am going to assume you have a product or service that people want.  If this is a true, and you are passionate about what you have to offer the world, use that passion to get your message out. Don’t sit behind a desk waiting for things to happen. If you need sales, there is nothing more important that you should be doing than seeking new customers.

There are many ways to generate new business; the obvious one is to advertise. The type of ad you choose in desperate times is different than the one you would choose in good times. And here lays the danger.

Many businesses use only what I call “desperate time advertising.” Ads with deep discounts and special offers work well to bring in new business, but they have diminishing returns. Your customers will be taught to wait for the big sale.

The best form of advertising is that which overtime you become the first choice the product or service you provide. The key here is that the customers that want it now, won’t look for a sales price. They will look for convenience and a positive buying experience.

Regardless of your current financial situation, you need to let people know you are there. Be louder than your competitors. If your competition is louder because of a bigger budget, send a more powerful message. Go where your completion is unwilling too.

Of course a strong message with lots of repetition is the best of all forms of advertising.

What strangers see as strange, you see as a way of life.  You are too close to see what’s wrong.

Survey your customers and listen to them. Or better yet, listen to your new employees.

It is our nature to tell an eager new employee why there great idea won’t work. Stop. Instead, start asking veteran employees what they think would need to happen to make the green guys idea work.

Take a walk in someone else’s shoes. When you start to look at things from someone else’s perspective with the intent to embrace there ideas rather then defend yours, you will grow in ways that you did not think possible.

Stop looking for reasons why you can’t and find reasons why you can.

The morning after my twenty first birthday I was promoted from the restaurant to the night club where I would keep the bartenders supplied with the liquor, mixes and ice. Seeing the money that the bartenders were making, I decided that I wanted to be a mixologist.

A few months later I got my big break when a bartender was needed for the Sunday brunch shift. My first day as a bartender was not very exciting. I only made two types of drinks, gin fizzes and bloody marys.

Having little opportunity to establish myself as a great nightclub bartender in the solitude of a Sunday morning shift, I decided that I needed to focus on one thing. If I was only going to get to make 2 different types of drinks, I would make the best gin fizzes and bloody marys in the world.

I can’t say that I achieved this goal with the gin fizz, but 3 months after my proclamation, I had built a steady regular crowd of 40 customers who would come in to the bar area just for my bloody mary.

One of the simplest concepts to understand in marketing is also the most challenging to accomplish. Every business owner understands that “standing out” is a way to get noticed, yet very few – especially dentist – know how to make their practices “stand out.”

If you practice general dentistry you might find it hard to distinguish yourself from other general dentistry practices. After all, you are all just… well… general. To find your platform, you need to take a hard look at your practice and determine what it is that you do different from others in your market.

When I ask this question to dentists and their office managers, I hear similar replies.

“We can do it all” So you can do crowns in a visit with your CEREC, straighten up a grill with Invisiline, or total reconstruction with implants- do you think the public knows that you would send them elsewhere if you could not do these things? Doing it all is more of a benefit to your practice then it is to the patient.

“We care more” I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief when I hear this one. It’s your job to care. It is part of being in the healthcare profession. Your customer is not calling around asking “Do you care for your patients, or just drill and dash?”

“Blah Blah Smiles” A lot of dentists think that there platform should have something to do with smiles. Sorry, that message is over used and underwhelming.

I have to say that at least these dentists made an effort to say something. About 20% of the dentists I talk to have no message at all and the others simple state what they do, Family, cosmetic or children. If you’re the only family, cosmetic or children’s dentist in your market this could work.

Find your plat form. In my bartending days, mine was the world’s best bloody mary.

If you can’t think of something that you can stand on that will lift you above your competition, invent it. This is the road block. I find the trouble with this road block is less of not knowing and more of not willing.

If ninety percent of your competitors operate 8 to 5 Monday through Thursday, Maybe your platform could be later hours, or weekend appointments. Few of you are willing to do that and that’s why it works. I have a client in a large market that is making a killing because they are the only ones delivering this message. Even though others were already delivering nights and weekends, my client was the only one to make that his platform.

You could also decide to specialize in one thing. You could focus on pain or missing teeth. There are a lot of ways to market to these people.

It is better to target to a small audience with a pointed message then a larger audience with a broad message.
Whatever your message, say is load, say it often and say it consistently.

If you are a dentist and would like to a FREE weekly Dental Marketing Memo sent to your email box each week. Click Here.

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.

It was a Friday lunch. I bit into my gourmet burger and “Zing!” Pain shot through me like a bolt of lightning. I had cracked a tooth in half. To my amazement I was chewing my chicken dinner that night.

Dr. Smith put a new permanent crown on that tooth in under 2 hours. It was amazing. I had no idea that was possible. It took 3 visits over 2 weeks to get a permanent crown from my last dentist.

There are many ways to get someone to read your ad. The example above is a technique called “Random Entry.” It’s effective only to get people to read the first paragraph of your ad. So the headline is the first priority of your ad. The first paragraph of your message is the second priority.

The first paragraph needs to be as surprising of a statement about your practice as the curious headline.

Predictability is the death of a headline.

“$49 X-Ray and Exam” Unless your reader is looking for a new dentists, they will never read past this. It tells the reader everything they need to know. The reader thinks “If I need a dentist, this one has a special on what my insurance covers.” Then it winds up in the trash. This ad is about the offer which can be work if the offer is strong.

“Now Accepting New Patients” I know a dentist that actually ran this headline. It says nothing to the reader other than the dentist is slow and arrogant. The reader thinks, “So What” This ad is about the dentist. No one cares about the dentist; they care about what the dentist can do for them.

“Beautiful New Smile” Someone wants my money. Why read any further. This headline is a statement that says “I’m just like every other dentist.” The ad is about the patient, which is a step in the right direction. The challenge is that it is lacks a compelling reason to read any further. It is obviously just another dental ad.

The goal of your headline is to get people to read your message. Because dentists have a hard time differentiating themselves from other dentists, there ads are often predicable. They only grab the low hanging fruit, the people looking for a dentist at the moment the see the ad.

What you say in your ads needs to speak to someone’s needs. Even, if it is not yet a need.

If your business has a defined platform that is different from your competitors, tell people about it. If you can’t get their attention with a direct headline, a random entry headline can increase response.

No matter how strong your headline is, your message is what gets the phone to ring or people to walk through your door.

Before you dismiss this topic as something that does not pertain to you, you should first make sure your company’s urgency is not desperation in disguise.

If your business is always in panic mode trying to cover payroll, you’re not being urgent, you are being desperate. You should be urgent to market for more clients or train your people to serve them better or cut cost to stay profitable no matter what size you are.

If your call takers or inside sales people are rushing through the calls to answer the next ringing line, you are not being urgent to gain business; you are being desperate to stop the ringing phone. Your urgency should be to find out why they are not able to spend the time needed to correctly use their scripts and help the customers.

If management is grabbing whatever task they can to keep their people busy, they are not being urgent about profits, they are desperate to look busy. This is a sure way to run up labor costs. The urgency should be to run a profitable day by marketing for more clients or giving some of your people a day off or two. I promise they will take their time cleaning when they have it. If you have Urgency to keep the shop and yard clean at all times, they will move much quicker after a day on a job as they will want to get home.

When you are so excited about a decision to make change in your business that you begin implementing it right away, you have urgency.

When you are faced with a customer complaint and your team moves fast and is eager to resolve it, you have urgency.

When the phone rings and you rush out to serve the client even when you are a head of budget, and you have fun doing it, you have urgency.

To have urgency you must have an “urge” to do something. What I find in my North American travels from business to business is that the urge of most people is to sweep problems under the rug as soon as possible and go home as early as they can. These people are easy to spot. They are the same ones who complain about the same things over and over.

So how do you create a company with urgency? The easiest way to do so is to make sure your company has that other thing that my mentor mentioned accountability. You can use accountability to create that urge needed in you people. But before you do that you need to set an expectation.

Set high expectations. And hold your people accountable to them. This will give them urgency to achieve. If it doesn’t, you have the wrong people.

Lack of urgency and accountability will stifle sales and lead to the entitlement mentality in the workplace. In other words it’s a knife to the wrist of your business.

If you have disguised urgency in your business, you should address it now. The best time to start something is the time you decide to do it. Don’t wait. I’m not saying you should not take a moment and plan it out a bit, you should. But don’t halt progress looking for reasons something can’t be done. Look for reason it can.

Sometimes you are too deep in your business to see it objectively. This is a good reason to have an outsider come in and help you see you business as you should.

The real kicker is that when the ad does not work, it is the fingers point to the ad agency and the expert copy writer they did not listen to. It is no coincidence that my most successful clients are the ones who focus on their business and trust ad writing to us.

It used to baffle me as to why there were so many awful ads. Just turn on the TV and watch for a while. Most of the ads, I figure 80% of them are the outcome of years of beatings. To be profitable the Madison Ave agencies write ads they know will get the nod of the client the first time around.

Why must the client get in the way? I have figured it out. Everyone has an opinion of marketing. So the wife of the business owner, the marketing manager of the company or the executive panel feels the need to put their stamp on each ad. After all, advertising is something that everyone sees, so if you have your stamp on an ad, you have added to your worth right? It is this stinking thinking that makes it easy for untouched copy from a real advertising professional to stand out.

While the intentions are good, the advice from your spouse or successful brother-in-law can be damaging. Here is why. They are afraid to offend. Yes, that’s it, they are afraid to offend anyone. So the result is an ad that appeals to no one.

Since the Greek physician Hippocrates first wrote about it in 370 BC, I have found 32 different books about the 4 different personality types and how they differ from one another. After reading at least 5 of them, I have concluded that you can’t please everyone with the same approach. In fact, if you are going to appeal strongly to one persona, you will proportionately offend another. In other words you must risk offending one persona if you want to appeal to another.

The strongest ads I have written, the ones with the best results, are the ones that also received the most complaints. It has come to the point that if the ad does not solicit some complaints, I get worried that it might not work.

If you want to grow your business, let a true ad agency, not the graphic designer that thinks they know advertising, but a go for results ad agency, the ad agency that has the guts to be accountable for the results.

Yes, when a client gets in the way of their success, it can be frustrating. Especially when your success depends on there’s. Learn from their mistakes, focus on what you know and trust what you don’t to the ones that do.

Profits are a necessity.

If you are a fan of Michael Moore, you probably disagree with that statement – but let me point something out. This country, like all the other economic powerhouses, was built on profits. Innovative people that put their personal wealth, time with their families, and personal health on hold to bring mankind such items as; the Phonograph, affordable automobiles, and the personal computer, deserve to reap as much profit from their contributions as the market will provide.

Profit is the motivator of action.

Personal satisfaction from gifting the world is a greater reward than the wealth gained from it. Just ask anyone who doesn’t need the money. However, few are able or willing to risk their family’s future just to feel good. Profit is the engine that drives risk.

Sadly, profit also motivates greed. As Gordon Gekko put it, “Greed is Good.” I disagree. Greed drives deception and deception soils society’s view of profit because there is no contribution to society birthed of it.

However most of the time the public views the dollar earned as too much when it is reported as a dollar amount. This is naiveté in its purest form.  No one would look poorly at an auto repair shop that earned its owner $77,400 on its $2,000,000 in sales but when Wal-Mart reports that it earned $15,690,000,000, people say it’s too much. What they fail to see is that in both cases the profits are only 3.87%. That is low by comparison to some other businesses.  We cheer the success of Apple who profited 30.8% – 508% higher than Wal-Mart for a net earnings of $23,605,296,000.

We like Apple.

Yesterday, Mr Jobs passed. In the stories of his life some compared him to Sam Walton. Both were icons of retail. The Apple stores that Steve Jobs created are the most profitable stores per square foot in the retail industry. Near double the runner up, Tiffany Co.

We don’t ask Apple to limit profits because Apple brings us things we want. Wal-Mart makes convenient to us the things we want, but banks just hold and loan us something we want.

What is most interesting is that if Apple were to fail we would be sad, but the government would likely not intervene. If Wal-Mart failed, communities would rejoice. If Bank of America failed we would have a world crisis. So why is President Obama telling a business that the government forced to absorb other failing institutions-a business that would cost the government trillions if it were to fail- that it does not have an “inherent right” to a certain amount of profits?

The real issue is executive pay. It is way out of whack in relation to the average pay of its work force. Yes- executives do deserve more pay. Their job is far more difficult and there are very few that can actually do that job well. What I don’t agree with is an executive putting together an acquisition deal that nets him hundreds of millions of dollars.

I remember reading the Forbes 400 back in the ‘80’s. There were very few billionaires (most were Japanese) and as I recall the average executive salary was around $350,000 a year. The earliest I can verify salaries is 1990. In 1990 the median executive salary was $2.918 million or 107 times the average worker pay. By the year 2000, just 10 years later, it was $14.857 million or 525 times the average worker pay. The only reason for this was supply and demand for top executive. The result was executives delivering $350,000 a year in leadership were receiving $14 million in compensation.

In my opinion, greed of these overpaid executives is what led to led to the Enron’s, WorldCom’s and Health South’s.

All of this could have been avoided if the SEC was not denied the ability to grow its force of auditors at the same rate of growth of new public companies. But that is a whole different argument.

Mr. President, give the SEC the people to do its job and report what is going on so that the shareholders can vote on what’s best for their companies. And for God’s sake- let a company’s profits be determined by the marketplace.

Profit is what allows a business to provide service, guarantees, and expansion. And expansion is what creates jobs.

Twelve different roads, including Avenue des Champs-Elysees, terminate at Place Charles de Gaulle, the 10 lane wide road that tightly circles the Arc.

This is a busy intersection.

As I entered the roundabout, the chaos, confusion and stress of fighting for a position with thousands of other cars vanished when I realized, Wow- I’m in Paris, a place with deep history and beauty at every turn of my head.

Life is like this.

We are programmed to keep our eye on the ball, to play by the rules and to obey authority.  The people who live in the moment, break the rules and challenge authority are viewed in 1 of two lights. They are problem makers or problem solvers, a Lindsey Lohan or a Steve Jobs.

There is a very fine line between problem makers and problem solvers.

I am beginning to believe that the more I am drawn to a stressful situation or the more challenging I find an individual, the more beauty, peace and genius there is around it. I just have to shift my focus to see it.

It is hard to argue that hard work is a key ingredient to success. But it is not THE key ingredient. Success is defined in many different ways. I define it simply as this- Are you choosing your day or is it being chosen for you. Do you see the hidden beauty in chaos or do you just feel stress. You need not focus solely on what you are driving towards. Pay attention to the scenery along the way. There are lots of lessons, and talented people along the way.

If hard work is not the key ingredient to success, what is?

The people you chose to surround yourself with are more important than the goal you seek, the effort you put towards your goal or the tenacity you drive it with. While a clear vision, hard work and relentless drive are essential to achieving success, it is impossible to accomplish with the wrong people.

If your business is chaotic, look around for people who are peaceful. Hire your weakness, hire people smarter then you.

David Ogilvy is considered to be one of the greatest ad men ever. Back in the early 60’s he gave new managers a Russian babushka doll. Opening the nesting dolls, each smaller than the one before, the manager would find a message typed on a piece of paper inside the tiniest doll: “If you hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If you hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants.” Today his advertising empire is the 2^nd largest in the world.

Always be looking for people that will lift the others around them. This gift may exist in people you already have, but if you are too caught up in the chaos to see it, they will disappear. Some go to your competitor where they can expose their gift and other stay on your payroll and let it burn out.

Find the beauty and let it let it blossom. Peace and success will follow.