Unless you have the deep pockets of Richard Branson, you can’t afford to throw money away on just getting your name “out there,” but that is exactly what a lot of small business owners are doing, mainly because this is what we have been led to believe is right by so-called marketing “gurus.”
That’s RUBBISH.
“Brand awareness” is the excuse used by marketers when their clients ads don’t work; they’ll say such tripe like “don’t worry about the fact the ad didn’t work and you got no calls … lots of people know about you!” I don’t care who knows about me … I care about who BUYS from me! It’s no good an ad saying … “this is us, here’s what we do, give us a call if we do anything that interests you” because it’s dull, boring and totally not proactive.
More importantly, “Brand Awareness” is a great way to empty the contents of your wallet into the wallets of the ad agency or graphic designer with no appreciable return for you.
The fact is this … “Brand Awareness” for SME’s is an absolute waste of money. You should only engage in Direct Response Marketing which, as the name suggests, means marketing that produces a direct response that you can measure.
Every marketing campaign you put out into the world must get your target prospect to respond you, you must be offering one specific thing which is something your target prospects wants or needs, and this something has GOT to be interesting enough to encourage them to get themselves out of their armchair and respond to you.