Most advertising is a rip off, even today with all of the conversation that flows around new technology and measurement.
But still, most advertising fails!
Why?
Because it focuses on the wrong thing.
Flip through any business magazine and look at the pages and pages of advertising, my favorite is Businessweek.
Go through the pages and count up the number of ads that make you slap your head and say, “WTF?!”
This simple exercise will teach you a lesson about targeting.
Which is the answer to why most advertising, especially B2B fails.
It isn’t targeted correctly.
Why do I say so much advertising is poorly targeted?
Well, simple.
Most of the worst B2B advertising because it doesn’t focus on value. It focuses on features.
The starting block for any advertising or marketing campaign has to be value.
It is one of the 3 vital questions that you need to ask yourself and answer before you start doing anything else.
Those questions:
- What is the value we want to create for our prospects?
- Who is our real buyer?
- How do we reach them?
In many cases, most of the B2B advertising fails because it isn’t really starting with value, but has been rolled out as something “we have to do.”
That’s a missed opportunity and one too many companies are making.