Choose a Spot and Stick with It
There have been a lot of opinions floating about the air when it comes to advertising. How long should we advertise for? How do we know its working? Is it time to “pull the plug”?
When you launch a new advertising campaign, it is like hammering a nail into a piece of hardwood. Every time your prospective customer hears your ad, the nail sinks in a little more. There is only one reason your customers don’t come running into your store the first time they hear your ad. They forget YOUR ad! The reason? Sleep.
Sleep is God’s gift to mankind to help him erase the noise of the day. That includes ALL advertising. The next morning all that’s left is a little indentation on the piece of hardwood.
Day after day, this process is repeated; but ever so slowly, the hole gets deeper.
Your goal is to drive the nail through the hardwood and clench it on the other side. This means your customer remembers you and thinks of you when he needs your product or service.
Driving the nail of your unique selling position into the hardwood of the mind is like climbing a slippery slope. Three steps forward and two steps back.
The frustration is simply too much. You don’t understand why you are not getting immediate results. “It must be time to change the unique selling position, because this one doesn’t seem to be working.”
To change your selling position is to start a brand new nail in a completely new spot on the board. You lose the hole in which you invested all this time. Why do you do this? Do you think there’s a soft spot on the board somewhere? There is not.
You can sharpen the nail (with better writing), but there are no soft spots on the board.
Stay with the hole you’ve started!
Sharpen the nail.
- Martin
