How to create great ads to grow your business

People don’t notice your Ads.

As the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute* famously revealed in its ’40/40′ study a few years back, only 40% of TV ads can be remembered the following day by consumers. And of that pitiful fraction, only 40% of those ads can be successfully attributed to the sponsoring brand behind it.

 *(16% effectiveness is from Ehrenberg-Bass Institute study, quoted in ‘How Brands Grow’)

Multiply those depressing decimal points together and you discover that only 16% of advertising is remembered and correctly attributed.… Read more

How much should I spend advertising my B2B business

The amount of money you should invest in building the image of your brand is a very contentious subject.  What is happening is the amount of investment in brands is falling, and the number of brands investing ahead of their share of market is decreasingand the effectiveness of advertising campaigns has declined with Short-termism is rising.

 

But recent in-depth research by Binet & Field has shown ( see here ,  here and here) that to grow your business you need to invest more in image building advertising and avoid the short-termism of sales activation.… Read more

Brand building vs Activation in B2B

Two questions today… why did Caterpillar start building sandcastles? And what works to sustainably grow your business?  Answers later

If we looked at what B2B businesses are doing now, you’d think short term activation is the best way to grow their business.

Short-term, thats probably right… get the sale. But recent in-depth research by Binet & Field has shown ( see here and here) short-termism is doesn’t sustain that growth.… Read more

Grow your B2B business through increasing advertising

And the purpose of advertising is to Expand Your Customer Base.

In the last two weeks i’ve discussed the failure of benchmarking and the leaky bucket. If you benchmark against your competitors you can only hope to perform at best at their current level.  Maybe you need to move outside your category to identify new and innovative ideas.  Plus you leak customers despite your best efforts to patch your business it leaks.… Read more

Your business is a leaky bucket

It’s an apt metaphor for businesses.

We fool ourselves thinking that we bring customers in, and that they stay with us for ever and as they stay with us we can sell them more and grow.

It’s a nice picture… but completely wrong.   Your business is a bucket. You attract new customers they fall into your bucket. You switch your competitor customers and they fall into your bucket… but Customers also leave.… Read more