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Want to improve your ads? Expand your comfort zone.
Over the years I’ve learned that there is an interesting connection between a business owner’s comfort zone (defined in one Wikipedia definition as “the limited set of behaviors and environments that a person can engage in without becoming anxious“), and the results their advertising produces.
Sound strange or a bit too woo-woo for your taste?
Hold your judgment. At least until you’ve read the stories I’m about to share.
The first story dates back a few years when I ran one of the largest retail ad agencies in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region.
During that time my agency was hired by a large, established retail carpet store in upscale Westchester, New York. Our assignment: create an ad campaign to grow sales by 20% over a given period of time.
Not many businesses are that clear about their advertising objectives; so I was intrigued and inspired by the challenge.
What further inspired me was the store owner seemed to be doing the right things to support his revenue goals: he beefed up the sales, marketing and ad budget; he initiated a staff training program; and he hired a seasoned sales manager to lead the charge.
All good things, right?
In our first meeting with the sales manager we hammered out a production schedule and media plan and discussed the need for the ads to have strong offers to accomplish the sales goals we had to meet. Everything was positive.
In a week we met again, this time we had ad concepts in hand. Each half page, black and white ad in the campaign featured a powerful, irresistible offer in the headline, lots pictures, lots of product listings with price discounts and a premium gift offer with purchase.
The sales manager loved the ads and approved them on the spot.
The first ad ran in the Sunday edition of The New York Times.
On the Monday following I got a call from the sales manager. He was ecstatic. “The ad produced the most one-day traffic the store has ever had. We broke all sales records”, he said.
When the next ad ran in The Times, it was even more successful than the first one.
“We had to hire traffic cops to direct traffic”, the sales manager yelled on the phone over the noise of busy shoppers in the background. “This place is crazy”.
The third week of the campaign he called to say the campaign was on track to generate “better than a 30% sales increase.”
We had hit a home run and I was feeling good.
But those good feelings were short lived. Because just as I was getting accustomed to these ego-boosting weekly phone calls, something strange happened.
The phone calls from the sales manager stopped.
When I called the store I was told the sales manager wasn’t available. Each time I called I got the same answer. It was weird and disconcerting.
Then I got a call from the sales rep at The New York Times. “The store manager just called and pulled the plug on the ad campaign. They want to stop advertising altogether”, he said. “What happened?”
Finally a week later the sales manager called. His once positive, confident voice now sounded sheepish, small and defeated.
“I have to let you and your agency go”, he said in a near whisper.
“What’s wrong?”, I asked in total disbelief. “Didn’t we produce the sales you wanted?”
“What’s wrong”, he said, “is the store owner is uncomfortable with all these people in his store. He’s uncomfortable with our success…he won’t even come into the store anymore.”
Then he put his finger on what I suspected was the real issue: “The owner wants his old store back. He’s completely out of his comfort zone right now.”
I later learned that the store manager quit; the sales training stopped, and the store shrank back to sales below where they were before they hired us.
But I’ll bet you the store owner was “comfortable” again.
Now contrast that story to this one: I was conducting an ad workshop in San Diego not long ago. During one of the breaks a young man, the new marketing director of a local casino, approached me with his current newspaper ad in hand. He wanted to know what he could do to dramatically improve revenues.
I asked him if he had “the guts” to massively grow his leads and sales.
He was a bit shocked by my question.
I told him to come up with a specific number of leads he wanted the ad to produce. I further told him the number should make him “uncomfortable”. And when he knew to come back and we’d talk about his ad strategy.
As the session ended, I saw him walking toward me. “I have an answer”, he said. “I want the ad to generate a thousand new leads.”
“Then you need an outrageously compelling offer”, I answered. “And to come up with one, you need to get outside your comfort zone.”
A couple of days later we met and together came up with an offer that was outrageous enough his palms were sweating. He would advertise a “Free Prime Rib Dinner for 2, plus $25 of Free Gambling Money”.
A few days after the ad ran in the local newspaper, he called. His voice was filled with excitement.
“You’re not going to believe it” he said. ”The ad pulled just over 10,000 responses in 3 days. And we generated over $500,000 in revenues to our bottom-line.”
‘That’s good news”, I replied.
“Ya, but there was a problem. The Food and Beverage Manager complained that they couldn’t handle all the new customers. They ran out of food, we didn’t have enough servers, and parking was a nightmare. So we had to stop running the ad.”
Okay, so being prepared for success is critical. And I’ll cover it another article.
But here’s the point: like the casino’s marketing director found out, your ads cannot deliver bigger sales results until you demand bigger sales results.
To improve sales, set your “lead and revenue targets” higher than you’re comfortable with.
You’ll be able to tell if you’re setting goals outside your comfort zone because if you are your palms will sweat.
Try this right now. Set uncomfortable goals for your next ad campaign. And then check your palms.
If they’re not sweating, do the exercise again until you do.
And if you are sweating, take a look at your ads again. Does the primary offer have the necessary fire power to accomplish the results you want? I think you can tell. We all know if an ad’s offer is “lame” or not. Be honest. And keep pushing the envelop out until you come up with strategies that will accomplish the mission.
Allowing yourself to think outside your-comfort-zone-box will not be easy if you’re not used to it.
But it’s the only way to quickly grow your leads and sales.
Like it or not, the results your ads are delivering are the ones you’re comfortable with. No, you may not be “intellectually” comfortable with your present results. But as it applies to your comfort zone, you are where you want to be. It’s familiar there.
So if you want sales at a higher level, challenge your present comfort zone and push your mental borders further out. It’s in this new, unfamiliar mental zone, that breakthrough ideas occur.
Albert Einstein summarized it best: “The same mind that created the problem cannot solve the problem”.
Outside your comfort zone you’ll discover a “new mind”, capable of powerful ideas you haven’t entertained before.
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Want more effective ads? Then fix your niche
Your niche is your most important business marketing strategy. It’s responsible for attracting customers, separating you from the herd of competing businesses and making your business money.
It’s much easier to create effective ads if your niche is truly “magnetic”. That’s because a niche that magnetically pulls and attracts customers is the biggest indicator your business works—even before you create ads to promote it.
Don’t rely on advertising to be the “attracting” factor. That’s what your niche is for.
One thing I’ve learned about niches is this: a great niche will attract great word-of-mouth advertising. When a business gives it’s customers an advantage they can’t get elsewhere, those customers talk. and if customers are referring their friends, your advertising campaigns will be that much more effective. A good niche will skyrocket ad response.
If your niche isn’t working to magnetically attract customers you should look (under the hood so to speak) at the engine that comprises your niche. There are 4 unique niche-building elements…each a strategy in itself. They are:
- A core customer—a specific type of customer who wants your products and services.
- A core product or service—a unique or hard to get product line or a way of delivering service that’s special.
- A core competitive strategy—a strategic way to undermine your competition…like Kinko’s being open 24/7.
- A core image –the appearance of your business that visually “transmits” your competitive strategy.
Let me give you an example of how one Plumber, facing 67 other local plumbers, decided to change his focus from being a general plumber to a unique category specialist. A category none of his competitors wanted.
He narrowed his product and service offering to “toilets”—the segment of his business that made the most money.
Here is the ad
By being the “toilet” expert willing to make service calls anytime day or night, he quickly cornered this lucrative part of the plumbing business. He also grew from 1 truck servicing the community to 6 trucks in less than a year.
If your ads aren’t attracting the leads and sales they should, take a hard look at your niche.
Chances are, if you look at your niche in light of the 4 niche elements above, you may not be different from your competitors.
If that’s true, fix it. Look at each of the 4 niche elements. Take them one by one. Find a way to be unique and special in each of the 4 areas. By being different than your competitors in each area, you’ll create a huge gap between you and everyone else.
Then create ads to reflect your niche strategy. And watch what happens.
David Fowler
