Business and Investment Center

Advertising is not rocket science. You shouldn’t need a degree in the physical sciences to create or understand an ad.

And you should never, ever, under any circumstances, kill an ad because it is not literal enough. On the contrary, if you find your ads are too literal, you should destroy them all and start fresh.

Are Volkswagens flawed pieces of junk? No, but an ad with the headline “Lemon” gets your attention, doesn’t it? It makes you want to read the story, which goes on to explain how the particular car shown in the ad would never be driven because VW cares so much it weeds out the lemons so you never get a bad car. Think what an opportunity would have been missed if the folks at Volkswagen had taken that headline too literally.

Think about it from this angle. Why do people read an ad or watch a commercial? The majority do so because they find them entertaining and informative. If your ads are all information and no entertainment, you’ve wasted your budget.

This is not to say that an ad should be created purely for entertainment purposes. Again, a great ad is both entertaining and informative. The entertainment value should be derived from a feature of your product or brand. In other words, what you’re selling should be the star of the show. Sounds simple enough, but it is often hard to strike the right balance. That’s what makes advertising so fun.

How much information does your audience really need? What kind of story will they find entertaining? These are questions that should be asked and answered early on so that when you finally are presented with an ad or a campaign, you can judge the work according to these preordained guidelines.

A good campaign will reach your target audience and talk to them on a personal level. This has a valuable effect on your sales and reputation. A great advertising campaign will do more than that. It will create a buzz outside of your target audience.

Apple Computer’s “1984” commercial ran only once. But it is still one of the most talked about commercials because it was rebroadcast on every major news show and written about in every major newspaper for weeks and months. And none of this cost Apple anything more than a single TV buy.

It’s worth noting that Apple’s Super Bowl commercial helped make the company a household name and created unbelievable demand for the new Macintosh computer-yet the ad never showed the product or explained any details about it.

BMW’s Mini Cooper was one of the first cars to be introduced in the United States with no TV advertising. Blasphemy! Instead, they bolted the Minis to the roofs of SUVs and drove them around major cities. They created tongue-in-cheek billboards, interactive print ads and great guerrilla promotions. Most importantly, they created a waiting list of customers who couldn’t wait to get a Mini.

Companies that think bigger become bigger. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle. If you just think like a local operation, you might miss the opportunity to expand regionally, nationally, or even internationally. Your advertising campaign should reflect the direction of your company—even if you’re not yet there.

In order to BE a self-employed person I had to start thinking like one. I found myself reverting to that nine-to-five mentality.  If I wasn’t accomplishing a task every hour, then I must not really be working.

Sometimes a self-employed person has to make decisions about her business.  Sometimes she is just thinking about a solution to a problem. Sometimes she just has to quiet her mind so new ideas can come. Just because you’re not pounding away at the typewriter every minute doesn’t mean you’re not working.

I’ve also learned that it’s okay NOT to answer the phone every time it rings.  That’s what voicemail is for, and the same goes for email.  At my nine-to-five job I would leave the email program open all day and answer each one as it arrived.  It took me a while to realize it’s okay to only check email several times a day instead of constantly being interrupted. It’s actually more productive than having to stop your thought process every time “you have mail.” At my other job, I was able to let a phone call roll over into voice mail, but it took me a while to be able to shut down the email too.

You’re going to have days where you feel you didn’t accomplish much.  Then again, you’ll have days where you’ll feel you can conquer the world and you’ll be amazed at how much you got done. Some days you may not finish many tasks, but you’ll make a decision on a problem that needed to be addressed.  Or, you will have learned a valuable lesson about yourself.

And, I had to learn to stop breaking down all my tasks into dollars and cents.  I tended to worry about how much I was or was not earning every day.  The truth is, some days you’re going to make more than other days. If I spent my day on marketing issues, even though I didn’t earn any money from it that day, I would benefit from it some time in the future.

Rather than worry about what benefits I do or don’t have, I realized the benefit I have in my business is that I answer only to me. Everything I do will benefit me sooner or later.  Instead of my income being dependent on somebody else’s budget, I can go as far as I dream.

And because I’m now doing what I truly love and not what someone else tells me to, I’m much happier and more content. I learned if you start THINKING like an entrepreneur, then you’ll actually be one.