The Small Business Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed in Your Small Business, 3rd Edition

Chapter 40

Advanced Marketing and Advertising

Advertising is the “wonder” in Wonder Bread.

—Jeff I. Richards

There's an adage about advertising and dogs that is pretty true, and once, I had the dog to prove it. Her name was Gert. A wonderful black Lab, she was sweet, smart, beautiful, and gentle—everything you could hope for in a dog. But, like most dogs (and cats for that matter), Gert hated it when she had to swallow a pill. She would spit that pill out as fast as she could. Then I got wise and learned that the only way to get Gert to swallow a pill was to wrap it in something tasty. I usually stuck it in a hunk of cheese. She would gobble the cheese up, pill and all—a spoonful of sugar and all that.

Well, as the tale goes, your advertising is not unlike that pill. Customers don't really like ads. They try to avoid them and spit them out by turning the page or zapping through them. So what do you do? You need to wrap your ads in some sort of tasty metaphorical cheese, of course—then they become much more appealing. Your cheese may be a great benefit, or humor, or maybe a catchy jingle. Whatever it is, the idea is to make your ads appetizing. Do that, and they will get noticed, and your business will grow.

Advanced Marketing

Increasingly, business marketing is moving online using a variety of new tools: social media, YouTube, Facebook, and e-newsletter and search engine advertising, for starters. All of these new e-tools will be discussed later in this book. This chapter is devoted ...