This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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This post from Dave Young (Branding Blog and WizardofAds) supports my imperitive to "Forget Control. It’s an Illusion." Surrender control to the god of value.
"At the heart of every moneymaking ad campaign is a powerful strategy, a story that needed to be told. But not every business has such a story. When your ads aren’t working, return to the core, look at first causes, heal the central wound. No writer, no matter how brilliant, can dress up a bad idea and sell it to intelligent people. It usually takes more than good writing to pull you back from the brink of disaster.
"How did you get to the brink of disaster in the first place?
"Business owners wander near the brink when they:
(1.) fail to have an attractive core strategy.
(2.) pretend their competitors don’t matter.
(3.) believe that ‘reaching the right people’ is the secret to success.
(4.) worry about "increasing traffic" more than delivering a wonderful customer experience."Give me a business that delights its customers and I can write ads that will take them to the stars. But force me to write ads for a business that does only an average job with their customers and I’ll have to work like a madman to keep that business from sliding backwards. Unless they have no competitors."
Are you telling a story that needs to be told?
Are you delighting customers?