Marketing: Don’t be a turkey and play follow the leader

What makes you think your competition’s marketing is working for them?

I talk to clients often about monitoring the competition. They clip out newspaper ads and keep direct mail pieces of the ads that their competitors are doing. However, one of the biggest mistakes people make is advertising in publications just because their competitors are in them.

Don’t be a turkey.

Don’t think that all your competitors are there because their ads are producing great results. They’re more likely to be there because everyone else is and most of them won’t have a good system to tell whether their ads are working.

A newspaper and yellow pages sales tactic you need to know

If a newspaper or yellow pages can get one or two of your competitors to advertise, they will call you up and tell you how you’ll lose out if you don’t advertise too. In fact, this is a well known sales trick used by the people selling ad space. Yellow pages and newspaper reps do it all the time.

What they fail to mention is that your competitors probably never test their advertising, often haven’t got a clue how to market and are only advertising because they are playing follow the leader. This is a highly effective way to sustain the advertising industry.

It’s not a great way for you to run your business.

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Chris Mitchell is the President and Founder of 25-8 Marketing, Inc, a full service advertising agency that plans and implements marketing programs for small to medium-sized businesses. He is a consultant, speaker and author and has worked with hundreds of companies. He has over 20 years of real-world advertising experience, and understands the marketing challenges of the small business owner.

website: http://www.258marketing.com
email: chris@258marketing.com