Introduction

Brands are important! Let’s make that perfectly clear from the get-go. You should identify your brand, worry about your brand, grow your brand, and protect your brand. As a local business, your brand is defined by the logo you use, the way you answer the phone, and how you greet a customer. Your brand may be defined by an audio identifier (the jingle guys like that term!), a spokesperson, a color scheme. Your brand is affected by the letterhead you choose, the company apparel you wear, your trade show booth, and what community involvement you decide to support. Your brand needs to be carefully planned and maintained with radical consistency. And then, hopefully, over time, the local consumer develops a sense of who you are, what you do and what you stand for, just by being exposed to your brand.

This, however, is a book about advertising. And, while all branding is advertising, all advertising is not branding. For you, the local advertiser, I want to help you not waste precious advertising dollars to simply brand your business. This book is focused on making sure your advertising delivers RESULTS.

It’s dangerous to write a book about advertising today. By the time your work hits the virtual bookshelf, the advertising landscape has probably already changed! In fact, it wasn’t too long ago that almost every ad said, “Like us on Facebook!” Now, the Facebook “liker” as an advertising currency is old news, and it was less than a year ago (as of this writing) that making your business a Pokemon Go stop was all the rage.

So, it’s dangerous to write about advertising because everyone reads with a sense of skepticism, especially in the world of digital advertising where it’s a mad dash to find the next “newest,” “latest,” “hottest” marketing tool or tactic.

That’s why this isn’t a book focused on the tool or tactic. If you’re looking for a read that will guide you through a digital re-targeting strategy that incorporates geo-fencing your competition, you won’t find it here. Neither will you find a book that will deliver the Do’s and Don’ts of Native Advertising.

So, what is this book?

This is a book based on lessons learned over 30 years of helping the LOCAL advertiser earn better advertising results. And, this book is pretty much media agnostic, meaning it is not meant to be an endorsement of one medium over another. My personal career spans print, radio, broadcast television, cable television and Internet marketing, and, as I have said for years, “They’re all good. They can all bring you a new customer.”

Instead of predicting the next big digital tool, I’ll delve deep into the basic principles of local advertising that need to be in place in order for a campaign to work, regardless of where you decide to invest your advertising money. That said, there will be a healthy dose of digital insights, along with success stories from all different media.

So, who should read this book? The answer is simple: anyone who affects an advertising budget. If you’re a business owner who handles your own advertising, this book is for you. If you’re a marketing director for a business, this book is for you. If you sell advertising and want to be more effective with the campaigns you influence, this book is for you. If you work at an ad agency or in the creative department at a media outlet, this book is for you.

I’ve broken it down into bite-sized chapters where we’ll identify some obvious advertising principles, dispel some longstanding advertising myths, and uncover some new insights. All of the content is designed to help you earn better results from your advertising investment.

Be forewarned. Some of the ideas in this book will fly directly in the face of what most local advertisers believe. Some of the strategies will be contrary to what most local advertisers regularly do. That’s okay. Because the content contained in these pages is what we’ve seen work repeatedly for local advertisers. That means your contradictions are opportunities for improvement. However, you should remember that there are exceptions to everything I’m about to share. So what! I’m much more concerned with what works consistently than I am the one-off stories. The “well, one time…” stories don’t stack up to a body of work that consistently delivers results.

So, if you’re ready, and your mind is open, dig in, discover and deploy…