CAN YOU FOG A MIRROR OR ARE YOU JUST DEAD WHEN IT COMES TO ADVERTISING?

When you came in to work today, did you die when you had to make a decision on your advertising? If you didn’t recoil into a fetal position and your brain’s neurons actually fired up, on what did you base your decision? Gut feel?

Here is the first of the twelve most common advertising mistakes made by new businesses everywhere. I hope you don’t find yourself making these when you are launching your business and I especially hope you’re not making them if you’re one of the old dogs. I don’t meant to belittle your decision-making, but I see it every day and it causes me to wither away a little bit every time.

1. Expecting to open the...

door and have everybody beat a path to it

            

When you start a new business you are totally consumed with it.  You can think of nothing else, and that feeling of total absorption rules how you think about your business and how you think others feel about it too. It is natural for you to think that everyone interested in what you offer will flock to your store like sheep being herded by a sheep dog. Sorry to break it to you, but that won’t happen. The sooner you understand this, the better off you will be. I deal with many well-known, well-established companies who still are amazed by the number of people in their trading area who don’t even know they exist let alone have ever shopped there. Hard to believe, but true.