1. Growing Means Stealing

You can’t get more customers unless you take those customers from the competition. 

There’s only so much business done in your category within your town. If you’re getting more of it, others are getting less. 

That doesn’t necessarily mean you need advertising that beats up your competition.

It does mean your business will end up competing on one of three factors:

    1. Preference and “Mental Availability” (aka, who they think of first and feel the best about)
    2. Physical Availability (aka, can you come when they need you? Are you open when they need you? Is your product in stock? Is your store easy to get to? Etc)
    3. Price

And yes, those three are listed in order of importance. 

If you don’t dominate the first two, you’ll be forced to compete on the third. 

2. No One Wants to Hear Your Sh*t

Your ads are an annoyance to your future customers.

Because your business is irrelevant to their lives until the very moment that they need what you sell — unless…

Unless you make yourself otherwise.

And the only way to make yourself otherwise is through:

    • Entertainment, 
    • Intrigue, and 
    • Provocation.

If your ads aren’t entertaining, intriguing, or provocative, they’ll be ignored. 

And ignored ads mean you’ll never be able to compete on preference or mental availability. 

Bottom Line: if you’re not paying for high-impact ads, you’re wasting your money. 

3. Without High Frequency, Your Advertising Will Fail

Precisely because no one wants to hear your sh*t, you need high frequency. 

The lower the relevance, the higher the repetition needed for “stuff” to sink in.

High impact, highly relevant stuff becomes permanent in one go. 

You don’t need to repeat the moment you first became a parent in order to remember it forever. The same goes for any other life highlight (or traumatic event).

The sheer irrelevance of your ads compared to those moments means you need boatloads of repetition over time for your branding to sink in.

And your branding “sinking in” is the key to competing on preference and mental availability. 

So if your media plan isn’t planning for high frequency, you’re planning to fail

4. Sales Won Over Years Can Be Lost in Seconds

Ads that make people think of you first and feel the best about you should win you the sale… eventually.

Unfortunately, that only guarantees your prospective customer will do one of two or three things when they finally need what you sell:

    1. Call you first 
    2. Go to your website first
    3. Go to your store first

If your phone staff screw up that call… 

Or your website frustrates the prospect…

Or your staff don’t properly engage the store visitor…

Then you’ll lose the sale, plus some.

On the blatant end of the spectrum, you could lose the sale by not answering the phone, or not answering fast enough with a real person.

At the mid-point of the scale, this could mean not providing prospects with the information they need to make the sale. 

And at the more subtle extreme, the lost sale could be because you don’t “feel” like the same company in person as you are in your ads.

5. Vulnerability Is The key to Bonding, and Bonding is The Key to Winning

If you recall the first hard truth, it’s not enough to get people to think of you first; they also have to feel the best about you.

This is called bonding with the customer. 

And the key to bonding is sharing stories. 

Specifically stories that give the listener insight to your character. 

Most especially stories about:

    • your scars (emotional or otherwise), 
    • your sacrifices made along the path to success and significance
    • and your moments or quirks of vulnerability

I’m essentially saying the fastest way to exponential growth is to get (emotionally) naked on the air. 

You can successfully brand your company without doing that, but you’ll be intentionally selecting a slower path to success. 

Sorry to be so blunt about it, but that IS the hard truth of the matter. 

Customers want to do business with owners who have “soul in the game,” and there’s no other way to communicate that than with vulnerability. 

What Now?

If you were unfazed by these hard truths…

…and if you have yet to launch the kind of bonding campaign that align with these truths…

Contact me and we’ll grow your business bigger than you could dream.

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