The title of this post comes from this Steve Martin Quote

It’s such a popular quote and piece of advice, it was even turned into a self-help book.

But when people first think of applying it to business, they naturally think in terms of mastering their craft. Which is how it should be.

Unfortunately, as many craftsmen well know, it’s entirely possible to be your town’s best kept secret, despite having mastered one’s craft.

So the idea is to apply this advice to your marketing, so that your mastery can earn the marketplace dominance it deserves.

And there’s two levels of this:

  1. Hire an advertising team that have mastered their craft, to include an ad writer that’s capable of crafting ads so good they can’t be ignored.
  2. Concentrate your media spend so that your ads can’t be avoided or ignored.

I won’t talk much about the first element, other than to say you’ll know if your ad team has “the right stuff” when people routinely come up to you and tell you about hearing your ads.

If your ads aren’t creating buzz, you should think twice about the ads you’re running.

But enough about that, let’s talk about concentrating your media firepower.

Concentrate Your Media Firepower

Too many business owners want to spread their ad budgets among various media — digital, print mailers, magazine ads, billboards, and, yes, even electronic mass media like radio and TV.

ads in concentrated mediaThat’s a recipe for failure.

To be fair, though, it’s a common-sense mistake.

It’s natural to want to “cover your bases” and not “put all your eggs in one basket.”

But the counter-intuitive truth is that concentrated force works better at breaking through the clutter than a too-spread out media mix.

You need to concentrate your firepower so that you can “own” whatever medium you’ve chosen.

If it’s billboards, you want enough billboards in the city so that drivers can’t avoid seeing you.

And if you go with electronic media, you want to own one station.

If you can’t own that station, you want to own a day part or a show, if you’re buying on TV or a talk, sports, or news radio channel.

Normally, we measure “owning” a station in terms of frequency — how often within one week’s time will the average listener hear your ad.

And the goal most Wizards aim for is a three frequency.

But the honest truth is it always helps and never hurts if you push that frequency up closer to thee and a half or maybe even four, if and when you can afford it.

You want your ads to be so prevalent listeners can’t ignore them.

And you want the ads themselves to be so good listeners can’t mentally tune them out either.

The two work together to drive Steve Martin style success.

Combine that with mastery of craft, and you’ll take over the world.

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