The 8020 Blog

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I am locked in mortal email combat with the editor of a very good e-zine in which I placed an advert and received a dismal response.

The reason for the underwhelming response is that they camouflaged my advert … it was “buried” in an article near the bottom of screen #2. Note: it was not even placed at the end of the article but rather inserted, in identical font size and near identical font colour, IN the darned article near the bottom of it.

I asked my wife to open the e-zine up and tell me what she thought of my advert. She read the e-zine and then had to ask me where my advert was. Exactly.

On emailing my concern to the editor he replied that Google recommend “visually integrated” adverts for a higher response rate.

Idiots.

I replied that the first thing that needs to happen in order for any advert to work is that it must get noticed. Then is has to get read and acted upon - but those two things will never happen until it get’s noticed.

Contrary to what some pimple-faced MBA graduate kid at Google says, make sure if have any option your adverts STICK OUT like dogs balls. The uglier and more outrageous, the better.

(Interestingly, the editor had four adverts on the same page for different products and services that he supplied. Every one was in full living colour … NOT visually integrated … hmm … good for the goose ….)

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Amazingly there are people out there who bust their butt to get new leads/new clients and then fail to follow them up.

Maybe they lack personal organization or maybe they are overloaded. Either way, it makes it easier for you to shine when you do the simple stuff reliably well such as following through on any new referrals or other potential new client leads.

Now I realize that this is not exactly rocket science but there are people out there spending many thousands on marketing or “get new clients” courses (good idea) looking for some quick-fix-secret (bad idea) when they have not yet developed the habit of following up good quality leads that are handed to them on a silver platter.

Go figure.