In last week’s edition we talked about one of the biggest mistakes most agencies make, so this week we’ll even things out by telling you about a big mistake that we made recently - partly because we think you’ll find it useful, and partly because being publicly humiliated makes us feel a certain way (a certain way that we like feeling).
Our mistake?
We didn’t consider how a prospect actually bought services, before trying to flog them our services.
It’s dumb, we know.
But we reckon you’ve probably done it, too.
Right now the majority of agencies are worried about client acquisition, and that means that they (and you) will have tried pretty much anything to acquire new clients - like sending cold emails (like Mr Freeze cold. Ice cold. Ice ice baby cold. OK, you get it).
The problem isn’t the cold emails - the problem is not realising how your prospect actually buys from you, and other suppliers. For example, the thing you’re offering or the promise you’re making (like five glorious nights in an Adults Only Disneyland) needs to sway your prospect more than a gentle breeze on a Caribbean night - and that only works if you know them.
In our case, we believed that our prospect would buy if we offered useful and free tips for improving their website copy to help them land more clients.
So far so good, right? Well…
We toddled off to rewrite their headline, and then pitched them in a Loom video.
While we did manage to book a call, it became more obvious than a clown at a funeral that something was wrong.
You see, we rewrote our prospect’s website headline, but we didn’t know that their clients don’t actually buy from their website - they buy through Government tender. Their website was just the final step in the funnel, and worked for them more like a Hinge profile than a sales platform.
Oops.
Your lesson here is this: when you’re reaching out to prospects - whether it’s direct mail, Linkedin, email, or messenger cat that can travel across dimensions - understand what makes them buy.
Further to that, understand where your offer or pitch fits into their buying cycle. The best way you can do this is simply by understanding your customer.
Don’t make the same mistake we did.
And when you’ve figured out what works for them, you’ll probably need some damn good copy to get them across the line. But first thing’s first: check out our short guide on niching to get the hows and whys of showing your customer you actually understand them.
Let us know how you get on.
See that guy behind you? The one that looks, smells, and tastes a bit like a competitor? He knows something you don’t. He knows where his agency stands in the market. He knows that his market positioning and niche are earning him clients. Not costing him clients. How does he know that? He spent £675 on a Copy & Positioning Report Card. It scored his niche, positioning, differentiation, and advertising against his competitors. 2024 was going to be tough, but then he spent chump change he found down the back of the sofa, and fixed it. You can too. So do it now, before you get distracted by cat videos on TikTok.
49% of ads do nothing at all
The truth, as they say, hurts.
In an interview with B&T, System1’s CCO, Jon Evans (also the host of The Unfiltered CMO podcast) has said that out of more than 100,000 ads tested, almost half of them may as well have been written on the back of a beermat and thrown into the sea (we may be paraphrasing slightly).
That is to say, the ads didn’t register any emotions in audiences or compel them to action. That’s obviously bad news for the brands concerned, not to mention pretty awkward for the swathes of creatives hired to make those ads, but Evans thinks the ramifications of bad ads go much, much deeper than that.
“If advertising doesn’t work, businesses will suffer, people will lose their jobs and ultimately, the economy will not do as well as it should,” he says. “The other side of the equation is the waste – the amount of money being wasted producing new things, making things that don’t work, and employing people that are going to be unproductive is enormous.”
This reminds us of a conversation Seb had the other day about ineffective copy wasting ad budgets, and it’s scary how many advertisers will still choose to throw wads of cash at new advertising formats, rather than investing in their messaging - the thing that’s actually made ads work for the past 5,000+ years. Human beings buy emotionally and justify rationally, and that isn’t going to change.
Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we may have a wee bit of bias here. It’s no secret that writing effective copy is our bread and butter at Soba - but bias doesn’t mean something isn’t true. This isn’t like the time your mum said you deserved a BAFTA for playing Sleeping Sheep #2 in the school nativity play; the fact is, if your ad’s messaging doesn’t work, then you haven’t made an ad at all - you’ve just made a waste of time.
Check out the B&T article here.
Dancing teens are being banned in the US
A US TikTok ban has been in the air since 2020, when former president/luminous sex pest Donald Trump gave an executive order to pull the plug over concerns about the data of American citizens being obtained by TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
While Trump may be gone forever (our therapist said to try manifesting; you’ll know if it works in November), the security concerns remain. So this week the House of Representatives passed a bill that will force ByteDance to either sell the app, or face a total ban throughout the US.
So what does this mean for advertisers?
Well, TikTok probably isn’t going anywhere. There’ll be no shortage of U.S buyers, and plenty of encouragement to keep brands spending there - but the brand disappearing isn’t the problem. The likelihood of users disappearing is.
It’s not like there’s no precedent for this - within 6 months of Elon Musk buying it, Twitter’s ad revenue dropped by half, and the company lost 71% of its overall worth by the end of the year, with no signs of recovering.
If the world’s least charismatic apartheid beneficiary decides to have another bash at running a social platform, that could spell big trouble for advertisers who rely onTikTok as a primary channel (and there aren’t many who don’t).
And in the event of a total ban, rest assured that Instagram Reels will willingly adapt to soak up the masses of lip-synching teens looking for a new home - if someone else doesn’t get their sponge out first (Twitter has just announced their plan to be a video-first platform, after all…).
Get Adweek’s take on it here.
Amazon’s filthy advertising lie - EXPOSED
As pioneering e-tailers, Amazon is raising the bar yet again. Not content to only treat their employees like shit, they’ve jumped on the opportunity to treat their advertisers like shit, too.
It turns out that Amazon has been advertising products that can’t be bought, and charging their clients for the privilege. But it’s OK - the multi-billion dollar good guys are offering one of the victims of their ‘misdirected advertisements’ a $15,000 refund for their inconvenience. No, it’s not quite the $300,000 the seller has asked for, but Amazon didn’t get to where they are by being nice. Or fair. Or letting their staff go to the toilet. Or sit down. Etc, etc.
The problem, it seems, was down to Amazon’s geographic targeting being out of sync with its algorithmic ‘We thought you might like this’ it was serving to customers. AI getting things wrong? You heard it here first, folks..
AdAge has the article here.
See that guy behind you? The one that looks, smells, and tastes a bit like a competitor? He knows something you don’t. He knows where his agency stands in the market. He knows that his market positioning and niche are earning him clients. Not costing him clients. How does he know that? He spent £675 on a Copy & Positioning Report Card. It scored his niche, positioning, differentiation, and advertising against his competitors. 2024 was going to be tough, but then he spent chump change he found down the back of the sofa, and fixed it. You can too. So do it now, before you get distracted by cat videos on TikTok.