Greetings Flooring Dealers!

I’ve got to get this off my chest before I explode!

There are two broad categories in advertising, and it is vital you understand the difference.  If you don’t, your campaigns are doomed to mediocre returns at best, failure at worst.  These two kinds of marketing are called institutional or “Image” advertising and emotional direct response advertising.

Emotional direct response advertising will make you rich!

“Image” advertising will waste your money!

Institutional advertising is where a business tries to get customers by building name recognition.  Almost all industries use this kind of advertising.  Open up the yellow pages to any industry category and you will find examples of this.

All the ads say basically the same thing: the business name, bullet-points telling what it does, phone number and a slogan saying something like, “Number one in customer satisfaction,” or other such drivel.  This advertising gives no compelling reason for a customer to use this company verses each and every other competitor.

The big-boxes use institutional advertising as their bread and butter.  Since their customer service is lousy, and their flooring “experts” don’t know a seam from a tack strip, and there is nothing special about their products, they can really give no reason for a potential customer to use them.  So they resort to promoting low price.

Serious Drawbacks to “Image” Advertising

  • Institutional ads are difficult to track, so there is almost no way of knowing if you are getting any sales as a direct result of your campaign.
  • There is no compelling reason for someone to call your company instead of another.  Therefore, it winds up turning into a “price game.”  And this is the one area where boxes simply cannot be beaten.  Fortunately for the savvy floor dealer, there are many other areas where they can be beaten—and beaten badly.
  • It can take a long time to see results.  At best, results don’t happen until sometime in the future, oftentimes too late to do you any good.
  • It’s very, very expensive.  Gigantic corporations can afford to dump millions of dollars into this kind of advertising.  Most independent or small floor covering dealers can’t.

In the next installment I’ll discuss alternatives to institutional advertising.

 

To Tons Of Customers!
Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”

Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
See what real, live dealers are saying!