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Smart Small > Big Dumb

Foto van schrijver: Arno WingenArno Wingen

Most marketing advice really really sucks.


I studied marketing for years in school. Then I started my own business. Tried to implement what I learned in school.


It was an unmitigated disaster.


Didn't get clients. Hardly got anyone to even look at the ads.


The ad salesman told me: "yeah, you should run it very often. Veeeeeerrrrrrryyyyy often"


Made sense. The guy got paid every time the ad ran. I'd say the same thing.


Took me a while to figure out that in university they taught me the strategy that companies like Coca Cola use right now. 


Just blast your ad and hope for the best.


Only issue is that Coca Cola has a 600 million dollar ad budget. And mine was like 600 dollars.


If you water a strategy down by a factor of one million it doesn't tend to do as well.


Also, Coca Cola has 10,000 people in their marketing department. I had one. Which was me. And I also had to do everything else!


So I started to look into the question of: 'how do big companies get so big?'. You don't go from zero to 600 million budget without doing something right... right?


After a whole lot of research I figured out that they all roughly use the same formula.


They don't start out running mass media 'brand awareness' ads. They start out hammering home a USP and using mostly direct response ads.


Coca Cola started out using coupons, forcing distribution and selling a whole lot of sugar water as a result.


Turns out that big dumb companies start out as small smart companies. Then they hit critical mass, the board of directors takes over, HR comes on, middle management entrenches itself, there's unlimited budget and the stupidness begins. 


Now - if you're reading this and you have a $600 million budget - that's awesome. Congratulations, I salute you. Just run any ad, it'll be fine. Wave to me when you fly over Amsterdam in your private jet.


If you're not at that level yet, you probably want to make sure your ads have some ROI. So you should check out my report on USPs. It shows you how small, smart companies grew at rapid rates using clever marketing.



Talk soon,


Arno


P.S. No P.S. this time. So it's like Schrodingers P.S. If there is a P.S. that says there's no P.S... is there really a P.S.?


 
 
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