2 Easy Marketing Tips to Immediately Improve Your Campaigns

The topic of marketing can be a long conversation.

I get a lot of questions from friends, family members and prospective clients about the subject at dinners and networking functions. Most often they ask me, “What are some immediate things I can do that will improve my marketing?”

Here are the two easy marketing tips that I tell them (that are just about universally applicable):

Tip 1: Stop Being So Darn Confusing

The most straightforward advice I can give you about making your marketing better is to be straightforward.

Just today I was driving to lunch and a billboard caught my eye for all of the wrong reasons (a.k.a something I realized I could use as an example to prove my point). It was an advertisement for a floor company’s high customer service rating. You’d think they would use a photo of satisfied customers or gorgeous floors, but no. They decided to showcase the text with a photo of a random dog. No relationship to the product, the company or the messaging.

It seems like common sense to make your marketing efforts extremely understandable. All too often, however, this concept gets lost in the brainstorming process. Either the message the business want to get across becomes to complicated or they think that they’re being clever by incorporating random images (the dog mentioned above).

The point is this–don’t be so darn confusing. Simple won’t make you look dumb or unsophisticated–it will make your message easily transferrable.

Here’s How I Would Do It

Although Top Hat IMC doesn’t require a billboard at this moment in our strategy, I already have one planned in case the day ever comes. It’s as straightforward and simple as it gets.

Simple, minimalistic and easy to read as someone would drive by at 60 miles per hour.

Tip 2: Ditch the Phone Number

The second easiest marketing tip I can give you is to ditch the phone number on your advertisements and marketing materials.

How many times have you driven past a billboard and wanted to know more, but couldn’t memorize the nine-digit phone number? I’ve seen this on more occasions than I’d like to admit, especially with outdoor advertisements and fast-paced commercials (where they’re on the screen for literally one second).

Nowadays, your second step should be to get someone to your website to learn more. This isn’t going to smoothly occur with a phone number that’s long, lengthy and hard to remember. A website address works much better.

What are some quick marketing tips you’ve found useful?