It seems that no matter what you do, in some form, you are advertising your business. If you attend a cocktail party, invariably someone will bring up something to do with travel—you’re advertising. You interact on Facebook or Twitter—advertising. Design an ad for the local paper—advertising. The ultimate goal is to have someone open their wallet and actually buy something. But there is an inherent problem with that. For the most part, it is not going to work. The odds are just not with you!
If you are depending on short-term sale messages to drive your message home, you have only one hope: that your message will engage your customers and prospects at the very moment those customers are thinking about buying. You are looking for people who are simply waiting for the right ad with the right message. It’s easy to demonstrate why this approach is not effective.
Let’s take a break from travel for a moment and put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. Consider that most people buy a new car every three years. That’s one day out of 1,095 they’ll be receptive to a short-term sale message. The other 1,094 days, they’re not interested, so they ignore the ad. And the advertiser’s money may be wasted. Put your travel hat back on now. How often does the average customer buy a vacation package, FIT, or cruise? Assuming a liberal once per year, it stands to reason that the probability of their “purchase window” coinciding with your message is one out of 365 at best. You can likely do better in Vegas!
But don’t be too discouraged. For the other people who do not respond; consider them customers of the future.
Successful ads must engage all of the other people. It must engage the ones not looking to buy as well. Eventually, they will buy—that is a given. It might be tomorrow, next month, next year, or in 2020; but they will buy. And more likely than not, they will buy from the agency who establishes themselves with a meaningful, memorable, long-term position.
So, don’t get upset when your ads (no matter the medium) are not working. The odds are stacked against you. But concentrate on communicating a compelling message about your agency which will serve the long term as well as the short term.
An ad that doesn’t address both opportunities is, after all, really only half an ad.
