First off, I flip between using the words advertising and marketing in my articles and I would like to explain why.  Marketing could be free or paid.  Marketing covers any way you can promote your product or service.  Telling your friend to go to your website is marketing. 

 

To me advertising is paying cash to someone for an ad spot somewhere.  Either in a magazine, an email, on a website, a bus, a bench, someone in a costume, a billboard, on tv, on the radio, etc.  You pay someone to expose your business to a customer base.

 

Lastly, if you are a business owner and stood outside your store telling people about your business, I consider this marketing because it's free to you.  If you paid an agency to do this for you, that's marketing too but would also be advertising in my book because you're paying someone to do it for you.

 

All I Need Is A Grand Opening Sign

The other day I was talking to a real estate agent who just sold a restaurant for over $2,000,000.  He told me he's making a living off of this one restaurant.  He has sold it four times to four different people in the last six years, and each time he earned a 2% commission.  That’s $40,000!  I asked him what was wrong with the place.  Is the location bad?  It didn't appear to be. This restaurant was right on a main street in Los Angeles.  Wow.  Was the food bad?  No.  Was the food priced too high?  No.  What was wrong?  He told me the problem was that all four business owners opened their restaurant, put a "grand opening" sign on the front of the building, then sat and waited for the crowd to come rolling in, but only one or two people would walk in every now and then.  Putting up a sign was all the owners thought they needed to do to bring customers in.  Then after a year and a half they all called the real estate agent asking him to find them a buyer. 

 

The problem here is that a grand opening sign as their only form of marketing wasn’t enough to spark business for this location.  This is obvious by the fact that no customers are coming in because of it.  But even though this was obvious, no one got it.  There are always exceptions, but on a busy Los Angeles street where people are flying by, and where there are over a hundred established restaurants in this area, a grand opening sign alone is not going to bring in enough customers to pay the mortgage.  Personally, I've stopped into a business very few times just because a grand opening sign was strung across the front of it.  But I have done business with hundreds of companies that I've found in the yellow pages, or after getting several flyers or coupons in the mail.  Why not try those ad mediums in addition to the sign?  Don’t just sit there and let your business go down the toilet.  Do something!

 

The main problem here isn't that these business owners put the grand opening sign up to begin with.  Everyone does that.  The problem is that after a month passed and it was obvious that it wasn't working, no one did any other marketing for the business.  They just sat there dying and lost everything.  The agent told me that some of the owners had GREAT food too.  But if you don't market it, no one will know about it. 

 

I talk a lot on this website about striving to be the best, shooting for a million, and giving it all you've got, but once you've developed a great product or service from all of these efforts, you have to market it.  PEOPLE HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE TO OFFER!  Even if you market well, if it's a bad business idea or product, it still might not sell.  But if it's a GREAT businesses idea and no one knows, it won’t sell well either.  You have no chance to do well regardless if your business idea is great or bad.  Great or bad, you fail.  So why even open a business if you're not going to market it?  You’re going to fail!

 

How To Get Rich Selling Nasty Pizza

Listen to this.  If you advertise well enough, you don't even have to have a great product and you may still have a very successful business!  This is NOT my own personal business philosophy.  I believe in making a great product along with great marketing.  I'm only telling the following story to show the power of marketing.

 

In Los Angeles, there's a small local pizza chain that sells a very nasty pizza.  This pizza is so bad; I wouldn't eat it if someone gave it to me for free, after not eating for a day.  I can't see how anyone would pay money for this pizza, but they do.  I believe the reasons they do buy it is; first off, it's very cheap, two large pizza's for $16, a great family price.  I guess this company is the best at something; they're the best at the price.  And the second reason people are buying this nasty pizza is because the company advertises everywhere!  Full-page yellow page ads, flyers twice a month, local tv ads, radio ads.  There are only two full page pizza ads in the Los Angeles yellow pages and this company has one of them.  Two major chains have half pages and there’s one more full-page ad with eight companies on it.

 

The equation here: A great price and great advertising = great profits.  What's funny to me is you don't even have to have a good product.  Wow.