Lazy Ads Repell Clients

I admit. I like tokmanni as much as the next guy. 

A couple of days ago on a walk I saw someone else who tried to take a page out of tokmannis book and sell for cheap; The Euro Store.

Lazy ads

Looking at the building from the outside it looked like a money exchange agency.

Outside the store was a sign one of those standing ones that you might see close to ice cream trucks.

Reading it I started smiling.

I was not expecting the sign to be some marketing masterpiece. I thought it was probably going to say what was in the store or maybe tell me to come inside, but what the sign said took me by surprise

It was blank. White. With five flags of countries in a lateral order, And beside each of these flags was:

We have the cheapest prices

I have no idea what they are selling, but they thought that telling me they had the cheapest prices was so important that they had to write it in five languages to make sure I understood.

I don’t personally like selling on price I think it brings some unholy people to your door, but this is not even the worst part of the ad.

The biggest problem I had with the sign was that it was irrationally lazy. I think the sign's brewing process went something like this.

I have euro store I sell things for euro, euro cheap I have cheap price I write cheap price in five language.

Notice how this iteration process is akin to a caveman. It is the laziest possible way to come up with an ad. You put your brain on autopilot and let it make an ad for you.

Because that is what the sign was, an ad to get people's attention so they would come and buy from you. And this type of advertising just repels people instead of attracting them.

We can be lazy with many things, but when we are lazy with ads, it does more harm than good.

Don’t make ads in the first draft. Think it through and try to figure out if it will actually get people through the door.

Always do this when making ads or otherwise, you are throwing away money.