It’s my opinion that business owners should only spend hard earned money in smart ways. No matter if it’s investing in new equipment, increasing staff pay, or participating with outside advertising opportunities, they must spend smart. For most locally owned businesses, gear and crew take top priority when it comes to outbound dollars, while advertising and marketing are low on the totem pole. As a marketing guy, I preach that marketing is essential while advertising is an extracurricular luxury item. And thats why I believe that if hard earned profits are to be used on ads, it should be done the right way.

Anyone in their right mind who buys ads should have some method to their madness, here’s mine. First, working with the business owner, we identify goals and intentions on why they want to buy ads. Then we prepare to run the ad(s) with knowledge based decisions and quality monitoring systems in place. We then run the ad(s) and watch the results, or lack of results, happen due to the marketing efforts, which then helps direct our next steps for refinement and rerunning. It’s a pretty straight forward set of steps that allows us to follow the ‘Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance’ ideology, and come out the other end successful, no matter what the results are.

BUT before a business owner decides to buy any ads, or pay an outside source to drive business their way, they must make sure their internal, organic, homegrown, native systems in good working order. If you’re a business owner, READ that last sentence again, it important.

What do I mean by ‘make sure internal, organic, homegrown, native systems in good working order’? I’ll explain using some examples: When a business buys a radio ad to promote their website address, but their website is out-of-date and not working properly. OR when businesses put a fishbowl to collect business cards, but never use the email addresses on the biz cards to correspond with promos. OR when businesses sponsor social ads, with no clear call to action or message. For locally owned businesses, these examples are all too common, and not only are they a huge waste of time, but they’re also an enormous waste hard earned money….and thats not cool.

The bottomline is that before a business owner chooses to spend hard earned dollars on outside marketing, they must first recognize and fulfill the potential they have within. Because if a business owner can achieve control, balance, and flow internally with things like their website, outreach tools, and messaging dynamics, it’s only then when a business owner should buy ads. Because its also only then when the business’s systems are in-place and prepared to buy ads the right way, and not waste hard earned dollars.

So if you’re a business owner thinking of buying ads, I personally suggest that you look within first. It’s only in my many experiences working with all types of businesses new and old, that I can say there is almost always something untouched, underutilized, or misguided, that when corrected and activated can organically help the business achieve goals without spending a dollar. And if I didn’t mention it before, helping business owners maximize their potential, and make sure their internal, organic, homegrown, native systems are in good working order before spending outward, is one of my many marketing guy specialties….and there’s a good change I can help your business too.

Written by Carl Foisy