If you are to believe the advertising agencies, advertising is an art. Their goal is to make something interesting and make an impression on the audience.

But, for a business, the goal is sales. You might make a big impression, but if that impression doesn’t help the bottom line, what’s the point?

This principle is on display in Burger King’s advertising.

After going with “The King” based campaign that was weird and, at times, a bit freaky, Burger King has decided to go back to the basics and promote the freshness and quality of their food.

In today’s health conscious landscape the new campaign seems like a good idea and the company is already seeing some benefits.

BrandIndex measures brands using its Impression score, by asking people if they have generally positive feelings about a particular brand. BrandIndex’s scores range from -100 to 100, and are calculated by subtracting negative feedback from positive feedback.

Before the launch of Burger King’s new campaign in late August, Burger King’s Impression score was 24.4, or less than half McDonald’s’ 48.9.

Burger King’s score began jumping soon after the first spot’s debut, and by the end of August had reached 45.1, actually catapulting McDonald’s.

As of Sept. 9, Burger King still retained its edge, with a rating of 38.8 compared to 35.9 for McDonald’s.

This highlights the divide between what advertisers want to do and what businesses need to do.

Burger King’s “The King” campaign was edgy, at times funny and at times just plain weird. But what did it tell people about the product?

Nothing.

It created an impression, but hurt the company’s image with adults and others that don’t care about slick advertising, but do care about quality.

So when it comes time for you to advertise your business, what’s more important, flash or sales?

The answer is obvious so don’t try to be flashy or cutting edge. Just tell people what you do and why it’s better than the competition.

For Burger King, that’s letting people know they sell a quality product, a much more effective offer than some constantly smiling, nightmarish mascot.

Take Red Bull for example. A couple of decades ago the energy drink industry was a very small one that was dominated by Gatorade while coffee was the energy drink of the working man and maybe a cola could provide that boost of caffeine you might need late in the day. Plus a cola tasted good.

Then along came Red Bull. Red Bull was the first energy drink of note and it had a strange taste people weren’t used to at the time. What Red Bull did have was a great way to connect with the customers they wanted and they also had a growing target market.

Over the last few decades, more and more people became adrenaline junkies or developed a taste for “extreme” sports.

Skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing and others were growing in popularity and the people that took part in those activities were exactly who Red Bull wanted as their customers.

So how did they connect with them?

They reached into that community and played an active role in building it. They sponsored both athletes and events, putting the culture on a bigger stage than it had ever been. Soon events like the “X-Games” were on television and there were the ubiquitous Red Bull signs in the background at all of these events. In fact, Red Bull began to sponsor, and produce, many of the events themselves.

Today, more than two decades after selling their first energy drink, Red Bull sponsors literally hundreds of “extreme” athletes.

They also sponsor a number of events around the world, including auto, motorcycle and plane racing, and their own “World Series” events such as The Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour, The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series and The Red Bull Air Race World Championship.They even produce a monthly magazine that targets extreme athletes.

With all of the events and marketing that Red Bull does, it is important to remember that Red Bull only sells four products, their original energy drink, their sugar-free energy drink, Red Bull Energy Shot and Red Bull Cola.

Yet they sponsor hundreds, if not thousands of events every year in promoting and selling those four products and they are successful (over 4.2 billion cans of Red Bull sold last year alone) because they connect with their target market while building an image much bigger than that of just an energy drink.

With this kind of focus on both product and customer Red Bull has been able to expand not only its business, but the entire “extreme” sports category, creating an ideal synergy between their product’s image and their customer base.

Many businesses believe that if you build your brand well enough, leads will inevitably follow, but in reality the opposite is true. If you can generate enough leads and convert those leads into customers, your business will grow.

This situation is a trap that many business owners are in. They advertise in hopes of building their brand, when in reality, they should be advertising with the goal of generating as many leads as possible.

Advertising is a necessity for any small business today although some still don’t or won’t advertise because they don’t know how to get the proper return on investment with their advertising.

Throwing good money after bad won’t create a strong advertising campaign, but studying the needs of your customers and speaking to those needs while testing and measuring the results will.

The problem with advertising is that most businesses don’t know where their resources go or what the return on investment is.

You can try virtually any kind of campaign, as long as you’re speaking to the needs of your target market and testing and measuring along the way. When you test and measure you can cut your losses when certain strategies aren’t working or continue to ride the wave when they are.

Simply take 10% of what you expect your total ad spend to be and run some test ads to see what kind of response you get.

If you get a response, continue with and run the campaign.

If you don’t, kill it now before you waste any more money, then go back and develop a new ad or campaign to test.

That way you know if your campaign is working based on the number of leads it generates.

To test and measure your advertising, a system has to be put in place.  Over the course of a campaign you should measure the number of enquiries made, the number of sales made as well as your conversion rate, or the difference between the number of people who bought from you and those who just visited your store but didn’t buy.

From the figures collected during this testing period, you can tell whether to change, adjust or re-run your advertising to get the best result.

This way will save you and your business a lot more money in the long run putting a different slant on the old adage, “It pays to advertise”.

Just remember that your goal isn’t some random idea of building your brand, but the actual end results of lead generation.

The Business Excellence Awards will honor the “best of the best” in small and medium sized businesses from around the world and entering the awards is also an excellent way to showcase outstanding performances of business owners, entrepreneurs, their teams and companies.

Winners will receive a 2011 Business Excellence trophy for their category, designed by the same company that designs the Oscars. They will also receive local and national publicity for the award-winning accomplishments.

The 2011 Business Excellence Forum and the 2011 Business Excellence Awards are sponsored by ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching firm.

Theses events are part of the company’s on-going commitment to innovation and business re-education for small-and-medium sized businesses.

In addition to the awards ceremony, the Business Excellence Forum will feature some of the finest speakers in the world of business, including Les Brown and ActionCOACH Founder, Chairman and President Brad Sugars.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to attend a number of workshops, breakout sessions and networking events.
Deadline for entries is June 30, 2011, so sign up today and get recognized for your hard work in Miami in August.

In 2010, Skype had 170 million connected users who logged over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations.

There is massive opportunity for growth with Skype, but the company has been around since 2003 and hasn’t exactly been a big earner.

The company reported a $6.9 million net loss last year, on nearly $860 million in revenue. It reported $686 million in long-term debt, and slightly more than $1 billion in liabilities.

In the purchase, Microsoft assumed Skype’s debts and liabilities in what was, to this date, the largest acquisition Microsoft has ever made.

This isn’t the first time Skype has been bought. In 2005, Skype was bought by Ebay for $2.6 billion but the partnership did not work out and eBay sold its 65% share in Skype for $1.9 billion in 2009.

Microsoft plans to integrate the service into X-Box Live and the Windows Phone but there’s little doubt they already possess the technology to do this without buying Skype.

So why buy Skype?

For all those customers who are already proficient with the service and are naturally ready to buy other Microsoft products.

As Microsoft continues to lose market share (their stock price has dropped nine percent over the last year) the company needs to find new ways to compete.

Adding Skype’s customer list gives Microsoft access to customers that are relatively early adopters of technology, who’ll want to buy the latest, hottest thing, but might not have thought of Microsoft products in the past.

This deal is just another sign that as much as technology changes, the basics of business, like buying a customer list, stay the same.

Celebrities have been at the front of using Twitter to connect with their fans and deliver their message directly. That was what brought Charlie Sheen to begin using Twitter, and why over a million people follow him setting a Guiness World record by accumulating 1 million followers of his Tweets in less than 24 hours.

It’s been a few weeks since Charlie Sheen was seemingly on every television show and radio station offering pearls of wisdom before moving to Twitter.

Sheen’s very public meltdown (or publicity stunt) gave us such classic memes as “Adonis DNA and Tiger’s Blood” or “Riding on a Mercury Surfboard”, to name just a few, but it also gave him a public pulpit he’d never had before.

While much of what he said was, to say the least, loopy, it certainly helped grow his already well known brand and take it to a new level.

Sheen started his public tirade the old-fashioned way, on television and radio, but he realized he was missing the social media boat. He contacted Ad.ly, a PR company that specializes in using social media and celebrities for commercial endorsements.

Say what you will about Sheen, but he saw that there was an opportunity and found away to cash in.

Sheen is now a member of Ad.ly celebrity roster, which is more than 1000 strong and while the crazy Tweets have slowed down, there’s little doubt his followers will be seeing plenty of Twitter endorsements from him.

Sheen’s story is a great example of how a business or a person can grow a brand with Twitter.

Sure, he was already well known and had the big advantage of being able to say any crazy thing he wanted without serious repercussions but it begs the question, what are you doing with your Twitter account to grow your brand, and your business?

It sure seems that way, but there are still a shocking number of businesses that aren’t taking advantage of the online world to grow.

In fact, almost 40 percent of small businesses in the United States have no online presence at all.

It’s easy to blame uncontrollable factors on failures, but a business that has no online presence and fails has no excuse. There is help for any business if they know where to look.

The economy may be bad, taxes may be high and the economy may be uncertain, but none of those factors mean anything if you aren’t taking full advantage of the opportunities around you and the internet is as powerful a marketing tool as we have ever seen.

People don’t look for the products and services they need in the Yellow Pages anymore.

In fact, many communities have done away with distributing phone books because most people search for what they want online these days and having a massive tome with everyone’s contact information was simply too expensive to produce every year.

For business owners that haven’t gone online with their message yet and then wonder why they aren’t finding enough customers, it’s time to move to the 21st century.  If a business isn’t marketing, it’s dying.

Developing your presence isn’t hard and it shouldn’t take up too much time, but it’s vital to your success.

If a small business doesn’t have an online presence, whether it’s a Facebook fan page or a dedicated, multi-page website, they are missing out on hundreds if not thousands of potential customers.

Online you can build a following of your best customers, interact with them and find easy, cost-effective ways to market your business.

An on-line presence is, arguably, the most important marketing tool available these days, so get online today and don’t lose any more business to your competition.

Now quickly, how many ads do you recall right now?

Consider this story.

An advertising agency has scheduled a team meeting. As the team filed into the seminar room they were all given a copy of that morning’s paper.

While they were waiting, most of them read it.

Of 100 ad agency people, only three remembered an advertisement. And that was within half-an-hour of reading the paper!

Of those three, only one was thinking about taking any action. She was studying a furniture sale ad — because she was planning to buy some furniture. The ad had not persuaded her to buy furniture, since she was already in the market, so what good did it really do?

It makes you wonder if any of the agency’s work was in that paper. It is also a clear example of why certain ads don’t work.

Ask yourself, do your ads stand out?

Are they noticed and remembered?

Do they stir people to action?

Do they drive people to buy from you?

Or when potential customers come to your ad do they simply turn the page?

In many respects, advertisers are the world’s greatest contributors to “charity”.

Lord Lever of Lever & Kitchen, which is now Unilever, once said he knew only half of his advertising worked, but he didn’t know which half.

This statement has also been attributed to John Wanamaker and Henry Ford, but whoever said it originally, the point is clear, advertising can be a drain on resources if you don’t have a focus on who you want to reach and how you are going to reach them.

Most advertisers aren’t even doing as well as half, because they are more concerned with winning awards than generating customers.

Nobody can be perfect with their marketing all the time, but by testing and measuring the response to your advertising you’ll soon know which ads are working, and which are merely a donation to the medium which you’re using.

Kevin Smith, the director of such films as “Clerks” and “Dogma” is taking his new movie directly to the people. He will be using social media and word of mouth to get the message out about his film, “Red State.” You won’t see advertisement for the movie in your local newspaper, on television or in any major media outlet.

Smith’s move is a response to the growing lack of control artists feel in the movie making industry. Smith said that he’d distribute the movie himself and wouldn’t spend a single cent on advertising. Instead he plans to use word of mouth, podcasts and Twitter to promote his movie.

This isn’t Smith’s first extensive foray into social media. He’s well known for starting a Twitter fight with Southwest Airlines when the rotund director had an issue with the size of the seats on the airline, so Smith has experience getting his message across through social media. But what can businesses learn from this story?

If the makers of a multi-million dollar movie are willing to tie their marketing exclusively to social media and word of mouth what does that say about the state of advertising today?

The first thing to be taken from this is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to effectively market your product. For Smith, odds are that a lot of the people that might be targeted through a traditional marketing campaign might not be interested in his movie anyway. To that way of thinking, traditional marketing is a money pit, an expense rather than an investment

Smith has a thorough understanding of his target market and by refusing to waste money on advertising he is taking a very proactive stance in movie marketing. He’s even referred to this position as “Indie 2.0”, a different way to finance and publicize for the rest of the independent movie market.

What do you think of Smith’s strategy? Would this type of campaign work for your business or are you still tied into traditional advertising? Tell me what you think…

Facebook marketing can bring great results.

If Facebook marketing has you lost, keep these two facts in mind: the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook is 35- to 54-year-olds, and the next fastest-growing demographic is the over-55 crowd.

This is great news for people who are trying to market themselves to potential clients – business owners are in these two age groups, and they’re actively using Facebook.

Now that you know that there are potential clients out there on Facebook, here is an easy way to market yourself and your business:

1) Create a Facebook page for your business
2) Share an interesting article on your page to engage your fans, comment on posts on your page to communicate with your fans, update your page to generate a story about it in your fans’ news feeds, create a discussion section on your page to interact directly with fans, create or join a group related to your industry to find more fans and/or create an event related to your business to meet fans.

As long as you maintain and continually update your page, slowly but surely, you’ll gain fans, interact with people who comment on your events you post on your page, and work up to interacting in person.

That’s the end result…but it takes work to get there.

That seems to be where people fall off the Facebook marketing train. They think it will be easier marketing themselves on social media sites. But in reality, it takes just as much work to maintain and update a Facebook page and interact with fans and friends. As long as you keep this in mind, you should be successful in Facebook marketing.

For other marketing strategies for your business, consider a free business coaching session. It’s a great way to figure out what issues in your business might deserve the most focus.