Many business or marketing “gurus” will tell you that marketing is just about “getting your name out there” but unless you have the deep pockets of Richard Branson or Apple you simply can’t afford to adopt this kind of garbage marketing strategy.

“Brand awareness” is the excuse used by marketers when their clients ads don’t work.

Marketers will say such nonsense like “don’t worry about the fact the ad didn’t work and you got no calls  … lots of people know about you!” I don’t care who knows about me … I care about who BUYS from me and puts food on my table!

It’s no good an ad saying … “we are carpet cleaners, here’s what we do, give us a call if we do anything that interests you” because it’s dull, boring and not proactive.

“Brand Awareness” is a great way to empty the contents of your wallet into the wallets of the ad agency or graphic designer with no appreciable return for you.

That’s definitely NOT to say you shouldn’t have branding or a decent logo because these are a necessity these days, it just means that the focus of your marketing mustn’t be just to tell people you exist!

The fact is this … “Brand Awareness” strategies are a waste of money for SME business owners.

That’s NOT to say branding is a waste of time for your carpet cleaning business … far from it. Branding is essential to your business.

You should only engage in Direct Response Marketing which, as the name suggests, means marketing which produces a direct response from targeted buyers which results is sales and enquiries you can measure.

Every marketing campaign you put out into the world must get your target prospect to take some sort of action, be it to call you, sign up to your newsletter, Like you on Facebook, or whatever.

If you are reading this you are NOT McDonalds or Microsoft, so spend your time creating marketing which really works for your business.