"A year from now, you'll wish you had started today."

Karen Lamb

 

When I was fresh out of college, I had the chance to press pause on my fledgling legal career and sail across the Atlantic Ocean - the maiden voyage for my uncle's new boat - starting in Capetown, South Africa, and ending in St Lucia in the Caribbean. 

 

I didn't know much about sailing, but I managed to get myself on the crew by offering to cook for everyone (I’d like to think that my spatula skills rival those of SpongeBob’s but that’s doubtful). 

 

There are lots and lots of stories I could tell you about this voyage: the scores of flying fish I'd find on the deck every morning, the twenty shooting stars per minute in an inky black sky, the enormous whale that nearly hit us and would have smashed our boat to smithereens, or the island of eerie, inbred people off the coast of Brazil that we had to make an emergency stop at.. 

 

But the story I want to tell you today is the one about the green flash.

 

It was a ritual on our boat that every day at about 6 p.m. we'd gather on the deck for "Sundowners" to watch the sun sink below the horizon. 

Perhaps you've heard about the "green flash" before, but if, like me, you haven't, it's something that sailors have revered for centuries. The sun sinks below the horizon in a split second: a "green flash" shoots out across from the sun. Blink, and you miss it, which I must have done for 27 nights straight as I never saw the darn thing. The rest of the crew oohed and aahed at how magical it was.

"Did you see it? Did you see it this time?" they'd turn and say expectantly to me.

"Um, no."

With every night I felt like a bigger and bigger idiot. How was it possible they could see something that I did not?

 

Well to be honest I'm not sure they did see it.

If you Google "Green Flash Ocean" people are equally divided between myth or fact. 

 

And this reminds me very much of the way most people think about successful marketing.

Conventional wisdom teaches that the bigger your brand, the more wildly successful (and profitable) your business will be.

And by a bigger brand, I mean the kind that when your logo is displayed, people would immediately think of your business. Like the Nike Swoosh, the Target bullseye or the McDonalds' Golden Arches.

 

In fact, the entire advertising industry is built upon this one primary assumption - build your brand and command attention, or ignore your brand and get washed up in a sea of "sameness". 

 

And for good reason. Having the right kind of branding is extremely powerful BUT …

 

Brand advertising is just like the green flash. Everyone tells you that it's the holy grail to getting more customers. But after investing hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions in building your brand you've still got no idea if its really working or not. 

 

Could that bump in traffic be caused from it?

Maybe.

But maybe its because your biggest competitor happened to also drop the ball and people are coming to you instead.

Or because the economy's picking up.

Or because your sales team are finally being held accountable to use the sales system you invested in, or, or…

 

The bottom line is this. Building a strong brand IS important for your business. It's critical. 

 

But it should be the by-product of your advertising – not the goal of it.

If you're hoping to catapult your business to fame using just brand advertising, you're going to burn through MASSIVE amounts of marketing budget, vert quickly with very small sales to show for it.

 

Having a cool looking logo, a clever tagline and a story-selling website isn't, on its own going to create a client stampede in your business. 

 

But the kind of advertising that can is emotionally charged marketing, otherwise known as direct response marketing.

Direct response marketing is designed to make your prospects take immediate and decisive action – to light a fire under their rears and get them to call you, to work themselves into such a lather that they have to speak to you right this very second.

Direct response marketing is measurable to the penny (which as a direct response advertising agency means we put ourselves on the line every time we create a campaign - we can't fudge results).

And it helps create a strong brand for your business as a wonderful side benefit.

Think of it as getting double the marketing bang for your buck. You get to make sales and build brand at the same time - instead of having to choose one or the other.

 

Does the green flash really exist? I still have no idea (and haven't seen it on any of my sailing trips since).

Are your brand ads working?

I have no idea (and you don't know either).

As this is your money we're investing – don't you think it makes more sense to use a proven way of marketing that can create a client stampede in your business, is measurable to the penny and happens to build your brand at the same time?

Need more strategies to build your brand and your sales at the same time? Grab a copy of my new book The Client Stampede (it’s a quick read that might just become a major turning point for your business.)