A friend of mine called me the other day and asked if I could help one of his friends with advertising their Chinese restaurant. They’re not doing well and need something to drive traffic. I said I’d look into it and see what I could do. They don’t have a website, so I took a look at their page on Yelp to get a better idea of their business. From the photos, it looked like they offer the standard dishes. The decor is nothing to speak of. The location is fine. I started reading the reviews and saw a lot of 2- and 3-star reviews. Not absolutely terrible. But a fair amount of complaints about service, not having air conditioning, the food being ok, but nothing special. But all in all, I really couldn’t find one compelling reason to go.
When your business isn’t doing well, many people often think the answer is ADVERTISING! And most agencies would like to perpetuate that belief.
The conventional wisdom holds that you need to advertise even more during downturns to bring your sales back up.
But I’ll let you in on a little secret. The opposite has actually become true.
If your business is doing poorly, is it really because you have an amazing unique highly useful product and deliver exceptional service, but people just aren’t aware of it? Realistically that rarely happens anymore. In an omni-connected digital world, big secrets don’t stay secret for very long. People post about it on their social feeds. They fight to be the first to write a review about it. They want to be known for discovering this hidden treasure. If you deliver something great, people will want to talk about it.
On the other hand, if you don’t have a truly remarkable offering, then there’s not much to talk about. So really the last thing you want to do is advertise. Because what would you even say anyway? Advertising isn’t some magic wand that transforms your mediocre business into something great. It can only highlight the value that is truly there at its core.
So put all your energy and resources into improving your offering. Find ways to deliver better service. Reevaluate your product line and optimize it so it matches the needs of your market. Talk to what customers you do have and find out what you can improve on and what would get them to recommend your business to their friends and family.
Do not buy that TV or radio or newspaper package that media rep dropped off and eluded that it would solve all your problems. Yeah, I know that would be way easier. But it would do very little in the end. And after thousands of dollars, you’d still be stuck where you are.
Ironically, the flip side of this is also true. If you’re doing well, that’s exactly when you should double down and invest in as much advertising you can afford. Not at the expense of degrading your product or service, of course. But there are moments when you need to capitalize on the buzz before it’s time to shine has passed.