3 Essential Marketing Tips from the Father of Advertising

Use research, not rules

If there’s one thing to take away from Ogilvy on Advertising, it’s that the man was obsessed with the power of research. From which fonts perform best, to color selection, layout, positioning, and even character count, Ogilvy had masses of research to draw from to inform his decisions when creating a new ad.

Organize your research

Research is useless if you can’t retrieve it at a later date. In fact, this is one of Ogilvy’s main criticisms of researchers in advertising agencies:

“Even if somebody remembers that the research was done, nobody can find it. So we re-invent the wheel, year after year.” – David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, p.36

If you can’t reliably retrieve the information you gather you’re forcing yourself to redo all of the work just to discover the same thing over and over again. In today’s climate, however, you can take this one step further – you don’t even have to do most research yourself.

Sites like ProBlogger exist with the sole purpose of helping you to establish your own blog and grow from the lessons they’ve learned doing the same. Brian Dean conducts fantastic research into SEO and link building strategies, then publishes his results on Backlinko. Growthhackers, Inbound, and entire subreddits exist to collect and promote the best content from around the web on anything from copywriting and marketing to truly awful one liners.

You’re not paid to be “creative” or “original”

It’s nice to say that we’re “creatives”. It feels good to imagine pushing the limits of our respective fields with original ideas and by breaking new ground. You don’t want to be just another copywriter, doing the same thing as everyone else – you want to stand out.

But you’re not paid to be creative – you’re paid to fulfill a purpose.

Whether you’re introducing a product, pushing an affiliate link, or guest posting with the aim to score backlinks, you’re never being paid to just be creative. Creativity might help you reach your results, but the trait alone will do nothing if you don’t channel it.

Read More:https://www.process.st/marketing-tips/