Imagine a local business has paid good money to put an advert in front of potential customers.

The advert proudly announces:

“We are delighted to offer high-quality solutions from our passionate team of dedicated professionals.”

Wonderful.

But what does the business actually do?

And why should anybody care before their thumb reaches the next post?

Somewhere, a marketing budget is being spent telling people absolutely nothing.

The five-second test

Find your latest advert.

Now cover the company name and logo.

Give somebody five seconds to look at it.

Can they tell what you're selling, who it's for and why they should pay attention?

If they can't, making the logo bigger probably won't rescue it.

Consider a café advertising a particular lunch, showing the price and explaining where to find it.

A hungry person immediately knows whether they're interested.

An accountant answering a question about a looming tax deadline gives business owners a reason to pay attention.

A plumber showing the sort of leak they can repair helps somebody recognise a problem they'd rather not have.

Now compare those with a photograph of two people shaking hands beside the words:

“Your Trusted Partner.”

Trusted in what?

Handshakes?

Your customer doesn't wake up thinking about your company

This is the uncomfortable part.

Business owners spend their working lives thinking about their businesses.

Customers generally don't.

Someone scrolling through Facebook might be wondering what to cook tonight, whether their boiler will survive another winter or why their teenager hasn't answered a message.

They're not sitting there hoping to discover another award-winning provider of innovative, customer-focused solutions.

They have their own problems.

A good advert interrupts that train of thought with something recognisable.

A problem they have.

Something they want.

A question they've been meaning to ask.

Or an offer that genuinely interests them.

If your advert starts with what matters to the customer rather than what matters to your company, you're giving it a fighting chance.

Congratulations on your 10,000 views. Now what?

Imagine an advert gets 10,000 views.

Sounds impressive.

But how many of those people were potential customers?

How many understood the offer?

How many clicked, enquired, booked or bought anything?

Views can tell you something about exposure. They don't, on their own, tell you whether the advertising achieved its purpose.

And a click isn't automatically a customer either.

Perhaps the advert promised something exciting, but the next page was confusing.

Perhaps the enquiry form asked for enough personal information to apply for a mortgage.

Perhaps there were six different buttons and nobody knew which one to press.

The advert got somebody interested.

The business then made it difficult for them to do anything about it.

The £500 question

Let's imagine a business spends £500 on an advertising campaign.

That's a hypothetical budget, not a recommendation.

At the end of the campaign, the owner asks, “Did it work?”

The answer comes back:

“We had loads of impressions.”

Lovely.

But did anyone enquire?

Did anyone buy?

Did the campaign reach people who could realistically become customers?

If nobody knows, deciding whether to spend another £500 becomes an expensive guessing game.

Not every advert needs to generate an immediate sale. Some are intended to build recognition, encourage future visits or introduce a new business.

But even then, the owner should know what the campaign is trying to achieve.

Otherwise, the advertising budget risks becoming a monthly donation to the internet.

Stop writing adverts like company policies

There's a reason ordinary, specific language is so powerful.

People can picture it.

“Emergency boiler repairs when the heating packs up” describes a recognisable situation.

“Comprehensive domestic heating solutions” sounds like something written for a procurement department.

“Sunday lunch for two” tells people what they're looking at.

“Delivering exceptional hospitality experiences” could mean almost anything.

Specific doesn't have to mean cheap, simplistic or sensational.

It means giving someone enough information to decide whether they care.

And when appropriate, a little personality doesn't hurt.

Businesses are run by people. They're allowed to sound like people.

The advert nobody remembers

Here's an experiment for the next time you're tempted to approve a new campaign.

Look at the advert without your business owner's hat on.

Pretend you've never heard of the company.

Ask yourself three questions:

Would I stop?

Would I understand?

Would I do anything next?

If the answer to all three is no, perhaps the advert needs more work before the credit card comes out.

Because the problem isn't always that people aren't seeing your advertising.

Sometimes they're seeing it perfectly well.

They're just not interested.