Good Ads are like Good Abs. What do they have in common?

How many times have you seen on the internet the magical exercise promising turtle shell abs? “The best abs workout”, “Get a six-pack in 2 weeks”, “10 minutes a day for a sculpted abs and your strongest body ever” - rings a bell?

Now, did that ever work for you? Do you know anyone who actually got lean abdominal muscles fast and doing only that one sequence of exercises? Two things are for sure: (1) such titles will catch your attention and get you dreaming about swapping the fat rolls with a ripped stomach in no time and (2) such promises tend to never come through.

Efficient ads require a cross-department effort, just like sculpted abs require exercise, diet and behavioral changes.

So why don’t such promises come true? According to specialists, one main reason is this: muscles don't work alone but in concert with a slew of other muscles. The secret is to train the core - the central part of your body, that includes 4 sets of muscles, the abs being one of them. It actually seems that the all-mighty and ever-reliable duo of sit-ups & crunchies is highly inefficient for building strength while it is potentially damaging for the back, because it puts all the pressure only on the abs while not strengthening the others 3 sets of muscles. And this got us thinking about ads and advertising…

Good ads require an integrated cross department effort.

Companies expect advertising to work like magic. Hocus-pocus! Set up and launch some ads and see how the business grows, sales numbers are fixed and customers start pouring in. In reality though, flexing that one muscle of advertising alone and having prodigious expectations from such exercise, very often does not work out as expected. And here is why: advertising does not work in isolation. Getting a good message, to the right audience, at the right time and offering an optimized client experience during and post purchase takes a village.

No matter how much money is pushed into the initial part of crafting and delivering a good ad, without all the rest of the pieces coming together the impact on the business will not be significant neither sustaining. Think of it like doing sit-ups desperately for 2 weeks without a proper warm-up and without adjusting your diet and lifestyle - it is more likely to bring tears to your eyes and pain in your lower back instead of a ripped stomach.

If you don’t see advertising as one of the several parts of your overall strategy, and do not acknowledge how everything else happening inside your company influences the performance of your ads, it makes no difference how much money you have available to spend. Putting money behind pushing a message out there without proper planning and preparation, without a strategy and a set of realistic expectations around it, is more likely to result in disappointment and wasted resources rather than mind-blowing return-on-investment.

Good ads require time, timing, testing and patience

In a previous article we outlined a few scenarios when running ads is the least inspired way to invest one’s time and money. Thinking of the parallel with the abs, imagine somebody wearing an evening party attire, standing up from the dinner table after dessert and starting to do planks and Russian twists. Wrong time, wrong context, wrong equipment. This goes to say that running efficient advertising requires planning and preparation which in turn takes time and also considers the importance of a good timing

Going back to the element of time, do you know anybody who went from tummy rolls to turtle-shell abs in a week or in a month? Similarly, finding the sweet spot in the context of an advertising campaign requires time, testing, adaptation and tweaking. Moreover it requires faith in the process and patience. More often then not we see companies getting disappointed and discouraged when after a few days of campaigning, results are not coming in. Having a plan and observing progressive improvements is essential and here is where realistic expectations come into play.

To wrap it all up, efficient advertising requires a cross-department effort, true alignment between all business areas as well as a good dose of patience, just like sculpted abs: in order to surface in all their glory, they require exercise, diet, behavioral changes and persistence. Next time you think about your advertising strategy, remember this ads and abs parallel.

This is the 3rd article from the series “5 empowering thoughts for small businesses in 2023”. Sign up to the newsletter (form available in the website footer) to receive them directly in your inbox.

Image credits: Tim Mossholder via unsplash.

About Journee - Digital at Ease

Founded by two digital marketing professionals with extensive international experience, Journee GmbH is a female owned digital marketing and technology boutique consultancy. 

We aim to make a big difference for the small: small business owners and solopreneurs looking to start and advance on their business digital journey.

Our combined expertise covers digital marketing, digital analytics, advertising, marketing technology as well as overall digital strategy support and mentorship.