How Advertising can hurt your image.

Posted on Oct 21, 2008 by Paul White

If you are a Night Club promoter, you make money from two things.  Your Cut of the Bar, and Cover.  Now a days getting a cut of the bar is much more difficult, as some bars are not honest about how much they are making.  A bar could sell 20K in drinks, and then tell the promoter they only sold 5K. Then give the promoter their 5 percent, and tell them to go home.  Cover is another way they make money, but sometimes they have to split this with the bar as well. 

Now what if you are not just promoting your events to the masses?  What if your goal was to promote to a small high class slice of the population?  If this is the case this means your events are designed to draw the who's who of your area.  The best events don't advertise.  They are spread by word of mouth.  Only those in the know get in.  Now lets say you started off promoting to this high class group.  Your first event you get 10 people. Second event 30.  Third Event 50.  Then you get the idea that you need to advertise.  WRONG!   Advertisng will draw people who are not in the know.  If these people get into your events it will cause your good customers to no longer view your events as having the status they originally thought. 

Many businesses try to buy customers through targeted advertising.  I repeat this doesn't work.  The only ones who win are the publishers.  The most successful websites never advertise, they build a quality website, and let the positive word of mouth drive more customers.  At some point they hit critical mass, and then they start to really profit.

Before you think about advertising, be sure you have perfected every little detail about your business's image, so when the customer walks in they are not disappointed.  If you feel you have done this and you still are not getting customers,  then there might not be a demand for the product or service you are selling.  This doesn't mean there is no market for your business, just means you need to tweak your products and services to match your local market.

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