Should Your Ad Be Funny or Focus on Selling?

Vikas Raju
Aug 2, 2024
4 min read

This is one of the most important questions that business owners grapple with when running ads.

Does being cute and funny work in your ad?

Take a moment and try to remember the last ad you watched. If you remember an ad at all, well yes– it failed.

Ads are not to be remembered. Ads are supposed to sell.

Let me explain, most of the ads we watch everyday are just trying to do the exact opposite of selling anything.

I understand because when I started launching campaigns, that was my first reaction too.

Are all these big companies just wrong?

I’ll break it down in the next 3 minutes, and the answer might surprise you because… well, it surprised me.

This is exactly what most marketing agencies don’t want you to find out.

What do the big corporations know that you don’t?

In business schools, they teach us how McDonald’s, Tommy Hilfiger ran the biggest and most successful ad campaigns ever known to man. It revolutionized everything.

Colleges love to teach about those campaigns.

But here is the catch, McDonald's spent $635 Million in their campaign.

You see the problem right?

Local businesses don’t have $600 Million for a marketing campaign.

I remember the first ad I ever wrote. I was fresh out of college and ready to crush everything with my ad campaigns.

I knew this stuff; I studied McDonald’s and all the other major brands' campaigns. I thought, "I can make an ad for a local business. How hard could it be?"

For hours, I stared at the blank sheet of paper trying to think of an idea. Should I use a puppy in the ad? Should I make a joke?... I had a million similar questions but no answer.

As the deadline approached, I thought, "Let’s just throw something at the paper and pray for the best."

After a few days of posting my ad, I gathered the courage to ask my boss, "Hey, how did the ad do?" He was surprised and asked, “What do you mean?” I said, “Did we get any sales from the ad?”

My boss was shocked and said, “Oh, no, no. That’s not how it works. This ad is for brand awareness.” I chuckled and said, “Ok-ok. I got it.”

I didn’t get it. To this day, I don’t know what brand awareness is. But that’s a whole other topic. You can read about my take on brand awareness ads. Here.

After a lot of trial and error, I figured out the best way to run a successful ad campaign.

And

It is not what you think.

Why Do Most Ads Fail?

Do you remember the ad from States Farm?

What do you remember from that ad?

The only thing I seem to remember is Jake from State Farm. But what does that have to do with selling insurance policies?

Absolutely Nothing.

Now, if a local business tries to do something like this, it is going to fail miserably.

These ads don’t sell, and they don’t need to sell.

These businesses don’t care about the results. They just want to spend their marketing budget.

This approach does not work with a small business. Your ads need to have a purpose and the only purpose your ads have is to sell.

We are not trying to win awards and get invited at the next networking event. We are trying to run a business.

Most of the ads today fail because of these two reasons:

Ads are trying to be funny instead of selling.
No one measures the results.

It is almost impossible to be funny in an ad and sell at the same time.

And

Even if you do manage to pull it off, people will only remember the ad because it was funny.

That’s not what we are trying to do. We are investing money so we can make a sale.

Follow the first principle of marketing:

It needs to be measurable.

How To Make Your Ads Profitable?

The best way to make your ads profitable is not to follow what big brands are doing.

Now, a lot of marketing agencies would have you believe that brand awareness is a thing and you have to put your name out there.

But let me tell you, that's just not the case. Sure, those ads might grab attention and make people chuckle, but what's the point if they don't actually remember what you're selling?

That should be your cue that this person doesn’t know anything about marketing. The only reason marketing gurus have people believe that brand awareness is a thing is because you can’t measure it.

Don’t be fooled by these. As a small business owner, your focus needs to be on making sales. Brand awareness will take care of itself as you attract more clients.

You can’t pay bills with brand awareness.

To wrap it all up, your ad needs to have a clear message that entices customers to make a purchase. Whether it be to buy immediately or sign up for later.

Depending on your business, you will either do: