Being in marketing and advertising, I always flip through these things to see if anything catches my eye… or to see if I could offer my copywriting services to these businesses.

Anyway check out this picture I took of one ad:

They actually did several good things in this ad…

On the lower right, they play up their strengths…their free this and free that services.

They also have a couple personal pictures… even their dog is featured. Corny? Yes but personal works in advertising.(A post for another day perhaps?)

So not bad, right?

Take a closer look:

At least it's a discount…

Did you catch the typo… and the irony?

OK, to be fair and honest, I completely missed this typo.

But…

My wife did not… and here’s why.

We need some new brakes for the car. So this ad caught her attention because she’s worried about how much new brakes are going to cost.

So at this point the ad is working perfectly, right? Right.

But then she looks at the individual coupons looking for the brake job coupon… and it happens… a typo on the one coupon she’s looking for.

Instantly she goes from interested to “I’m not trusting my car to these guys… they can’t even spell!”

Un-Marketing! rears it’s ugly head once again.

Now maybe you don’t care if your mechanic can write. But I assure you many people do care about typos in ads. To them it says  a lot about the quality of work you’ll do.

[Side Note: Some people believe typos can improve response because it makes you look more human... less perfect. I've never seen the actual numbers or ads to say but I doubt it works across the board.]

Especially when you consider there were at least 3 other car care ads in that same flier on that same day.

Listen, I’m not perfect either. Just look around my site and I’m sure you can find at least one Un-Marketing example… If so let me know so I can fix it, please:)

The point is, we need to try and minimize these lazy mistakes in our marketing as much as possible.

Well, enough of that for today… I need to go proof read a few ads.

Tell me… Have you ever been lazy about your marketing and it cost you or your company sales?

If so let me hear about it below…

Later,

McCool