Ok, so I’m not talking about 10-year-old boys on Ritalin selling lemonade on the corner of a suburban street. I’m talking about small and medium enterprise with Advertising Deficit Disorder.

SMEs who, from either lack of funding or simple know-how, spend too much money on advertising in all the wrong places, or those who don’t spend any at all. So which one are you? Do you have AD1 or AD2?

Let’s start with the scary part. The Symptoms. The part where you start sinking in your seat as you’re reading and thinking, ‘Oh no, that’s me.’

AD1 = Advertising Deficit

• Do you have difficulty focusing on where to advertise?
• Do you have difficulty deciding on what type of advertising works for your clients?
• Do you become distracted with all the options available for advertising and feel overwhelmed by it all, so opt to do nothing, because it feels like the safer option?
• Do you lose track of how, where and why you have the customers you do, which causes you to make careless errors in judging the next move in your business?
• Do you make a decision on where you are going to advertise and then get confused on what your ad should look like?
• Do you think advertising is too expensive, and only for big corporate companies?

Well my friend, if you answered yes to any of these, you have AD1.

AD2 = Advertising Disorder

• Are you hyperactive in your advertising?
• Do you place dozens of ads everywhere?
• Do you get a call from a media company and take up every distress ad out there?
• Do you have difficulty inhibiting ‘buy it, buy it now‘ behaviour, when it comes to ad placements?
• Are you in constant motion of placing ads and not really seeing whether the ads you are placing, are actually working for you?
• Are you engaged in excessive fiddling with your ads, never getting them out there in fear of your brand being misrepresented or not sure if the design is right?
• Do you purchase advertising on an impulse?
• Do you never really think about the psychology behind the buying behaviour of potential clients seeing your ad?
• Have you created ads for your business that had a negative effect?
• Are you someone who doesn’t listen to your creative designer or marketer?

If you are eagerly answering ‘me, me, me’, then I’m afraid you have AD2.

Okay, so now you know the symptoms, you have the diagnosis of whether you are AD1 or AD2. “But hang on,” you say. “I’m neither of those.” Well, you’re either in denial, which is actually ADHD (Advertising Denial and Heading for Disaster), or there’s actually nothing wrong with your advertising.

So what the hell are you doing here and who is looking after all those customers pouring through your doors because your advertising campaigns are perfectly fine?!

But I have ADD. So Where’s my Ritalin?

Well, like any good psychiatrist, we’ve run out of time. Make an appointment with my next post and I’ll prescribe you your cure.

Now get off my couch….

Louise Schultze is CEO of iBidAM.com ^[1], an advertising and marketing company focused on helping small and medium business. She is also a motivational and topical public speaker.

Photo: Sebastian Fritzon ^[2]