Marketing is like boiling an egg

If you are an adult, I'm going to assume you know how to cook a hard boiled egg.

Gramma taught me when I was 10. Here were her instructions.
1. Get a pot.
2. Fill it half full with water.
3. Place eggs in water.
4. Turn on heat to Max.
5. Wait until it starts to boil.
6. Time out 8 minutes.
7. Remove heat.
8. Remove shell and serve with butter.

Pretty simple, right.
To get the results of a perfect boiled egg, the recipe must be followed in this order.
These are the inputs: eggs, water, heat, and time

Here's how you get bad results:
Put the eggs in the pot without water.
Boil water but don't put the eggs in.
Don't turn on the heat.
Pull the eggs out too soon.

Boiling an egg is like your advertising campaign.
Eggs are potential customers
Water is message.
Heat is the money.
And time is still just time.

If you want your advertising campaign to work, treat it like boiling an egg.

Use a message that gets noticed by potential customers. Spend money on areas where these potentials are hanging out. And wait until they come out hard-boiled.

Don't stop the heat.

It takes time.

If you stop the heat before the time is up, your advertising will be wasted. You won't get what you're looking for. You will be disappointed by its results.

So the next time you want to run an advertising campaign. Ask yourself three important questions:
1. Do you have enough time for this to work?
2. Do you have the ability to apply enough heat to get your hard boiled egg?
3. Do you have water?

If the answer is "no" to either of these questions, don't waste your money on the campaign, unless you're looking for transactional customers.

Transactional customers don't need any of this.

They only need a great deal.

If you want transactional customers, all you need is heat and water. You don't even need clean water. Any water will do, as long as its the cheapest around.