A businessman should never cease to survey or study his customers. Neighborhoods and customers habits change. If a customer drift away, he should try at once to find out why.
Customers may not realized a need for certain products until educated by advertising. This is generally true of new products, for which extensive pioneering advertising may be required. It is sometimes true for any new business unit, and this explains in part why the advertising expense is higher during the first few years. But if customers do not want a product or service, advertising alone cannot make them buy.
Advertising has a cumulative effect. Response is slow at first but increases with time. Sporadic splurges rarely pay. It is much better to advertise regularly and continuously on a small scale than to use even large advertisements infrequently. Advertising is like a freight train, slow in getting started but gathering momentum as it goes.
Most firms merchandise or sell their advertising to their own personnel as a steady diet. Road salesman, for instance, should be convinced that the firms’s advertising helps them make more sales more easily.
