This might sound like a very obvious tip, but you’d be surprised how many companies don’t take the extra few minutes to read, re-read, and read their advertising copy again. While minor errors in blog posts and random emails can largely be ignored, when you’re investing thousands of dollars into a marketing campaign, it is absolutely essential to take the extra time to ensure that the copy is absolutely error-free. Make sure that the advertisement — whether it’s going to appear on your website, in a newspaper, or on a billboard — is read by as several people in your organization, because what one person may miss, another may catch. Yes, even let the accounting guys take a look.

I keep an active eye on the real estate market here in the Greater Vancouver area, not so much because I’m in the market for a new place per se, but rather just so that I am better prepared to purchase when the time comes. In any case, during my journeys through real estate websites, print magazines, and flyers delivered to my door, I have come across countless minor — but glaringly obvious — mistakes that could have easily been fixed. I won’t name names, but one company failed to understand the difference between “then” and “than.” Another had pluralization issues.

To some folks, these mistakes may seem rather inconsequential, but they could also adversely affect the image of your organization in a very profound way. After all, if you’re sloppy about your ads, what’s to say that you’re not sloppy about everything else you do?