 Effective Advertising
When people discuss their marketing campaign, most often they think about advertising. But advertising is only a small part of an effective marketing campaign: most of your PR should actually be free.
You often hear the owners of small businesses say “advertising doesn’t work” however, this just isn’t true. If advertising didn’t work, you’d order a Bacardi and Pepsi at the pub and the multinationals wouldn’t invest obscene sums into high profile advertising campaigns. It’s not all about spending huge sums; you just need to know how to make your money work smarter.
Be prepared
The most important step is to do your research. You need to know your business inside and out, as well as that of your competitors. Advertising that isn’t targeted closely enough won’t work, so invest (your time) in yourself.
Questions to ask yourself – write your answers down, you are statistically more likely to stick to them.
Who are we?
How do you want your business to be remembered?
What % of the market do you have?
What areas of my market are growing?
What are declining?
What innovations are coming along in my sector?
Who are my customers?
What are their demographics? (age, sex, class)
Where do they live?
What are there interests?
Which newspapers do they read? Which magazines? Which TV programmes do they watch?
Do they buy from a competitor?
Have they heard about you?
What’s the best way to speak to them?
Who are my competitors?
Where are they geographically?
What do they offer?
What % of the market do they have?
Where / how do they advertise?
SWOT Analysis – don’t groan, these are really useful. Fill one in honestly for your own business and for your main competitor. What can you improve in your own business? What can your learn from your competitors? What weaknesses do they have? How can you capitalise on them?
Make 4 lists with the following headings:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Now you have worked through your marketing research, you can start on the fun bit. Firstly, however, you need to set yourself some marketing objectives – forget woolly, these need to be measurable. For example: “I will increase my turnover by £5,000 by January 2008” is so much more helpful than “increase turnover” Marketing objectives don’t have to be related to sales either. It is perfectly acceptable to want to increase the number of hits on your website, or improve your brand awareness. The important thing is that it needs to be relevant to you.
Finally, what is your budget? Set a yearly budget; break it down month by month and stick to it. That way your advertising is consistent and you are not worried about overspending. You don’t have to allocate the same amount of budget to each month – think about when your peak times are. Would it be more profitable for you to advertise in the run up to Christmas? Around Mother’s Day? In January when business is slow and needs a kick start? Just before the school holidays? Having a yearly overview will help you to look carefully at what times of year it will be most profitable for you to advertise, and this will help to maximise your response.
Choosing where to advertise
Your research should have told you what sort of media products your customers consume. You need to target these publications / radio stations / websites first. Questions to ask yourself include:
Does this publication reach my specific target audience? If you don’t feel a resounding “yes” then proceed with caution. Niche media products are much more effective places to advertise than general ones. For example, local magazines might well be cheap, but will they be delivered to lots of people who aren’t interested in your products? If so, perhaps you’d be better off with a targeted poster campaign, leaflet drop or website advert instead. You really do get what you pay for.
What is my budget? This is key – set your budget and stick to it. Sales people are skilled in persuading people to spend more than they intended, don’t make snap decisions.
The Secrets of Negotiating
- When you first ask for a price, you will be quoted a publication’s “rate card” rate. Unlike shops, where the price you see is what you’ll pay, advertising sellers expect to have to negotiate. Therefore their rate card is set artificially high – and it’s a bonus if a client does actually pay the higher rate. Expect to pay 50 – 75% of the first price quoted.
- Regardless of their prices, don’t be afraid to say “my budget is X, what can you do?” I guarantee the sales person will come up with some solutions. They are not going to walk away from guaranteed custom, even if it is much less than their rate card rate. Just be prepared to compromise on what sort of advertising you get.
- Find out when the copy deadline is. Adverts will be sold cheaply if there are spaces to be filled close to the copy deadline. One small start up company were recently able to secure an £800 advert for £195, because they timed their pitch well.
- Don’t be afraid of saying no and walking away. If an advertising salesperson knows that you are seriously interested in advertising with them, they will come back to you with a better deal, I promise.
- Get discounts by placing multiple adverts. Pretty much every advertising salesperson will want to encourage their advertisers to place more than one advert over a period of time; it means they don’t have to sell the space twice. It’s much more cost efficient to block book your ads than take it edition by edition. Ask for a discount of top of the price per ad you have already agreed.
- Present your advertising message consistently. It is MUCH more effective to place a series of smaller adverts than one large one; your customers will become familiar with your brand and will start to think of you whenever they want to purchase your product or service. If you place one large ad, they may well miss that edition and will then have never heard of you. Salespeople may well persuade you to take a large ad (logic says you are then likely to take a series of large ads) don’t be afraid of taking a block booking of smaller ads, you’ll spend the same money and have a much better response.
- Ask for other ways in which you can help the magazine, newspaper or website. Could you offer a competition prize? That way you’ll get your name and logo on more than one section of the magazine or newspaper, and your potential customers will become more familiar with your company brand. Publications won’t usually charge you for competitions; it helps them attract more readers.
- Will the publication run some editorial on you? Editorial is written by the journalist, rather than ‘advertorial’ which is (usually) written by the advertiser. Editorial is perceived to be more truthful and of interest to readers. Editors are always looking for new things to write about that are relevant to their target audience – send them in a press release (which must be newsworthy and directly relevant to their audience). Ensure that you ask about this at the time you book your advert, and you never know what response you’ll get. At this stage in the negotiations, sales people are willing to please!
Designing your advert
I will say this only once – it is well worth getting a professional designer to design your adverts. It will cost much less than you think – probably less than £50 for something simple. You have now bought your slot and you need to make the biggest impact on your potential customers, don’t leave this to chance (or a self designed Word advert, sorry)
- Consider bright colours – it’s simple, but effective. Alternatively, a plain white or black background can look stunning.
- Use a brilliant photo – if you sell a product you must get a professional one done (sorry). Remember that people are always interested in faces, especially smiling faces. Cute also works well.
- Don’t be afraid of “white space” (the space on a page that is not text or pictures). Don’t try to cram too much into your advert, especially if it is small. Try to include two bullet points max, plus your contact details. If your photo is good enough, be brave and just include your phone number, or your best offer (e.g. ‘sitting and portrait for £25’ or “25% discount with the code ABC1”) A ‘clean’ ad will leap from the page more than one which is cluttered.
Monitoring the Feedback
If you don’t get the response you hoped for straight away, don’t panic. You never know who has filed your information away in the back of their mind, or who has filed the publication away to be looked at later. Your ad might generate a response at some point down the track. Getting a healthy response to advertising involves promoting a consistent message – keep your ad design the same (or similar), get as many mentions as you possibly can (they don’t all have to be paid. Business networking is a great, free way of getting your advertising message ‘out there’ and there are others.) Just keep plugging away, and play the long game.
The clever way to measure how successful your advert has been is to ask all new customers how they heard of you, and keep records. That way you can see which publications work best. Alternatively, add an offer code or discount – not only are you more likely to tempt customers to buy your products or services, you can also see exactly how many people have responded to each ad you place.
If you have done your research about your customers and competitors and chosen the place you advertise in carefully, you will get a response. The key is to keep plugging away at it, like a broken record. Rather than say “I can’t afford to advertise” ask yourself “can I afford not to?”
Submitted By Claire Boynton of Generation One Magazine www.generationonemagazine.co.uk
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