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Business Advertising Tips |
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If your
Advertising isn’t working – YOU SHOULD STOP IT! |
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Let’s start with
the simple stuff. If you are running advertising that is not working,
then you should stop it!
This applies to any ads you may be running in newspapers, magazines,
radio, television, billboards, posters, taxis or buses.
I know it sounds obvious but this is often what happens: People run
advertising because they feel they ought to. They never really know if
it’s working but they are hesitant to stop it because it may be one of
their main forms of marketing.
Hopefully the information found here will ensure that you are never in
that position again. You will either be running great ads that produce
great results, or you will be spending your marketing money elsewhere. |
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Only use Direct
Response Advertising |
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There are two
types of advertising – direct response advertising and brand
advertising.
Understanding the difference between the two will immediately save you
a fortune.
Brand advertising is used by companies like Heinz and the large car
manufacturers to build and increase awareness of their brand. Unless
you have a huge amount of money to throw away, you should avoid brand
advertising at all costs. For a small business it will be a complete
waste of money.
The type of advertising you need to consider is direct response
advertising. The purpose of direct response advertising is to produce
a clear response.
The response will vary depending on what type of business you are in
and your overall marketing strategy. You may want the response to be
an immediate purchase. You may want the response to be for someone to
contact.
The great thing about direct response advertising is that you will be
able to tell whether it is working. It will either produce a response
or not. One of the reasons why most small business advertising doesn’t
work is that it’s a combination of half hearted direct response and
highly ineffective brand advertising. |
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Testing and
Measuring |
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It is
absolutely essential that you test and keep a record all of your
advertising.
If you are going to engage in direct response advertising you
obviously need to be able to measure the response, otherwise you are
not going to know if the ad is working.
At the very least you need to know how many people have responded, how
many of them were converted to a sale and what that’s worth to you.
Then you need to compare this to the cost of the ad and you can
immediately work out how profitable the ad has been, or whether you
should stop running it.
Many businesses just allocate a certain amount of money to an
advertising budget, spend the money every year…and they don’t know
whether the ads are working are not. This is crazy. If your ads are
working, you want to roll them out on a larger scale. If they’re not,
you need to STOP and use the money on one of the dozens of other
marketing strategies that can bring you a 100 or 200 or 300% return on
your investments.
You will need some sort of system for asking people who contact you
for the first time where they heard about you and keep a record. If
you have a larger business, you may even be able to setup separate
phone line with a number that only appears in your advert. If you’re
directing people to a website, you may want to set up a webpage that
also only appears in your advert. This will ensure that you can
clearly identify where people are responding from.
One of the reasons why Radio and TV Advertising can be so high risk,
is that it's very difficult to test it on a small scale. You should
never advertise on Radio or TV unless its money you can afford to
lose. |
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Your Headline is
the most important part of your Ad |
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In the advert
itself the most important element is the headline. The headline is
either the heading that goes at the top of the advert or if you don’t
have a heading it’s the first words of the advert. If you're on the
radio it's the first thing people hear. If it's TV it's the first
thing they see and hear. The headline needs to grab peoples’
attention.
One of the biggest challenges
that any print advertiser faces is getting people to read their advert
– let alone for the advert to produce a result. So the main purpose of
the headline is not to sell your product – it’s just to get people to
read your advert.
The headline should be about your readers – not about you. If your
headline has the name of your business in it, you are probably losing
out. Imagine you owned a company selling £10 fire extinguishers. Which
of these headlines do you think would be most likely to get the
reader’s attention: |
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Simpson Fire
Extinguishers - Your Guarantee of Safety |
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OR |
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Is your Family's
Life worth the price of a round of Drinks? |
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Be adventurous with your headlines. Test different versions and see
what works best for you. There are no rules – except what works. |
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Remember AIDA |
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There’s a classic
formula used by advertisers that is well worth remembering. The
formula is AIDA. This stands for |
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Attention
Interest
Desire
Action |
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If you follow this
formula in every advert that you use, you will greatly increase your
chances of success.
Attention – the first thing your advert needs to do is grab the
reader’s attention. You achieve this with your headline.
Interest – once you’ve got their attention, you need to create
an interest in your product or service.
Desire – There is a big difference between being interested in
a product or service and desiring it. You need to convert the reader’s
interest into a strong desire for what you are offering.
Action - Even if someone desires what you have, it is not
enough until they take action. At the end of the advert you need a
call to action. Tell people exactly what they need to do to follow
through and make it easy for them to do so. This is where many people
go wrong. Even if you have a good advert, you still need to tell
people precisely what to do! |
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Benefits,
Benefits, Benefits |
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One of the
principles that should drive all of your marketing is telling people
about the BENEFITS of your product or service.
Your advert needs to be a personal message to the individual reading,
hearing or seeing it. And it needs to be about them. It needs to
address their needs, desires and fears and it needs to constantly tell
them about the benefits of what you are offering.
Nobody will buy anything from you until they understood exactly how
they will benefit from what you have to offer. So here’s a useful tip.
When you’ve written your advert, imagine stepping into the shoes of
your prospective customers. From this perspective does the advert
fully convey what those benefits are? If not go back and fine tune the
advert until it feels right. |
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Don’t Advertise
on a Left Hand Page |
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If you're
advertising in newspapers or magazines, this one piece of
knowledge can turn an unsuccessful advertising campaign into a
successful one. This has been tested over and over again. When you
read a publication, your eyes are drawn to the right hand page as you
flick through, so statistically, more people will see your advert if
it’s on the right-hand page.
If you look in the big national newspapers and magazines, you will see
that most of the large advertisers are on the right hand pages. The
few that appear on a left hand page will be paying less because their
advertising agencies know that less people will see the advert.
When you book advertising space, tell them you want your advert on a
right-hand page. Very few people in your position ask for this so if
your told that they can’t guarantee it – tell them you’ll advertise in
a future edition when they can guarantee it. You’ll soon discover how
obliging they can be! |
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Never pay the
full rate for advertising |
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The person selling
you the advertising needs to know very early on that you have
absolutely no intention of paying the full rate.
Most advertising rate cards are far too high and you can always
negotiate. If you’re a small business remember that large companies
who use advertising agencies are buying based on the readership or
audience levels rather than the rate card - so haggle and negotiate.
If you can negotiate a discount (generally between 20 and 50%) off
your adverts it can turn an unprofitable advert into a successful one.
Here’s another handy little trick to pay less for your advertising.
The closer to the deadline you can book your advert, the better. Sales
teams work towards targets and as the deadline approaches they get
more desperate to fill the ad space. They therefore become far more
open to negotiation.
This applies to all forms of advertising. If a radio or TV station
does not sell all its ad space that they have available for tomorrow -
it's gone forever. If you come along and offer them a deal at what
seems a ridiculously low price, you will be surprised at how low
they're willing to go. |
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Don’t Follow the
Competition |
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One of the biggest mistakes people make is advertising in publications
or on various forms of media (taxis, billboards, buses etc) just
because their competitors are doing so. Don’t for a minute think that
all your competitors are there because their ads are producing great
results. They’re more likely to be there because everyone else is and
most of them won’t even know if their advertising is working.
In fact, this is a well known sales trick used by the people selling
ad space. If they can get one or two of your competitors to advertise,
they can call you up and tell you how you’ll lose out if you don’t
advertise too. What they fail to mention is that your competitors
probably never tested their advertising, often don’t know how to
market and are only advertising there because they think you will.
This is a highly effective way to sustain the advertising industry.
It’s not a great way for you to run your business. |
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