5 Ways To Create Effective Advertising

Advertising is an important part of any marketing plan. But with so much focus on social media these days, you'd think that advertising isn't worth the cost. However, done right advertising can be a really important part of your marketing strategy, especially with a good mix of online and traditional advertising. If you've ever attended one of my workshops or even read some of blog posts you'll know that I am all about consistent, integrated marketing. That means that all of your marketing activities need to work together in a systematic approach to achieving your business goals. And advertising is one of those activities.

The biggest advantage that advertising has over other marketing activities is the sense of control. With proper target marketing you can control (to a point) who sees or hears your ad and you can control when your ad is run. The key to effective advertising is knowing what your objectives are and how you want to approach your campaign. 

Below are 5 elements that you should consider in order to make any form of advertising effective.

1. Advertising should have one of 3 objectives... to inform, remind or persuade your audience. Know what your goals are before you even think about writing the ad. The desired outcome will ultimately determine the look, feel, sound, and distribution of the ad. The goal of most advertising should be to start a relationship, not sell a product or service.

2. Be realistic about what an ad can do. If you are running a small online ad chances are it will be pretty unrealistic to expect a multi-thousand dollar sales achievement from 15 words and a link. When setting your advertising goals, set a realistic goal and set a ‘stretch’ goal to strive for. Also, know that advertising alone cannot be the only metric to measure your success by. There are a lot of factors that go into the buying decisions of consumers.

3. Advertising, both online and offline can be and should be targeted at a narrowly defined viewer. If a radio station that tells you that 75% of its listeners are 18-55 that isn't narrow enough. Know your ideal customer really well, what they want and how they want to communicate with you before implementing any advertising.

There are lots of resources out there to help you learn more about your ideal customer but Google AdWords is a great tool to find out what your customers are looking for. Group your Google AdWords into very tightly crafted keyword groups to target people looking for very specific things. You can also find geo targeted mailing lists and then cross them with lists of people that buy a similar product.

4. Measure everything

The most successful business owners, managers and marketers can tell you exactly how every element of their marketing is performing and why. It takes a great deal of work to get serious about things like analytics and tracking, but you won’t really succeed until you do. By taking the time to create a process that allows you to measure every aspect of your advertising you can see what's working and what isn't, allowing you to make necessary changes and further improve on what is working all the while staying tuned in to what your market wants more of.

5. Test, test, and test again

This last element goes hand in hand with measurement, but takes it a step further. Once you have a baseline you can start to work on improving your results by simply tweaking things like headlines, calls to action, visual elements, keywords, content, publications and lists. Once you know what’s working in one place you can expand on it to test it in other places. Google AdWords is an inexpensive way to test thing out before broadcasting more widely. As for online advertising, particularly in social networks, you also might want to test out new social networks and their advertising structure to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t, providing it reaches your target audience.

So, even with the advent of social media, advertising still has its place in your marketing strategy. Advertising has changed its distribution channels over the years and that will continue for many more years to come. But no matter what distribution channel you use, whether it’s online or off ine advertising, using these tips will allow you to create advertising that resonates with your customers.

Mind Your Ps and Qs When Sending Out Business Communications

Building a brand requires a lot of work and consistency in every single way you communicate to the public.  I’ve said this over and over in previous blog posts, but I want to reinforce this one more time.  The brand that you develop for your company is the unique vision that the public has of you.

The way you communicate with your customers is absolutely vital in developing that positive impression.  Think about all the levels of communication you distribute throughout the day.  You post on your business Facebook wall, you send out emails to current clients and to prospects, you send out email newsletters.  Have you ever given much thought as to how your communication sounds and looks?  In this blog I want to give you some tips on how to improve your electronic communication.

Let’s start with emails. 

How many emails do you send in a day?  Probably more than you'd like to, right?  Here are some of things you need to consider before sending your next email:

1.       Grammar and Spelling – One of my biggest pet peeves is poor grammar and spelling.  Spell check is there as a guide to help you correct mistakes on the fly.  However, you can’t fully rely on it.  If you don’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re or to, too, and two, please find a dictionary to get it right!  Spelling is also vitally important when it comes to spelling someone’s name.  Please double and triple check the spelling before sending out the email.  It's just respectful.

2.       Tone – Sometimes in written forms of communication, the tone you intend to project doesn’t quite get across the way you wanted it to.  When composing emails, especially emails that you might be all fired up about, write it but don’t send it right away.  Go back to it a short while later (after you've cooled off!) to re-read it and adjust it accordingly.  The last thing you want to do is to inadvertently make somebody angry.

3.       Spam – I get emails sent to my main business email address all the time from companies all over the world claiming to be an expert who can help me with my business.  If I need an SEO expert or a graphic design artist, I’m not going to contact some guy in Cambodia!!  So, make sure the emails you send are going to people who actually want them, to people who have specifically opted in to receive your content.

4.       Timing – Don’t bombard people with tons of emails on a daily basis.  Just because they have opted-in to receive emails from you doesn’t mean you can fill their inboxes with info.  Sometimes you might have an urgent situation that needs to be dealt with.  Picking up the phone and calling that person is going to be a lot more effective than sending them an email every 20 minutes until they respond!!  That goes back to the spam point made earlier.  Too much of a good thing is not good.

Social Media:

Social media is extremely important to your company image.  But of course it’s different from emails and newsletters.  Posting on Facebook is a great way to interact with customers.  But just remember that whatever you put on Facebook is there forever.  It’s great to get into a discussion, even a debate, but before you post anything, please take a moment to think before you type.  Then after you’ve typed it and before you hit “Comment”, please read it a few times to make sure it makes sense, your tone is appropriate and things are spelled correctly.

Be sure to create a business Facebook page and post content on there that is valuable to your audience.  Also, remember that you are an extension of your business, so even though you may be posting business appropriate stuff on your business page your personal page needs to reflect a positive image too.  Like I said earlier, once it's out there, it's out there forever.

Now, Twitter is a whole other ballgame.  Like text messaging, you only have 140 characters to get your point across.  Twitter is also a great way to interact with customers.  However, when you're adding @ and # to your messages, the message can sometimes sound a little odd.  Please proofread it before you hit ‘Tweet’ to make sure it makes sense.  And although you can (and should) post to Twitter more often than other social media sites, don't post stuff just for the sake of posting it.  Make sure it's something actually valuable to your audience.  If it isn't, after awhile they won't read your posts any more or they'll just 'unfollow' you altogether.

Linkedin is a social media site that allows you to connect with other professionals, showcase your expertise, and search for job opportunities.  This is not where you need to tell the world about your weekend plans or what you made for dinner.  Your objectives here are very different than on other social media sites, so take that into consideration when you're posting on there.  Consider the audience and what they want to see.

All I’m saying here is that you need to keep in mind what kind of image you are trying to project.  So, the key takeaways I want you to get from this post are: 

• Be consistent, but not spammy. 
• Consider your audience and your objectives.
• Proofread.  Then proofread again.  And again.
• Keep your professional image in mind with everything you write and post.

The last thing you want is for your potential customers to get the impression that either you don’t know how to spell or that you’re too lazy to take the time to correct it.  Not quite the impression you want to leave in a prospects mind!