Smart Advertising: Four Tips For Small Businesses

 Advertising  Comments Off
Apr 082012
 

Not long ago, media buying involved purchasing expensive TV, radio or print advertising contracts with traditional media outlets. For small businesses with limited budgets, the price of becoming a big player in the advertising game was often just out of reach. Now, the evolution of online, social and mobile marketing platforms has leveled the playing field quite a bit. Small businesses can buy cost-effective media more efficiently and intelligently than ever before – and truly compete with bigger brands.

Getting started with advertising can be overwhelming to a small business owner, and a good strategic campaign doesn’t happen by accident. Here are four tips for smart media buying:

1. Know Your Target Audience. (Hint: your audience is not necessarily a mirror of you.) Understanding exactly who is the decision maker when it comes to buying your product or service is crucial. Gender, age, household income and education all come into play. Do your homework before you advertise. Not sure where to start? The Small Business Administration (sba.gov) offers good information on how to conduct market research.

2. Aim For Key Market Segments. The truth is, because there are now multitudes of ways to reach people, audiences have become more fragmented and harder to reach with any one medium. However, reaching key market segments is actually easier. By intelligently using qualitative data, small businesses can drill down and discover listenership of a particular radio station, determine which brand of credit card the target audience is more likely to use, or even gauge their likelihood of attending the State Fair. Search online for great data on consumer statistics – it’s out there.

3. Geo-Target Your Audience. Direct mail is a tried and true method of targeting a specific geographic area, typically by zip code. Cable television allows geo-targeted reach in specific areas with a visual component. And it’s also possible to take advantage of online and mobile marketing to reach your audience. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 6:03 pm  Tagged with: ,

Substance Before Style – For Advertising That Get Results

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Apr 062012
 

When it comes to your company’s advertising, are you more concerned about how it looks or what it says? While design and style are important, all the glitz and cool stuff won’t mean a thing if there is no real substance to your message. Whether you use print ads, direct mail, email, website or social media, copy is king!

So the next time you sit down to prepare a new marketing campaign, give a little more thought to your copy. Here’s a six step approach that might make this a little easier – and make your marketing a lot more effective.

Step 1: Define Your Ideal Customer

The best marketing starts with a clear ‘audience’ in mind! Write a one-page description of your most ideal client/customer. Describe in detail all about them. For consumers, this might include age, marital status, car they drive, number of children, income range, personality type, common problems or challenges. For businesses, this might include size, industry, # employees, decision maker title, hobbies, personality type, goals, and common problems. This answers the question “Who” is your ideal client (not your target market – your IDEAL “A” class customer)

Step 2: What Would They Buy?

“What” would your ideal customers buy from you? Most businesses offer more than one product or service for their ideal customers, so identify all of them.

Step 3: Why Would They Buy?

This is important and is two-fold. Why would they buy from you instead of your competition – and what are the benefits they receive when they make the purchase? Your Unique Value Proposition is important here so you don’t compete on price alone!

Step 4: Headlines That Speak to Ideal Customers

Whether you are creating a landing page on your website, an email marketing campaign or direct mail piece, a powerful headline is a must — to get attention and encourage ideal customers to read more. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 10:48 pm  Tagged with: ,

How Dumb Do Advertisers Think Consumers Are?

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Apr 042012
 

As a consumer – a frequent buyer of varied products and services – I’m often offended, as perhaps you are, by how dumb advertisers think we consumers are. But as a marketing professional, which is how I continue to earn my living, I’ve never understood why so many advertisers seem to think that “Phil the Consumer,” along with millions of other consumers like me, must all be total dunces! Three quick examples should prove how dumb many advertisers think we consumers are.

While watching a TV commercial for a national brand of frozen pizza, the ad agency for the pizza company tried to position this particular brand as unique because each pizza, according to the announcer, “has a hand-tossed style crust.” Look at those words one more time. The implication – what the agency would have you believe – is that there’s an army of pizza-tossers hidden away somewhere that does nothing but hand-toss only this brand of pizzas. Not true!

Read those words again, “…hand-tossed style crust.” The key word is ‘style.’ This particular brand of za is deliberately made to “look like” it’s been hand-tossed – whatever that means – when they obviously zip down an assembly line untouched by human hands.

Then there’s the burger chain that’s now selling a national brand of yummy, hot cinnamon buns. Every TV ad I’ve seen for them shows a close-up of two of those seemingly huge, tasty-tempting delicacies filling a colorfully decorated container. Price is never mentioned. But as I was told by more than one disillusioned customer, when they ordered those fresh-from-the-oven goodies they got only one of them – a mere two inches in diameter – for about $2.

Want that taste-tempting pair shown in the burger chain’s commercials? We’ll they’re gonna cost you very close to $4.00 for the pair. That’s for a couple of minuscule, not-completely-baked, semi-raw sticky buns? Really?

Oh, and if you think those commercials insult your intelligence, consider how audacious the commercials are for drug companies. Great graphics, right? Convincing? They sure try to be. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 4:12 pm  Tagged with: ,
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