Successful Advertising Should Make Your Bottom Look Big
I’m on a mission here today, to encourage you to use your marketing budget more wisely… Lately, I’ve been thinking about paper based publications marketing and advertising and I wanted to share what I’ve found out about how to make your bottom line expand with some simple strategies! Successful business men and women entrepreneurs alike can go with that right?
If you are paying for advertising already, or plan to in the future, here are some basics on assessing what works and what doesn’t and what it can mean for your budget management.
First off, stop any advertising that isn’t working! Obvious, right? Seriously, you would be amazed at how many business people run ads just because that’s what their business has always done, or because it’s what their competitors do. Shockingly, they don’t even really know whether the ads are working, because they never thought through why they were doing it, who they were targeting, let alone set up any results tracking or really studying their competitors wider strategies. It’s that old: “throw it at the wall often enough, some of it will stick” time and money wasting philosophy handed down from way back when…
Secondly, you won’t know whether the ads are working unless you test and measure all of your advertising. This is sooo important. So many businesses allocate a certain amount of money to an advertising budget, spend the money every year, with only a vague sense of whether the ads are working or not. This is not a good business practice! It perhaps also shows a complete lack of understanding of this vital sales and lead generation strategy.
If ad campaigns are not working, use some other marketing strategies that can bring you a bigger return on your investments. A bigger ROI on your bottom line looks good from any angle!
Thirdly, only run ads that are going to get a response. This is known as ‘direct response advertising’. The other form of advertising is brand advertising. (This is designed to build and sustain awareness of a brand. Yes, of course you are your brand too as a small business owner…. but this is another marketing article for another day…)
Learn to earn like smart online marketers who only pay for ads that produce a profitable response. For instance, in Pay Per Click campaigns, knowing what your conversion rates and your Cost Per Click is, tells you where to draw the line. OK, this is not always straight forward perhaps, but these are crucial cost management tools. For some business people,this level of analysis is out of their comfort zone. The point is not being interested can ultimately leave you demotivated as you watch your business ‘muddle along’ at best, or worse still…struggle.
Your business marketing strategy is a whole skill set in itself which requires your observation, study and active willingness to learn. Do you (or your marketing team if you have any) know, for instance, what the cost of a sale conversion from your advertising campaign is? Who are responding to which ads? How many are buying? How is this reflected in overall costs of campaigns and product prices?
Sometimes, business people are so caught up in all other operational considerations, taking time to really analyse the success of their ‘sales lube’ gets left behind. Are you trotting out tired campaigns for convenience because of tight deadlines? Putting in some appraisal time can really pay off. One small tweak in any off or online ad campaign can even have exponential results.
For instance, the KEY element in any advertising is the headline or the the first words of your ad. Obvious right? What do you have to offer to grab peoples’ attention in the few seconds you have to distract them from whatever else they might otherwise be doing? You are potentially building a relationship with new customers here and research says you have literally seconds to do it! One simple tweak to your headline can really increase your response rate. (TIP: If the headline of your ad is currently the name of your company, you can almost certainly increase your ad response rate by merely changing the headline to a compelling offer or an amusing or intriguing few words. Who really cares who you are?! The public are tuned into W.I.F.M. daily; i.e. What’s In It For Me – even if it’s just entertainment they are after, offer salesmanship! )
The body copy of your ad should be a personal communication to the individual reading it. It needs to be about them and speak to that one person you are going out to find. It needs to address their needs, desires and fears AND it needs to constantly communicate the BENEFITS of what you are offering, not just the qualities of the product(s).
At the end of the ad you need a call to action. Tell people exactly what they need to do to take the next step towards you and make it easy for them to do so. If there is a bonus of some kind on offer, remind them. If you have a time-limited offer, make it obvious what the benefits are of acting NOW.
Some other basics of the marketing masters include: Don’t advertise on a left hand page e.g. in magazines or newsletters. This has been proved over and again. When we read any publication, our eyes are drawn to the right hand side of the page. It makes sense then, that more people will see your ad if it’s on the right hand page. However, on any single page, our eyes alight on the top left and move to the right, hence the placement of sponsored ads on Google, for instance.
Bargain hunters, remember, we are in a recession and advertisers need your business. So, NEVER pay the full rate you get quoted. You can always negotiate. If this is something you are not comfortable with, get some practice in with someone you trust to play hard-ball with you. If you’re a small business, be aware that large companies who use ad agencies are buying based on the readership or audience numbers, rather than the ‘rates chargeable’. Haggle and negotiate; you are not expected to be treated the same as the big boys and your custom is just as important in tough times. Think about it, paying, 20% less for your advertising can turn an unprofitable ad campaign into a really lucrative one.
OK, whilst still on the subject of advertising presence in publications, don’t think that just because your competitors are there, that you need to be too! Don’t make the mistake of assuming that your competitors are there because their ads are producing great results. Chances are, they are only there because their competitors are and the funny thing is that many won’t even know if their ads are getting results anyway, because they don’t really bother to measure results either! This is a mistake commonly made by newbies who are still looking around for marketing role models… I know this because I’ve done it!
Consider non-traditional advertising media to complement eg magazine advertising. So many businesses waste money on unproductively restrictive advertising outlets. Other marketing strategies might be more profitable, especially if your budget permits, used jointly to underpin or mutually strengthen each other: Direct Mail, Telephone Marketing, Direct Sales, Email, Internet, Referrals, Strategic Alliances, etc. The possibilities for a good marketing mix are as successful as the planning and execution you put in.
Knowing what works, above all, is the result of your actively testing and experimenting over time. This takes patience, planning time and strategic focus. The good news is it gets to be fun when you start to see the results of tightening up on your methods. More importantly still, advertising can become a highly profitable part of your marketing tool box when you get it right and immensely satisfying when you know that your expansive bottom line is directly resulting form feeding your campaign properly.
If you are looking to learn more about marketing effectively and have time or money to invest, I recommend an online marketing ‘ earn as you learn ‘ training platform where you can learn all aspects of marketing and salesmanship from the marketing masters, some of whom are from Fortune 500 companies, offering their know-how on tried and tested methods. Check out the videos page here on this site to find out more.
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