Advertising is an important part of promoting your business, and is one of the most effective ways of reaching new customers. Your ads will create the first impression that many of your new customers have of your business – so ensuring that they are professional and represent your business well is vital.
What do you want to say?
The first step in creating great adverts is working out exactly what you want to say. Do you want to concentrate on your products, and its benefits? Or are you selling an image of your company? How you answer this question will directly affect the look and feel of your ad, so it’s important to work it out at the beginning.
If the aim of your advertising is to directly increase sales, then you should concentrate on reasons to buy your product or take up your service. This could be price, quality, some unique features, or customer service – but remember that there are ground rules to the kinds of claims you can make about products legally. The Committee of Advertising Practice website has lots of information on advertising guidelines – if in doubt, you can call or email them for advice.
Targeting your customers
The second thing to consider is who exactly you’re advertising to. Unless you have a small business that serves a niche market, you’re likely to have quite a few different kinds of customer. Trying to advertise to all of them may not be the most effective method – so instead, identify the most valuable customers, and aim your ads towards them. You’ll probably find that 20% of your customers provide 80% of your revenue, so they’re they ones you should spend a disproportionately larger share of your advertising budget on.
Do it yourself, or hire an agency?
Whether you create your ads in-house, or use an agency will depend, first and foremost, on your budget. If your advertising budget is relatively small, then an external agency may not be an option.
However, even if you are creating your ad in-house, it’s a far better option to hire a designer to work with you than attempt to do everything yourself. As the owner of a business, you have a lot more things to do with your time than learn graphics programmes – so get someone who knows what they’re doing, and work closely with them.
If you have the budget, then an agency can be a good option. A good agency will not only work with you to create the ad, but also help to work out the strategy – where it should be placed, how you should sell your company and product, and so on. If your account is likely to be large enough and ongoing, then you should ask several agencies to pitch for your business – that way, you can understand how they would approach your company and its products before signing a contract.
Where to advertise
Directories
Paper-based such as Yellow Pages and Thomson Local or Trade Directory and Online listings…
Press
Specialist trade press, national newspapers, local/regional newspapers, newsletters/reviews, show guides…
Broadcast
Covering TV, Cinema, Radio
Online search advertising
One simple way to advertise is key word search advertising. When someone searches on Google, Yahoo!, or another search engine, you will see paid for “sponsored” links appear at the top or side of the other results. Which ads appear depends on what the person has searched for – which means that the ads are contextual, and should be more effective than less targeted advertising.
This form of advertising has many advantages. First of all, you have complete control over the budget – you can set an amount per month that you want to spend, which can be as little as £10 – and you have direct access to results which show you how many people are clicking through on your ad.
However, choosing the right keywords to have associated with your ads can be difficult if you want to maximise their effectiveness. And, because they tend to be text-only or small graphics, they can be limiting to how creative – and thus noticeable – you can be.
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