Advertising does work – but it needs to be done right. Remember that every technique has a successor……… What was fantastic this year will be replaced today.

What is an Advertisement Exactly?

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary suggests that an advertisement ‘is a notice or display that advertises something’. It’s about presenting or describing (a product, service or event) in a public medium so as to promote sales.

If we are to promote anything in return for money, then it has to be better than previous products and services, or people will not go with our product – this stands to reason. Let’s suppose we have this great product, we now have to sell it via an advert. The advert must therefore catch our attention – be of a certain standard:

The Ad must have Stopping Power, it must grab attention – in fact, no, it must stop people from what they are doing and make them look! Then it must guide or lead them to what’s being sold. Then conversion can take place, or begin.

Here are my principles that apply to a good advert:

Can You Afford to Advertise at All?

If you’re marketing a small business, start by deciding where your prospect might look for your company. What are you selling, how will people find you and why would they look for you in first place. Next look for contact information in targeted publications, sites etc that identifies ad campaign manager, ring them and ask for a rate sheet (this details prices of ads, discounts per ads etc), if it’s a magazine always ask for schedule, which tells you when ads need to be placed by, alternatively, you can get this info from each publication’s website. WARNING:

If site just has a email asking you to contact them to discuss advertising – chances are it’s going to cost you in region of at least £2000 and anything up to £30000, so be prepared for that, and make sure you check ‘reach’ (readership level of your ad) by asking for readership levels. Once you have your rate sheets, look at pricing and throw away any that are near or over 5% of your yearly ad budget – and forget about advertising in those ones. You need tons of little ads running at minimum to make a good print advert campaign, and too expensive ads will eat into your budget, and you won’t be able to keep it going. If you operate on too small a scale to afford advertising, try putting a good flier together (use good quality paper) and mail that to 300 people/companies instead. That’s a lot cheaper and less risky than spending £20’000 on some campaign aimed at 200’000 – which could easily fail.

Even advertising for as little as a month, can and does cost as much as £1500 per month, and most portal type sites will cost £10’000 for a weeks campaign. I recently checked ad rates for a black cab service, and they started at £14’000 per month for a lightweight campaign for 200 panels (excluding production costs) – so it’s an expensive business. Big companies don’t worry about losing £14’000 or even £200,000 on a campaign, as they are experts, and hire best market researchers, PR staff and sales people in world to look after this for them. But you guys can’t afford to do this, and even with introduction of web, finance does pose a problem. Planning is Key! If you have a plan, then you can keep track of what you’re buying, time period paid for each advert and results from each campaign. For those who don’t know what an ad campaign is – it’s “a series of adverts in different, but targeted media that communicate a single or multiple message” And those ads need to be targeted exactly.

To plan a campaign, an advertiser usually consults an ad agency. Such agencies will create, design, develop, plan and implement an ad campaign for a client.. Some agencies offer all manner of services and some specialise, in creative work or copyrighting etc. You ads must be in right place, at right time and targeted at right people – otherwise campaign will fail. In this article, we will review certain publications, and list why they work and why they fail and include some less common tips on how to reduce that ad spend. You will like this, we will have some fun!!!

Most advertising actually fails – did you know that? Well it does, and I’m going to prove it to you.

Advertising fails because it's ineffective, because either ads are badly written, not advertised in right media - or ad is okay, but you're paying way too much for ad space. And people copy others as well. Do you remember copying someone’s homework at school because you couldn’t be bothered to work on it yourself, and you got caught out, I do! Well, advertising is exactly like that, with businesses advertising in same damn publication all time. You wouldn’t see 2 pubs sitting right next to each other would you – and why do you think that is………

(Pretty obvious why)

See where I’m taking you with this.

Your business is unique, and a general medium may not be best place to advertise – even if price is attractive. Let’s take a look at some advert media:

NEWSPAPERS

Newpapers, local and national are used for 2 different reasons:

National press is larger and will have a wider circulation compared to local rags. Yet local papers can provide a more highly targeted readership – it depends on your needs. They use ‘display’ ad spaces, which can be up to a full page in size – guaranteeing attention of some sort, although paper cannot guarantee target readership exactly (anyone can buy a paper)

Either way, newspapers are a medium to large expense, and most web companies/sites can’t afford to use them. Try using news web sites as a cheaper option.

Local press is distributed locally, by town, county, or specialism! And is a more affordable option, but still expensive compared to other methods.

MAGAZINES

These are highly specialised, can be online and offline, target by age, group or niche area – and are medium to high cost. An added advantage of a Magazine is colour – colour does attract, and will sell more than just a plain old black and white advert.

Space is usually bought in ‘issues’ and a price will be quoted for number of issues wanted, and charges decrease with higher number. Still very pricey though, don’t expect much change from £80’000 for several issues. But choose wisely, and results are truly fantastic! Ok, these are print ads, and most marketers go for printed adverts, as they are less expensive to create, set up, modify etc etc. Print advertising also integrates well with other media, and is backbone of most marketing programs in this world.

When designing anything in print, Your ad’s purpose is to generate a sale. That’s called ROI (return on investment) and is goal for most. Only big companies can afford brand campaigns.

Now lets discuss underperforming media and tactics involved – both should reveal why this fails for most website ad campaigns.

DIRECTORIES (offline/paper versions) - When they first arrived, were new, interesting and highly used. They had high usage, good distribution rates, could be targeted and were considered good value for money, as there was little else being offered in that price bracket at time. Kellys started it all off really, with their massive 100’000 category monster, aimed at Industrial market and companies. Then along came Yellow Pages followed by Thomson Local and a few smaller competitors.