Creating Advertising that Works

It doesn’t matter how you advertise, there are three keys that can increase your chances of success. Two depend entirely on where you decide to advertise. These are relevance and relationship. By choosing a platform that is relevant to your target market, you have a better than average chance of catching and keeping their attention. Next you have to gauge the relationship of the place you are planning to advertise with your target market.

For instance, if the local paper is something of a joke and no one in your target market takes it seriously, then advertising in it or even seeking publicity through it is not going to aid your marketing efforts. It neither has relevance or a relationship with the people you want to reach. This is no way to say anything about the general effectiveness of newspaper advertising. In some markets advertising in a newspaper is the most effective way of advertising and others where it will not yield the expected results. It’s all about relevance.

The same is true of websites, mailing lists and other advertising platforms you might be considering. Traffic or readership alone does not tell the whole story. To be truly successful in your marketing efforts, it’s important to dig a little deeper than just numbers and examine the people behind those numbers. After all, it’s people who buy, not numbers.

It all boils down to the question are these the people you are trying to reach? If you are trying to sell a gadget for luxury cars, then advertising on the inside of a bus is not in your best interest. Advertising on the outside of a bus, on the other hand, may be an effective alternative.

After you’ve got a media that provides you with relevance and you’d determined that it has a good relationship with your target market, the final key is repetition. You cannot expect a prospect to see your ad once and respond. Getting a response depends on repetition. You have to get your sales message in front of your target market many times with the same primary message. You’ll lose marketing momentum if you are inconsistent or if your message keeps changing, this is the essence of repetition.

By:Patrysha Korchinski, CRA