4 Goals For Advertising
Advertising is a powerful tool to help grow your business, and it’s important to have a strategy. The first step in any advertising strategy should be to decide what is the direct measurable goal that you want to gain from it. Many people are quick to just say sales. However, we break advertising down into 4 possible goals Direct Marketing, Branding, Market Research, Market Size Growth, for you to choose between, and we will explain why each has value depending on where your business is and market demands.
Direct Marketing
Direct marketing is advertising that includes a clear call to action. Its objective is to generate leads and sales. This type of advertising revolves around a good offer with a call to action that connects with your ideal customer. Direct marketing can best be described as “Find a need; Fill a need.” Your direct marketing has to tell people you fill a known need, and they must trust you before it will be effective.
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This advertising goal should be evaluated directly against the number of qualified prospects gained from the promotion, or as a direct ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend). This kind of advertising has two objectives: increased leads, prospects and sales.
This goal is incredibly beneficial to many businesses. However, in businesses with competition, low customer trust, or an unknown need, this kind of advertising becomes very costly with minimal results. It’s important to understand that this is a channel for people who want your offer but don’t know about you, or it serves as a reminder for customers to buy.
Direct marketing advertising, which was extremely popular with print advertisers in the past, has been significantly influenced today by Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, and Brian Kurtz, to name a few. It became well-known as a method of immediately determining the ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend) of print marketing materials. It has been hailed as the most effective marketing strategy available. Connecting to a present client need and then offering the solution as your business is one of the most important elements to its success. It is the concept of ensuring that your company addresses and resolves people’s most pressing problems. It is language that both entices and directs the other person to act.
Although direct marketing is still effective, many factors have changed. To begin with, trust in America is low. Many businesses are viewed with suspicion as a result of frauds, inferior products, and broken promises. This is why reviews were so popular until we found out bots were filling out questionnaires. Because of this loss of trust, direct marketing has become significantly less effective than in the past. The key question you need to ask before doing a direct marketing campaign is, “Do I have my target audience’s trust.” Keep in mind this trust could be a specific accomplishment, a degree, a certain amount of time in a field, or a specific experience. You also could run a direct marketing campaign that is offering a reduced risk element to enhance the trust such as a discount or offering a free trial.
The transactional nature of direct marketing is a major reason why it is becoming less utilized. The ability to exceed the value provided in the offering is the most important criteria for long term success. That has gotten extremely challenging by today’s standards. Exceeding your customer’s expectations is more difficult than ever in a world of same-day pick-up, same-day shipping, lower rates, and a myriad of options. There is often less of an emotional attachment with these ads due to the goal being to buy my product. As a result, nurturing and exceeding expectations are the primary techniques to establish a long-term emotional bond.
The rise of competition has also had a significant impact on the effectiveness of direct marketing. With the online landscape, you may no longer be the only option in town. Nowadays, there may be competitors online who provide what you provide in terms of shipping. Because of the increased competition, many firms are no longer unique. Direct marketing can be perceived as just another ad if it lacks originality and innovation. This is why incorporating it into other ad objectives is typically critical for success.
There are a few things you can do to improve the effectiveness of your direct marketing ads. Offering anything at a large discount or buy one, get one free could be a wonderful deal that people feel forced to buy or sign up for. It could be something for free that helps improve your end user’s experience, such as a free trial or a free book. The crucial point is that the offer must be too attractive to pass up. The idea here is to provide so much value for the money requested that people want to buy just because of the incredible deal they are getting.
Infomercials are a wonderful illustration of this. They will say things like, “If you buy within the next hour, we’ll give you a whole second set for free.” You will also see this used by car dealerships with their ads. They often have ads like “Best deal of the year for Memorial Day.” These offers are so good that they require you to show up.
Russell Brunson’s promotion of the free funnel challenge is another excellent example of direct marketing with a twist. He’s giving out items that would ordinarily cost hundreds of dollars for free. It’s such a good deal that customers have enthusiastically joined up, seeking to save hundreds of dollars. For Russell, it allows him to initiate interest and build trust. It also gives him a list of people to email and call.
Branding
Branding is advertising that aims to improve the image of a company. This is about persuading people to see your brand from a specific perspective, or it is about ensuring that people become aware of your company. This could be to establish trust, or it could be to immerse yourself in the lifestyle of a specific community. This type of advertising does not require a direct call to action, but it must connect to what your ideal customers are interested in.
Depending on the channel, these should be measured using a few different options. How many shares are there? How many social media posts have been made about it? Did the people in the audience know you sponsored the event if you spoke to them? How many potential eyes will be drawn to your brand? If possible, surveying people to see if their perceptions of the brand have shifted is another way to assess the ad’s effectiveness. Keep in mind knowing your company exists and knowing what your company does sometimes are 2 different things. This is why a healthy ad mix is beneficial.
As an example, would be to promote a little league all-star game as a means to link your company with little league players and parents. Another alternative is to promote something positive that your company is involved in, such as teaching children financial literacy.
* This should often revolve around specific communities that are your ideal customer to ensure it’s not wasted money, and it should be around something that has emotional attachments.
While promotional efforts about branding can be beneficial, they usually take a long time to deliver noticeable results and it is difficult to track direct sales from them. They can result in money being spent and never returned. This is why it’s critical to make sure your product or service is simple to understand and that consumers recognize the brand and what it stands for. It is also critical to ensure that you are only promoting in locations where a significant percentage of your target audience is present.
GymShark and Yeti are two excellent examples of how to effectively promote your brand. GymShark is an athletic wear firm that will be close to, if not over, a billion dollars in revenue in thirteen years of existence. The secret for them was to avoid discussing their product. They had two advantages. They created a distinct apparel design for a younger audience, focusing on the emotions and desires of their prospective clientele. Because their gear was unique in and of itself, it was a simple buy for many gym influencers. The GymShark shirts were distinctive, and the shorts were a perfect complement. As they matured, they prioritized everyone’s ability to be healthy and happy. They publicized people’s achievements in the gym. They capitalized on people’s disappointments and troubles at the gym. They ended up creating a social media community for people to discover camaraderie, laughter, and inspiration. This is how they were able to scale to the size they did. It was accomplished by focusing on their key clients and the psychographics that connect them to a community.
Yeti is another excellent example where you will seldom hear an advertisement highlight any of the bottle’s qualities. Instead, they concentrate on telling tales about how their ideal clients use their products. They accompany a rancher on their day of checking the property in one of their advertisements and at the conclusion, they reveal the ice in the water is still there. They’ve done an excellent job of connecting with people who enjoy being outside and whose occupations need them to be outside. Their promotions primarily consist of other people utilizing their items, but because people know that person or that person resembles them, an instant connection is formed. They’re promoting the idea that “I’m like them” or “I want to be like them.” This form of branding is quite successful emotionally. It fosters a bond considerably greater than the transactional aspect of direct marketing.
The most common branding ad problems include business ambiguity, the wrong story, to the wrong group. It won’t help if consumers don’t understand what your company does or how it differs from other competitor promotions. Consider a car dealership advertising a community event. People say, OK, this is sponsored by a Kia dealership. So, what? Later on, during their new car research, they may come across your dealership and be enticed to check it out, but they are unlikely to recall any of the event sponsors after a few months. Instead, it is critical that you either run advertising before or after the event relating your company to that event. You want to be connected to the event by identifying a car-related issue that those people are most concerned about. It may be a small car that can transport everything for the kids, or it could be a car that gets great gas mileage. Whatever the psychographic is, you want to run an ad that shows how your event sponsorship connects to you guaranteeing they obtain the correct car for them.
Wrong stories happen all the time when people focus on too narrow a client segment or local companies focus on a story that has no connection with the community. It’s great to have a business brand story. It fosters connections and understanding, but it may not be the people that live around you. A bowling alley, for example, may highlight how, as a child, bowling was a place for an unathletic child to be successful. It could be centered on the personal empowerment that bowling provides. However, if the local group is made primarily of persons aged 25 to 55, this message may not be received well. Bowling, on the other hand, may be about having a place to go and hang out with a bunch of pals. It could be a cheap way to gather everyone together when it’s raining. Then you should center your story on the friendships and connections you acquired while bowling. Talk about the wonderful folks you met. Concentrate on all of the wonderful regulars who attend.
Finally, be certain that you are targeting the correct demographic. Paying to have more people witness the power of chiropractors during a little league game may be for the wrong audience. There may be a small number of parents who notice and are interested, but this is unlikely to be a huge number of parents compared to having a setup for a local gym competition or at a construction event. Branding is rarely simple to see immediate returns on investment, but when done correctly, it produces the highest level of emotional connection and a long-term following that pays for itself many times over.
Market Research
Advertising for market research is done as a preventative step. Frequently used prior to the release of a product or service. It helps you to test the waters and determine whether there is a lot of interest in the new product. This is a quick technique to gauge an area’s market demand before committing fully. This is typically a direct marketing ad with no distribution backend.
Running Instagram advertising for a restaurant site before signing the lease is one example. You can test several different ad types to discover what style or topic appears to be the area’s interest. Then you may lease and build based on what got the most people to click or sign up. This should be measured in terms of how many clicks or sign-ups per dollar spent. This percentage will be useful if you decide to run advertising after the opening to determine the CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost).
* This is a great way to quickly know the market demands in a specific location where you don’t live.
Market Size Growth
Market size growth marketing is marketing that is focused on growing the market size of your business. This is about not focusing on what your business offers or direct branding. Instead, it’s about focusing on why more people should engage in X activity or be concerned about X issue. These advertisements should be connected to company websites that feature blogs, tools, or videos regarding the subject. The key thing to remember is this type of promotion is geared around, “Creating a need; Filling a need” to grow the overall market size potential
This type of advertising should be measured based on how many people go to your blogs or videos, and you should look for trends on Google or social media showing an increase in participants of X thing or looking for X thing.
For this type of advertising to be successful, it requires your product or service to be a natural outgrowth of the psychographic change or change in activity. It also requires a lot of subliminal branding throughout the ad to ensure your business is the one they buy from. It’s a longer term process, but it’s what allows you to become the sole business that people buy from when they transition.
* New markets follow this type of advertising often as it’s focused around explaining the need or value of something, not the direct sale of a product.
Home Depot’s workshops for kids are an excellent example of a company accomplishing this. They hold these programs for kids to help them develop their do-it-yourself talents. People’s emphasis and ideas directed toward doing things yourself expanded as a result of this focus. Home Depot has established its brand around the same psychographics. As a result, encouraging more individuals to do it themselves encourages them to shop at Home Depot. This is also why they failed in their venture into China. When the culture was unaccustomed to conducting their own repairs, they focused on direct marketing. Instead, if they had focused on changing people’s minds about doing it themselves, their stores would have grown organically over time.This can backfire if your branding fingerprint is not visible throughout the promotion. This may boost market size, but it does not make you the obvious company to buy from. It might also backfire if you are unable to generate a compelling reason for individuals to shift their attention to you. Remember that this is a long-term trail of money. It may be sluggish at first but if done correctly, it will make your business the preferred company to buy from and will increase your market size.
To scale their business, many companies will use a variety of ads with varying objectives. It is critical to determine the aim and measurement for each ad you create, and it’s important to ensure you are using the proper mix ratio for your business. It’s with the right ads and proper mix that you will see your branding, direct marketing, and market growth ads have the greatest impact. It’s not only about how much money you spend. It’s also about making your customers feel understood.