Focus on . . . Advertising

I’ve seen some confusion lately among small business owners and micro-business owners about the relationship between marketing and advertising as well as how to effectively produce ads. If we’re looking at a textbook model, Marketing is responsible for Promotions, and so I consider advertising an important part of the plan to promote your product or service. Developing an effective "ad campaign" is a good first step towards establishing your new brand and/or generating awareness in the market about your current brand. To help you achieve this, whether you do it yourself or engage my services, here are the keys to planning your successful ad:

1. Position. Determine your position by knowing your target market and your competition. If you haven’t done at least a basic market study, or have scattered information that needs to be compiled, doing so will be a major success factor in your strategic marketing efforts overall, as well as any advertising effort. Armed with industry research and target market needs, you’ll be able to create an effective message. A Primo Position: Diet Coke has two innovative, eye-catching yet simple ads. One ad shows a condensation-covered can with a cardboard insulating sleeve typically used for coffee around it and the headline "Good Morning." Another ad shows 3 images of the same sleeve-clad can with the headline "Three-hour meeting." This is a brilliant campaign strategy to carve out a potential new market—folks who prefer a cold, easily accessible, cheaper "coffee" as they head to or cope with work. If you’ve read my previous newsletter about Coke BlaK, you’ll see that the advertising track is a much better competitive strategy than costly new product development.

2. Message. Once you’ve defined your position, create an effective message with a solid, concise tagline. Test it with the following questions:
• Will it speak to your target?
• Does it highlight your competitive strengths?
• Is it true and easy to remember?
While not everyone can afford market research testing on their concepts, you can gain valuable feedback for free by engaging potential customers, loyal customers, friends, and family. Don’t create in a vacuum—the big agencies never do. When I work with clients who want to make their message a long-term investment, we create buyer personas to define the intended audience with precision. Visualizing these personas while in the concept development stages can really drive a creative campaign. Messing with the Message: The brand Bvlgari, well-known Italian jewelry manufacturer, conveys luxury, prestige, and opulent style, and its extension into other products, such as fragrances, continues this tradition. The newest perfume is called Rose Essentielle and the display ad I saw at Westfield Mall in San Francisco is a full-bleed portrait of a woman’s face with a rose. The tagline (brace yourselves!) is “The Essence of a Jeweler.” Really, what are they selling . . . and to whom? I’m imagining some combination of deodorant, smoke from soldering, harsh cleaning agents, and grease from some gears. Maybe I have an active imagination, but I still think the tagline’s a mistake.

3. Design. Your design doesn’t have to be perfect, and if you have a small budget, chances are you won’t be producing your own photo shoot. This means working with stock photography and ensuring your layout is as appealing—and logical—as possible. Like most marketing efforts, good design is an investment, and if you plan well, you can get the most out of it. There are a range of possibilities here and I always involve the best associates and tools for your project, based on industry fit, media type, and budget. Dissing a Design: December 2007’s Entrepreneur magazine shows an ad by software company Sage that touts "end-to-end solutions." To visually support this concept, the image spans the top half of two pages (16-17) and the headline is also prominently displayed across the 17 inches. These elements work together horizontally, but the copy itself is broken into two columns—one per page—such that you must read down and not across, as expected. Without all elements in harmony, the design falls short of reinforcing the message and subliminally creates doubt.

4. Integration. Make sure your marketing efforts link up across all media. If you’re advertising a new product or service, have the product or service on your website. Make sure you come up on web searches for appropriate keywords. Timing is everything. A coordinated effort will gain much more credibility and traction.
Lost opportunity: If you were interested in the fragrance Rose Essentielle after seeing the ad and had visited the Bvlgari site (at least at the time of this writing), you would find no mention of it on the Fragrances page.

5. Media and Place. Pick the right media (e.g., radio, TV, billboards, outdoor, magazines, newspapers, internet, mobile, etc.) and the right place within that category (e.g., which time slot, location, issues, sites, lists, or keywords). Deciding means researching available options as well as some creative thinking about additional media based on the target you are trying to reach.
A+ for Placement: Zagat advertises on the side of Muni buses in San Francisco, creating high visibility for tourists. The aforementioned Diet Coke ad appears on bus shelters in Phoenix to remind morning commuters of the soda as a substitute for coffee . . . and the one I saw is about .2 miles from a Starbucks to boot.

6. Consistency. You’ve probably heard it before, but sticking with the same ad campaign for a length of time is far more beneficial to building brand awareness than if you change it every time and/or don’t place in the same media on a regular basis. Most notably, a 2006 study on Internet ad exposure and online advertising shows that consistency pays off in terms of repeat purchase probabilities too, as long as you also don’t expose the viewer to too many different designs . The point is: It’s called an ad campaign because it is serial, widespread, and strategic. If this is news to you, or if you’re erratic or bored with your advertising, commit this phrase to memory: Ads must be repeated to be effective.

7. Tracking. Build in mechanisms to track and measure your results. Collecting data, and having the game plan to do so, will allow you to measure ROI and the historical knowledge will help you to make future decisions regarding media and place.
Tracking tip: When you create an ad, include a web address with a specific and new landing page for each publication. That way you can track direct hits based on media and measure increase in traffic over time.

"The Effect of Banner Advertising on Internet Purchasing." Puneet Manchanda, Jean-Pierre Dubé, Khim Yong Goh and Pradeep K. Chintagunta; Journal of Marketing Research, 2006, 43(1), p. 98-108.