“You can have the most wonderful product in the world, but if
people don’t know about it, it’s not going to be worth much.
There are singers in the world with voices as good as Frank
Sinatra’s, but they’re singing in their garages because no one
has ever heard of them. You need to generate interest, and you
need to create excitement.” Donald Trump, American real-estate
tycoon
Advertising doesn’t cost, it pays! And good advertising can pay
you well. Bad advertising, or no advertising at all, invites
disaster.
You have to advertise if people are to be made aware of your
business and the benefits it offers them. Without advertising
you rely on word of mouth recommendation or press editorial,
both extremely effective, but slow and generally unpredictable.
Advertising takes many different forms, from painting your name
on the side of a van to delivering leaflets door-to-door or
posting printed cards in shop and post office windows. More
often the term applies to classified and display promotions in
appropriate media, usually newspapers and magazines, and it is
with this definition we concern ourselves here.
Advertising by itself does not sell. It will not sell a bad
product (customers will ask for refunds) and it won’t open up
new markets. It is not a miracle cure that can generate sales
for a dying product. Conversely, advertising will not sell your
must successful products to people who simply don’t want them.
Main Points About Effective Advertising
* It reduces the entire population to your target audience and
reaches as many of those people as possible at least available
cost.
* It must always have an objective. This means having a clear
idea about what you want to accomplish in your advertisement.
Reasons for advertising include:
* To invite orders or enquiries
* To launch new products
* To publicise price changes.
* The message must attract your target audience, it must
interest them, create a desire for your product and prompt
people to act (order or ask for further information). This
acronym AIDA is one you will encounter many times in advertising.
* It must be truthful and straightforward. The nearer your
advertisement is to reality, the more effective it is.
* Sufficient resources must be allocated to accomplish your
advertising objectives.
* Testing is crucial to effective advertising, allowing good
promotions to be repeated and bad ones to be eliminated.
* Every aspect of your advertisement must be prepared from the
customer’s point of view. That person wants to know how you and
your product can benefit him. The most important feature of any
advertisement is the benefits it contains.
* It must be placed in the appropriate media.
Newcomers to business tend to confuse the real benefits of
advertising, frequently considering it a necessary, and
expensive, evil, not the long-term investment it really is. In
short, effective advertising is the lifeblood of your business.
Without it you will surely fail!
Deciding When and How
Advertising can be a major headache for many firms, not just new
businesses or those without specialist advertising departments.
But it isn’t always costs that are to blame as much as making
that vital choice between classified or generally more costly
display advertising.
Returning to basics, all advertisements must follow the general
AIDA principle. They must attract attention, generate and retain
interest, create desire, and stimulate action.
But what will best achieve this objective: classified or display?
The answer depends on a number of things, not least of all an
understanding of what these two methods involve, how they differ
and what similarities, even overlap, might exist.
Classified advertising, sometimes called ‘lineage’, generally
employs just words, without embellishment, other than perhaps a
few words emboldened, and sometimes impact lines or boxes around
the advertisement. Where these minor forms of decoration are
included, the format is frequently referred to as ’semi-display’.
Display advertisements, on the other hand, are designed to stand
out from the crowd, using a variety of techniques including:
occupying a set position on the page, taking up a specified
amount of space, including graphics and illustrations, adopting
a variety of fonts, and so on. The argument is that display
advertisements are more noticeable, more profitable than their
counterparts buried amongst countless others in the classified
columns. Hence the far higher cost of display advertising.
The following main points will help you decide:
* Classified ads are usually cheap and are excellent for
generating enquiries. Many successful classified advertisers use
the two-stage enquiry method, allowing the customer to obtain
further information before placing an order. A major benefit for
dealers is the chance to build a useful mailing list for future
offers.
* Display advertising is best for selling straight from the
page. Readers are more likely to trust their money to someone
who has paid for a larger advertisement than someone whose
advertisement occupies a tiny space among so many competing
entries. Classified advertising is rarely effective for selling
off-the-page except for very low cost items, commonly Ј10
or less.
* Classified advertising can be used to test interest in your
product before venturing into more costly display advertising.
* Classifieds can be used to test and compare advertising
sources.
* Classified advertising is generally unsuitable for anything
that requires a lot of ‘telling’ to accomplish the task of
selling. Too much grey matters in classifieds is boring and
readers can easily lose interest halfway. If it can’t be said in
a few words, try display advertising.
* For classified advertisements, the words themselves must do
the job of selling. Sometimes a maximum wordcount is set and
every word must pay its way. Conversely, display advertising
allows a variety of other techniques to be used to attract and
retain reader interest. Based on what they say about a picture
being worth ten thousand words, it follows that, if the design,
style or appearance of your product is important to the
potential customer, display advertising is usually best. If the
product markets well ’sight unseen’, classified ads might be
appropriate.
* Classified ads usually focus on a single offer. Display
advertisements can include several products, or an invitation to
send for further information, obtain a catalogue, send for
samples, and so on.
