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Sometimes a good ad runs at a bad time. It's unfortunate, but it happens. It's usually a no-brainer to pull your advertising when there is a potential negative reaction, such as an airline pulling ads after a major crash. Greyhound Bus Lines recently pulled their ads after an unfortunate incident on one of their buses in Canada. It was particularly ironic in this case however...click here to read more. |
With increasing competition for the same consumers, it has never been more important to make sure that the advertising you do breaks through increasing advertising branding and clutter. Especially now in what we call the “homogenization” of the world. If advertising is supposed to be so easy, why do most people think it is such a confusing and complicated process? Without a doubt, the advertising industry has a lot to do with that. Thanks to folks in the advertising and media industries, most people outside of those businesses have no idea how the media advertising process really works. Even worse than that is the grim reality that most people who do this work in agencies or in media don’t know what they’re doing, either. Nearly everyone in business has said at one time or another, “I tried radio (or television, or newspaper, or billboards, etc.) once and it didn’t work.” This in itself is a statement of complete ignorance. Because, all media are good. It’s true. Television is good. Radio is good. Newspapers are good. Yellow Pages, coupons, sponsorships, the Internet, magazines are all good. But you’ve got to use them correctly. Otherwise, you might as well roll up your advertising dollars, light them on fire and smoke them. An advertising friend in Atlanta, Jarrett McConnico, believes that a model of a perfect business could be represented by an equilateral triangle. That would be a triangle with three even sides. On the left side you’d write product/service. On the right side, you’d have sales force. And across the bottom you’d have advertising. In a perfect world, all three sides should be even. People aren’t really that difficult to figure out. We’re like light switches. Either we are on or we’re off for various products and services. We clearly see those products and services that we’re interested in, and we filter out most of the rest of the clutter. What makes your business unique? What do you offer that makes you stand out from your competition? That's your ID (identifiable difference). Newspapers use headlines to grab your attention. Commercials should do the same, and the way to do it is with emotion. You need to educate your audience about why they should do business with you. But if you use cliches, the information goes in one ear and out the other (to use a cliche...) Your ad should not only tell your audience who you are and what you do, you need to tell them what you want them to do. A call to action is crucial to making your ad work. Here are some additional things to think about when thinking about the words and pictures and overall design of your advertisements. Too often people think of an advertisement as nothing but applied art, but hopefully we’ve made it clear that the strategy behind it can be far more important than how artistic or inventive it is. This course covers the nuts and bolts of return on investment. Now that you know what ROI is, this course teaches you how to calculate it. It's a very important step if you want to determine if you're advertising is working. This course will help you determine how much you should invest in your advertising.
| Welcome! Our aim is to educate you about basic marketing and advertising so that you can spend your time running your business instead of worrying about your advertising investment.
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