What is the Goal of your Advertising Campaign?
Advertising is an essential part of your business, but knowing what you want to achieve with your advertising is even more important. Many businesses rush into advertising without clearly identifying what are the goals that they should realize as a result of that. I’m sure you know the phrase “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, this is so true for business in general and specially advertising. Because when you advertise you are spending money, and if you just spend without direction you are basically throwing money away.
Enough of that already, and let’s get into the reasons you might consider advertising your business. Many people would answer that simply by saying that they advertise to make more sales. Well, that is definitely the result you desire0 of your advertising efforts, but your approach or strategy should be well defined before committing any serious money into the process. Now, let look at the different approaches you could take.
The most popular approach that many big established companies take is branding. Just look around you for a moment and you will see it everywhere. The goal of branding is to make your brand associated with certain characteristics that your target market will remember and identify your product with them. For example, when you think about McDonald’s you immediately see a cheeseburger and French fries. When you think about Nike, you immediately think of nice looking, comfortable quality athletes shoes. This is the main goal of branding; basically make a name stick in the mind of consumers.
When applied to online advertising, branding campaigns usually use more general broader keywords that are usually expensive. For example, Dell or HP will bid on a general keyword such as “Computer Desktop” or even “Computers”. That’s because the company wants to introduce its brand to as many people in its market as possible. So, the main objective is not to immediately make more sales, but rather increase brand awareness and gain market share. That explains why only big established companies use this advertising strategy.
Another advertising approach is the direct sales approach. This one is more suitable for small or medium businesses that are more interested in generating more sales as a direct result of their advertising efforts. As you can see that means a totally different way of doing things. This means using a more targeted approach that will deliver their message to buyers in their marketplace. You noticed I said buyers not just consumers that might be in a different stage in the buying cycle. This strategy involves more marketing research, but will usually generate better results for the advertiser.
So, coming back to internet advertising, when using the strategy mentioned above, you want to choose very targeted keywords. In contrast to the branding approach; you want to identify keywords that a buyer would use when buying products in your market. For example, using the computers market one more time, instead of bidding on keyword such as “computers”, you bid on “desktop computer best deal”, “buying desktop computer” or ” discount desktop computer” if your competitive advantage is price.
The final strategy I want to mention is advertising for lead generation. Lead generation is the process of collecting information about prospect consumers who might be interested in your products and/or services. This is usually done by offering the prospect something for free in exchange for their contact information. This advertising technique is quite a popular one because it offers more advantages over other approaches.
Again looking at the keywords that might be useful for a lead generation campaign, you need to look for keywords that reflect that the searcher is seeking information related to your products or services. For example, let’ s say you are selling skin care and acne related products, you might use a phrase like “how to get rid of acne” or “free information about acne”. To make this strategy effective you have to offer free information on a landing page that you direct your ppc traffic to and collect visitors’ names and email addresses as a minimum. Depending on the market and product you might want to ask for more information.
The above mentioned strategy is probably the most effective in the long term because it allows you to collect prospects’ information. If you use this information right, you can generate very good results for your business. However, a segment of your market might don’t want to share their information with you. So, the effectiveness of this method depends on the market you are serving and your products.
In conclusion, like so many things in life, you need to set goals for your advertising. In general this will be identified when you plan your overall marketing strategy, which will determine your market conditions, competition, and your competitive advantages. Knowing this information will allow you to choose the best advertising strategy that meets your overall business goals. Companies advertise for branding, advertise for direct sales, and they advertise to collect prospect customers’ data. The final question that remains is, what does your company advertise for? answer this and you should reach your goals.
Until the next post, best wishes with your online business advertising!
Written by Meedo on April 9th, 2007 with
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