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Business Success Tips

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Contributing Authors

	Stephanie Chandler Author of The Business Startup Checklist & Planning Guide
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	Steven D. Strauss Author of The Small Business Bible
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	Joe Kennedy Author of The Small Business Owner's Manual
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	Tom Severance Author of Business Start-Up Guide
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Advertising

Free Mercedes Benz! Yes, with the right headline and the right offer you can dramatically increase customers and sales through advertising. Done right, it can be your most effective and immediate promotion technique. However, it can be a great waste of time and money if not done right.

For many, advertising is synonymous with marketing. It is not. Remember that marketing is the complete process of segmenting the market, targeting your ideal customer, and implementing the full marketing mix to satisfy that customer. Advertising is only one of four promotion types. Promotion is only one of the four P’s of the marketing mix. Advertising is important, but keep it in perspective. For many small and start-up businesses, other promotion methods may be more effective in the long term. They almost certainly will be more economical.

There are many specific reasons to advertise, but all fall within the three major categories of informing, persuading, and reminding. For most small and start-up businesses, the main reason to advertise is to persuade the customer to buy their product or service or to buy more of it. You may need to inform the customer of all the benefits to persuade them. However, informing or reminding by itself is not the best use of your advertising dollar. Large companies with unlimited budgets may be able to do this, but you need to show a specific and verifiable rate of return on your advertising investment.

Here are some characteristics of effective ads and some suggestions for you to consider:

Know the main objective of the ad and stick with it.
Direct the ad at your target market.
Choose the right medium for the ad.
Be informative, truthful, credible, and convincing.
Arouse emotions such as hope, admiration, and fear.
Catch the prospect’s attention with a powerful headline and a good lead sentence.
Stress the benefits over the features.
Use an appropriate tone and powerful words such as “free,” “save,” “new,” “easy,” “you,” “guarantee.”
Remember that advertising is “salesmanship multiplied.” Even though many people may see or hear your ad, each one is seeing or hearing it individually.
Always test elements of the ad. Try to find a better way. Test headline, offer, placement, price, media, etc.
Make sure you can track and measure the results of your ads.
Make the ad easy, simple, and attractive with photos, illustrations and enough “white space.”
Make the ad large enough to see or long enough to hear.
Repeat the ad, repeat the benefits, and repeat the phone number.
Use a logo or a theme for quick recognition.
Use third party endorsements of your product or service.
Use guarantees and risk-free offers.
Use time limits and bonuses for quick action.
Ask for a specific response and action.
Stay with ads that are working and change those that aren’t.
Negotiate the best deals with the media. Consider forming your own advertising agency to receive 15% agency discounts. Ask for remnant rates, discounts, vacant time, and space.
Consider cooperative advertising where others who benefit share the cost of the ad.