Secrets of efficiency: doing advertising right

Advertising is the engine of progress. This statement was made a long time ago, but, nevertheless, it does not lose its relevance. Today, no new product or service launch is complete without advertising. Brands that enter the market also tell about themselves by launching relevant campaigns. What sophistication and tricks do not marketers resort to in order to get advertising that will attract a user audience, show high efficiency in practice, ensure good sales of goods, services and, accordingly, income for the business.

But, alas, it is not always possible to achieve such success. In practice, there are often situations when quite a lot of money is invested in promoting goods and services, but the return is insignificant. And here the question arises: is it worth spending money on this at all? As a result, under the influence of doubts, businesses often allocate a relatively small budget for advertising so as not to lose a significant amount of money. This is especially true for small companies that are just starting out in the market and have fairly limited financial capabilities.

Will this approach be correct in practice? Most likely, no, because if you do not attract people to your business, you simply will not get a return. You will not be able to tell about how good the goods or services you offer are: people simply will not know about you or your products. Therefore, here you need to think not so much about the question of "what budget to allocate for a purchase", but about how to make your advertising as selling as possible. Yes, there are no universal recommendations here. In any case, it is necessary to start from the market segment you are working in, the audience you are targeting, the financial resources you are using, the situation in your market segment, and many other points. However, there are a number of general recommendations that deserve attention.

In today's review, we will dwell in more detail on what types of advertising can be used today by representatives of small and medium businesses to promote goods and services. We will provide a number of recommendations that you can use to make your campaign as effective as possible. We will highlight 3 key rules that all marketers without exception should follow, and also suggest how to improve the convenience of work, avoid various risks and restrictions, automate some of the routine work associated with launching advertising campaigns and surfing the Internet in general.

What types of advertising should small and medium businesses use?

The advertising market does not stand still. New technologies and new directions for communicating with the user audience are emerging. And here marketers should be as savvy as possible in order to use in practice only those strategies that will give the desired result in practice. So, of the types of advertising that exist on the market today, the following solutions show good results in practice:

• Outdoor advertising. In this market segment today, there is far from one technology that can be used in practice. So, today flyers are still actively used. This is not a relic of the past, but a tool that will work great for local service centers, shoe repair shops, beauty salons, cafes, etc. That is, here the emphasis is on attracting people living nearby. You can safely use flyers to tell the audience that you have opened, that you have launched some kind of promotion or any other important event. Do not forget about a well-designed sign in outdoor advertising. This way, people will visually remember where you are and will be able to contact you at the right time. You can also spread information about yourself and your business using business cards. You can leave such advertising material at hotel reception desks, office building receptions, etc. Advertising banners are also still relevant. Their effectiveness is largely due to the large advertising area. Here you can place advertising that will catch the eye of others, attract their attention, and be remembered. Banners are placed on special billboards, on building facades, in places where people gather the most. And all this, with the right approach, gives good results in practice.
• Promotion of business in social networks. An extremely popular and in-demand direction today, which involves attracting the attention of people who use such online platforms. The effectiveness of such advertising is very high today, since almost everyone uses social networks. In this case, you should initially focus on your target audience and choose the platform where most of it is present. And then you will prepare content in accordance with the requirements of a particular social network. So if we talk about Facebook, then it is mainly represented by the audience of millennials, that is, people with fairly good and stable incomes, those who understand perfectly well what goods or services they need. But the advertising itself here should be as informative and descriptive as possible. Instagram is more visually oriented, that is, photo and video content are more popular here. The main task in this case is to tell about your business, show certain products, and emphasize the features of your services. People will be more willing to contact you if they know you in advance. And social networks can best provide these opportunities. Here you can also easily organize personal communication with the consumer market, which will allow you to guide customers through the sales funnel and bring them to the target action. Here you can also easily launch targeted advertising for a specific audience.
• Internet advertising. Bill Gates once said that if you do not launch your business on the Internet, then you will not be in business. By this, he predicted the massive development of the World Wide Web and the expansion of the opportunities it provides to companies, regardless of what market segment they operate in. If you have not managed to break into the top of the organic search results, then you should take advantage of the opportunities that online advertising provides. This is your chance to get the kind of traffic that is impossible to achieve with outdoor advertising. It is also much easier to maintain interaction with the user audience, promptly respond to their questions and requests, and quickly convey relevant information in the online space.
• Adding a business to Google Maps. An excellent advertising option for small and medium-sized businesses, especially local ones. Recently, users have often used this service to find the goods and services they need in the immediate vicinity of their home. If you place an ad for your business on Google Maps, you will get an excellent opportunity to attract customers absolutely free of charge. It is noteworthy that in this case, traffic will come not only from Google Maps, but also from the search engine. And the work ahead is quite simple. You will need to fill out your profile indicating key queries and add a few photos. As a result, as soon as users enter the appropriate phrase in the search engine, they will see a selection of all companies that meet their queries based on location.
• Reviews. Nothing attracts the attention of new customers more than a positive opinion about cooperation left by other customers of goods and services. The main difficulty here is that not every customer leaves reviews. And here it is in your interests to stimulate them. As an option, you can offer an additional discount or bonus for sharing their opinion after cooperation with you. For reviews, you can provide a corresponding place on your official website or on the same Google Maps. You must understand that the more people see positive feedback about your company, the more new clients you will get.
• Affiliate marketing. One of the extremely promising areas of business development. It will be useful if the advertising campaigns that you launched earlier do not give the desired result, if you want to get the maximum with minimal financial investment. More details about what affiliate marketing is, what advantages it gives to business, what tools and types are used in practice can be read in detail here. Now we will note that the essence of the technique is that you find a partner for you - a company operating in your market segment or a related one and develop joint advertising campaigns, advertise each other on your sites, provide incentives for attracted customers or a percentage of sales. That is, the point here is that both parties benefit from the cooperation. This is the only way to get a good result, such as increasing the user audience, intensifying sales, increasing brand awareness, introducing a new product or service to the market. And all this with minimal material costs, which will be especially interesting for small businesses.

To get decent results, these technologies are often combined, several campaigns are launched simultaneously. But, regardless of what type of advertising you will use in practice, today there are a number of general recommendations designed to increase the effectiveness of these works. What exactly is at stake is discussed below.

TOP advertising techniques that are worth using in practice

You need to start working with an advertising campaign with a detailed acquaintance with your target audience. That is, you should initially understand who you are targeting not only here and now, but them in general. Based on this, the types of advertising that you will launch in practice are selected. At this point, we can confidently say that the preparatory work is complete and we can move on to the most interesting stage — the direct preparation of advertisements. To get the desired result, you need to literally hit the nail on the head. And here the following techniques will help you:

1. Highly informative advertisement.
2. Structuring information in the launched creatives.
3. Limited quantity of goods or duration of the promotion.
4. A separate campaign for a specific product or service.
5. Adding a call to action to the advertisement.
6. Maximum simplicity of the advertisement.
7. Reminder of the problem and suggestion of a way to solve it.

Now we will consider all these strategies in more detail. This way you will be able to navigate their features and build an advertising campaign that will really work in practice, meet all your expectations and provide good profits.

Preparing highly informative advertising material

When preparing advertising creatives, you should provide as many real figures and facts as possible, indicate the products and services that are in the highest demand among your target audience at the moment. No need to tell people that your online store is “the best.” Show people statistics, comparison with other similar stores, real reviews. You can also indicate your experience in the market, what is spent on average on processing one order. It would also be a good idea to provide prices for certain types of products and show that they are lower than in other stores, if this is true, of course.

That is, in your advertising campaign, do not waste time on empty words. Provide numbers and facts that people will believe. This means that they are more likely to contact you with orders. Never understate prices in advertising. If you put up one price tag, and during the purchase process the client receives another check, you can be sure that he will refuse his order. Moreover, this person will never contact you for a purchase again.

Structuring information in those creative ones that you launch

Unfortunately, an advertising campaign is often not limited to one phrase or photo. This approach can only be used to inform buyers about promotions or special offers. If you want to convey information about your business or a certain product in general, then you will have to prepare a more detailed advertisement. Within its framework, you will have to disclose the essence of your offer in as much detail as possible. But there is no point in launching a huge canvas, since no one will read all of it. It is necessary to structure your information, to present it as concisely and consistently as possible. This is the only way to hold your client's attention.

And at this stage, structuring the data will be of significant help. We are talking about composing ads in such a format that the user could intuitively move from the main material to the secondary. One of the most effective and proven schemes will be one where the main emphasis is on the title. It makes it clear what product or service is being discussed. Then the details themselves are revealed, for example, the technical characteristics of the product or the features of the promotion being launched. As a final element - CTA, since the person already knows what product you are offering him, what will be his benefit from such a purchase. And if he is interested, he will be able to place an order or contact managers to clarify the details.

We rely on a limited quantity of goods or the duration of the promotion

The presence of restrictions always stimulates potential buyers, in particular those who are really interested in your goods, services, those who are currently thinking about purchasing them. That is, if you manage to create a sense of urgency, then with a high degree of probability this will attract a client to your business. Despite the fact that this advertising technique is no longer new, it gives excellent results in practice. But here you should be careful. If you said that you really have a limited quantity of this product, then having sold the same 100 last items, you need to stop. Similarly, if you said that the discount is valid for 3 days, you should not extend it for another 3 days, and so on. That is, you should not mislead your customers.

Also, you should not conduct such promotions too often, since customers can get used to the fact that you regularly launch such promotions and will simply stop paying attention to them. Again - work honestly. Otherwise, you will lose the trust of customers, which will significantly worsen the overall state of your business. In extreme cases, change the terms of the promotion, the appearance of the advertisement, the products that participate in it.

Launch a separate campaign for each product or service

Do not try to cover all the products and services of your business in one advertisement. Such dispersion will not give the expected result, since it will not allow people to focus on the uniqueness of your offer, to see the products that interest them. That is, create the most detailed and complete description of the product that you plan to advertise.

The creative itself here should be as concise as possible, revealing the features of the product. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer. Someone who sees dozens, if not hundreds of different advertisements every day. What exactly could attract your attention and make you linger on a specific offer? If you find such an element, then you can consider that your idea was a success and the advertisement will definitely reach its audience.

Choose the central element that a potential buyer will pay attention to. This should be an object that can be seen at a glance, but which would be enough to understand what is being discussed and draw conclusions about the advisability of such a purchase. Moreover, not only a photo can be used here, but also the name of the product, some capacious phrase. That is, you need to initially let the person raise whether he is interested in it or not.

If you decide to advertise several products at the same time, but cannot provide visual perception. This will lead to you simply losing your target customers: they will simply go to your competitors, because they will not understand what exactly you are offering them: a set of dishes, children's toys or a new jacket.

Add a call to action to your ad

A tool such as “call-to-action”, that is, CTA, is one of the most important tools in Internet marketing today. In this case, we are talking about a call to action. That is, by doing this, you kind of promote your client to perform a particular target action, inform them what you would like to receive from them at the next stage: contact you to clarify the details of cooperation, learn more about the product, place an order, pay for the purchase, etc.

You need to add the appropriate button to the landing pages of your site, to the mailing list or even to advertisements. But for such an idea to work, it is necessary to adhere to three key rules:

1. the call to action itself should be as short and clear as possible: so that the person understands what is expected of him;
2. use active verbs in the button title, such as “write”, “call”, “order”, “leave a request”, etc.;
3. implement the CTA in the form of a button with an active link that would stand out from the general background: to perform the corresponding action, the user will just need to click on it.

This way, you will provide the fastest and easiest access to your products and services for potential customers.

Make your advertising as simple and understandable as possible

In this case, you can use a life hack that is actively used by marketers in practice. In particular, after you have prepared your ad, look away for a few seconds, then turn sharply to your creative. Your eye should immediately catch the main message. If this happens, congratulations - you did everything right. This means that your potential clients will only need that glance to see what you wanted to tell them.

In their work, Internet marketers often face the desire to create some large-scale, spectacular project. Imagine that you climb Everest and leave a flag with your company logo there. Agree, it sounds powerful, cool. But here you need to think about whether such a decision will benefit your business? Most likely - no. Well, launch one publication where you tell about this achievement. And that's it. You will not trumpet about it everywhere and all the time. In addition, it is more important for your potential clients to know what personal benefits they will receive from working with you than that you have conquered Everest.

Practice shows that simple, clear creatives that contain direct benefits for the audience work much more effectively than loud phrases. You do not have to spend huge amounts of money on complex and intricate advertisements: you can create a presentable and solid image of a business that will literally sell itself with minimal time and effort. The main thing is to make them as simple to perceive as possible. Give up intricate ideas that are difficult to implement. Then people will instantly be able to understand what you are offering them, and will also appreciate the usefulness and value of your offer.

Remind about the problem and offer a way to solve it

Show in your advertising creatives what benefits your products or services will bring to people. This is what will work on absolutely any advertising, regardless of its content or type. Moreover, if your product has several application options, you can launch several creatives in parallel, which will further increase conversion.

The most striking examples are here:

• a bottle of dishwashing liquid next to a sink with dirty plates and pots;
• a cup of hot tea or coffee against the backdrop of cold, uncomfortable weather;
• an antiseptic and pain-relieving spray next to a person with a sore throat;
• an umbrella or rubber boots against the backdrop of rain;
• original jewelry and a gift box next to them, etc.

There are many, many options here, the main thing is to choose the right association. The fact is that the physical proximity of the product and the problem itself that it can solve is always perceived as a single whole and as an indication to action. This idea works especially well with an audience that is not yet familiar with the product. That is, you are focusing here on attracting new customers. Those people who have already used your products already know what problems they can solve. If they liked them, they will continue to buy them. That is, you should not count on the long-term perspective here, but the immediate result can be quite impressive with the right approach. And when looking at such advertising, a person associates your brand with a specific problem and is highly likely to turn to you for a solution.

By the way, this approach shows itself well not only in advertising, but also in traffic arbitrage. But there are still certain limitations. In particular, there is no clear evidence yet that this strategy will work with products that have an intangible impact on the audience. That is, if you show a well-fed person against the background of a cafe, then the advertisement may not give results. It is also difficult to say whether this strategy will work in the case of general-purpose products, that is, those that do not have a specific purpose. The main difficulty here is choosing the right association.

When launching such an advertising campaign, focus primarily on visual perception. If you need an accompanying text, it should be as short and concise as possible. It is difficult to imagine that people will stop and read your text publications.

That is, to implement this strategy, prepare an image of the problem and your product that will solve it. The "before" and "after" strategy works great. Come up with an effective slogan that can emphasize the effectiveness of the product, its benefits for people. Explain even elementary things, do not expect that all people without exception know what your product is, how to use it. Demonstrate key benefits clearly, and you will get an impressive result.

Key rules for effective advertising launch

Along with all the principles and tools that we discussed above, it is also important to follow three basic rules when launching advertising. They will be universal for any companies, areas, services:

1. Work without embellishment. Launch advertising only for those products, services, services whose quality and reliability you are confident in. Even the coolest and most expensive campaign will not yield results if you supply the market with low-quality products. If you advertise good craftsmen, advanced service, exclusive products that fully meet consumer expectations, it will be much easier for you to highlight key advantages, build an effective strategy, and get positive reviews. That is, never embellish your product: present it as it is. But here it is already clear that it should be good a priori.
2. Don't blend in with the surrounding crowd. Your advertising campaign should be aimed at increasing brand awareness, making everyone who sees your ad immediately say that it is YOU. To implement such work, it is important to define your own unique selling proposition. That is, you need to understand how you differ from your competitors, what your highlight is and present this to the audience. Yes, this is not an easy task. Here you will have to literally lay out all the features of your professional activity on the shelves. But your advertising and the company as a whole will be on the lips of the audience. This means that when the first need arises, they will turn to you with orders.
3. Create a portrait of your target audience. You should clearly understand who exactly your business is targeting. A general strategy aimed at the mass of the consumer market will only work if we are talking about general-use products, that is, universal goods. If you work in a narrower niche, you should prepare such creatives that can attract the attention of those people who are interested in them. As an option, children's clothing and toys always attract the attention of parents, motor oils - car owners, pet food - those who have the same cats, dogs. Knowing your target audience will also allow you to choose the right type in the advertising campaign itself. Agree, young people will not react much to banners, flyers, while pensioners will not go looking for the goods they need in the same social networks.

It is clear that all these recommendations that we are talking about in today's review are general. And your task will be to take them as a basis, but adapt them to the specifics of the business, make them more personal, individual. This is what will allow you to launch an advertising campaign that will attract the attention of the user audience and facilitate the performance of target actions.

And if you bet on video advertising?

Recently, video advertising has been gaining momentum in popularity, as it allows you to convey to the audience the most important information about the business, goods, services in just a few seconds. And here are also 3 simple recommendations that each of you can take on board:

1. Add subtitles to your video. This will significantly increase your audience reach, since your content will be seen even by people who watch videos without sound, such as at work, on public transport, etc.
2. Use static elements in advertising, including on top of dynamic content. This is what will focus the viewers' attention, allowing them to grasp the essence of the video as quickly as possible. You must understand that you only have a few seconds to attract their attention. Use them to the maximum.
3. State the main essence of your content right away, literally from the first second. No need for introductory speeches, rants. If you don't interest viewers right away, they will simply scroll past your ad and you will be left without clients.

You can read more about video advertising and modern trends in this area in the material.

Let's sum it up

Regardless of what market niche you work in, what audience you are targeting, what scale of business you are dealing with, creating advertising always requires an extraordinary approach, original ideas, creativity. The main thing here is to find that point of contact with the target audience that will contribute to a response and arouse interest. We hope that the information presented in today's review will significantly simplify your work and increase its efficiency.

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