Is your business advertising campaign in need of help? These eight steps will guide you to success. There are 8 steps to setting up an advertising campaign.
A fan of the TV show “Mad Men” – which features an ad agency on Madison Avenue – knows how expensive advertising is for large corporations, while small businesses cannot afford it.
As a small business owner or marketing manager, you may not have much support from outside your company.
Let’s take a look at each of the nine steps involved in beginning an advertising campaign for small businesses. The checklist details each step as follows:
1. Make a List of Your Advertising Objectives
Declare your business objectives explicitly in your advertising strategy. The wish to increase sales is not enough. Everyone hopes to increase their sales. Your objectives might be better defined if you use SMART goals.
2. Choose the Promotion Type You Want
The next item on your small company advertising to-do list is to figure out what you’ll sell.
Select whether or not the advertising will promote:
- A service
- A product or service
- A collection of items or services
- Your company’s name
- A unique sale or event
- Something different
3. Make the Advertisement Message and Graphics
After that, you’ll need to design your campaign’s advertising message and “creative assets”. Some ad kinds necessitate the use of a professional advertising design.
Many small firms use a creative agency to create print advertising, television commercials, and maybe radio spots in order to establish a professional image.
Small businesses can also take advantage of online graphic design tools to create stunning social media posts, make flyers and brochures, awesome business cards, and many more. The tools help them cut the cost of hiring design professionals.
Many sorts of internet advertisements, on the other hand, can be created by the user. You may, for example, generate Google AdWords or Facebook advertising directly from the dashboard. For use in display adverts.
4. Decide Where You’ll Look For Your Target Market
It’s critical to have a solid audience fit when creating a small company advertising strategy.
Estimate how much time your targets spend on social media and where they acquire their news. What do they like to eat on a daily basis? How do people do their homework before making a purchase?
Return to the buyer personas. Do they imply that your target audience consists primarily of urban millennials who don’t drive and prefer to browse online rather than read the paper or watch television? Billboards, newspaper advertisements, and television commercials will not reach many of them in this instance.
5. Choose the Best Time For Your Campaign
Some forms of promotional methods can be implemented right away. Others need extensive forethought.
Most small businesses want results immediately. Some types of advertising, however, require longer turnaround times.
For example, if you’re conducting a limited-time promotion, you’ll need results before the offer expires. It will be too late to put a magazine ad that must be placed months in advance. Pay-per-click advertising is a superior alternative because they start generating clicks within hours. Consider radio commercials that air in a few days.
Remember that in every small company advertising strategy, timing is crucial.
6. Determine Your Target Audience
Clearly define the goals you intend to achieve. “More purchasers” or “consumers” are not the only objectives. Be as precise as possible.
Identify your target audience with buyer personas in order to narrow down your marketing efforts.
Go to Make My Persona and utilize the free tool to create buyer personas if you’ve never done so before. Create numerous ideal client profiles because most organizations have more than one.
7. Make a Marketing Budget
When deciding on your advertising budget, be reasonable. It’s natural to want free advertising. It’s not unusual to spend some money on advertising.
Keeping these three factors in mind will help you set an advertising budget for your small business. Here are some factors to consider:
- Using your previous advertising history as a starting point will be easier. To determine if previous campaigns were successful, look back over previous campaigns. Identify the amount of money spent. Make the necessary adjustments.
- The lifetime value of a customer – Your advertising expenses should be justified according to how much you expect a sale to generate for you. CFPA Robert Brady suggests that you determine what you gain from a successful conversion of a transaction.
- Benchmarks of your industry – Use industry benchmarks to determine what other companies of roughly the same size in your industry spend on advertising. Benchmarks are calculated as a percentage of annual sales, giving you a number to compare against.
8. Choose Outlets to Advertise In
Make sure your media outlets match your goals, audience, timing, and budget.
Or put another way, where should you advertise based on what you would like to accomplish? You should advertise where you will find your target audience.
It may be harder to identify outlets for other types of advertising. Occasionally, you find hidden gems.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you might need to check various television or radio stations, websites, magazines, coupon clipper books, or other media outlets. Simply look on the website to find the contact details of the “sales” or “advertising” department (Or find a phone number to contact).
9. Measure Results
You should have set particular measures to determine the effectiveness of your campaign based on your company goals. These measures must be used to evaluate performance.
Because the data is collected automatically, some forms of advertisements, such as AdWords, are simple to measure. You can track click-throughs to determine how many of them resulted in online sales or leads, for example.
Social media and Pay-Per-Click ad platforms offer detailed reports on how much you spend, where your budget is spent most efficiently, which creatives are the most effective, as well as the demographics of your audience.
If you know how many people click on your digital ads and what percentage of those people perform a purchase or take another desired action on your business website, you can make more informed decisions about your advertising. Often, it is difficult to measure the success of broadcast and outdoor advertising. It might be useful to use a unique URL, phone number, or email address in these ads, so you can track how many people respond to them. You might want to consider including a discount code on your site. You can compare the success of all your ads if you use a unique code for each ad.
