A client recently told me that he’d come to realise that the time to advertise is when you’re busy, not when business is slow. In lean times you may feel that you ought to try and drum up some sales enquiries by advertising, but advertising can be an expensive and not always effective way to try and turn on the sales tap. Advertising is best used when you have a specific offer for a niche or targeted market that will give you a good response rate?
So here are the first of 5 Tips to help you decide where and when to advertise.
1. Go where the fish are
No matter how prepared you are for a day of fishing, if you aren’t in a spot by the river where there are plenty of fish to bite, you aren’t going to catch your fish supper. This is true for advertising. You need to advertise where your customers are, so choose your media very carefully, checking whether your customers match the readership or website subscriber profile.
2. Only advertise something that will get a direct response
There are two types of advertising – brand advertising, which you should only indulge in if you are happy to invest in building and increasing awareness of your brand, and direct response advertising, which is when you want someone to respond to you for something you are offering. The thing to avoid is trying to do both in one advert. You will be able to tell immediately if the advertising is working for you. You either get a response or you don’t. If your ads aren’t working for you in the way you want, you should STOP, review and change it.
3 more tips will be posted soon!
