Stop before you advertise

10 QUESTIONS TO ANSWER BEFORE YOU ADVERTISE
Acting as the marketing department for a number of clients I realise how often your business must be approached with apparently un-missable opportunities to advertise in this magazine, that newspaper or increasingly now online – on directory sites and other people’s websites.

But before you commit to what could be an expensive marketing investment you really should stop – and go through this set of questions to satisfy yourself that you really are going to get the best return on that investment.

1. Who reads the publication or refers to the website?
Ask about the target audience – there’s no point advertising top end furniture in a newspaper that is read by people on a low income or listing your specialist consultancy firm on a site read by consumers.

Newspapers and many magazines will be able to share profile data with you – by way of the age, sex, socio economic grouping – for their readership. Websites can provide less data – but if you review the site yourself you’ll be able to get a feel for who you think it’s targeted at and whether that matches your target audience.

2. How many people read this media?
Newspapers, national magazines and commercial radio stations should be able to provide audited readership and listening figures for you. Even local publications will be able to tell you their circulation figures.

If you are considering advertising on-line on a website, ask about the number of unique visitors they get each month and for any further breakdown they can give you on visitor numbers. Don’t be fooled by being told how many ‘hits’ they get. This is a nonsense figure which counts every web page visited whether by a real person or a search engine spider.

Failure to supply you with meaningful readership figures should ring alarm bells.

3. Have I got something worth offering?
The most successful advertising, unless you have the luxury of being able to afford advertising purely to raise brand awareness which of course most smaller businesses can’t, is an advert that has a compelling offer for the reader. It might be a price or promotional offer, but it could be that you are offering a unique product or service. Think hard about what will arrest your audience on the page.

4. What will my call to action be?
What do you want people to do as a result of reading the advert? Do you want them to call you, visit your showroom, request a quote, click through to your website - what?

Be clear on your call to action and perhaps even get others to review your ad to make sure the call to action is as clear to them as it is to you.

5. What do I want from the ad (leads, sales, downloads)?
This is critical if you are to judge the effectiveness of your advertising. Do you expect to make a sale straight off the page – or will your advert simply generate a lead which will need to be followed up by a member of your sales team? If that’s the case you need to make sure the sales team are briefed about the advertising and available to handle the leads. If your online advert is intended to encourage downloads of a particular report or visits to a particular page or section of your website who is going to make sure all of this is up to date and in place, before the ad goes live?

6. What response rate can I expect?
I admit the first time you advertise in a publication this is a bit of a finger in the air exercise but I still think its worth some thought. If the media will reach exactly the right target audience and you have a compelling offer for them you should get response – right? Well do some guessing – do you expect 5, 50 or 500 responses. Unless you consider this you can’t plan properly for how you will respond to the enquiries you generate.

7. What exactly am I going to say in my advert?
If you advertise on a regular basis you may have standard wording that you use in all your adverts. Even that is worth reviewing based on things like where you are advertising, the time of year and any seasonal issues and any special offers you may have available.

Advertising copy writing is an art in itself. A few simple tips:

Write a compelling headline – not about you, about what you can do for the reader
be concise
if you have space use a testimonial to show why what you claim is true
have a clear call to action
include a phone number, email address, url and, if they are likely to want to know, your address or location – I see an ad regularly in my local paper for a great sounding pub – but it doesn’t tell me where it is and the next time I’m at my PC to look it up I’ve forgotten about it.

8. How much will it cost?
If you’re advertising in a print publication they’ll quote single column centimetre rates at you. Don’t be afraid to say – ‘what are the exact dimensions of that’ – or get a copy of their publication and get them to price specific ads you are looking at. That way you get to know exactly what you’ll be getting for your money. When asking about price make sure you are clear about which bit of the publication you will appear in. Front page and early right hand facing pages in a newspaper are often priced at a premium for example. But there’s no point in advertising if you’re going to be tucked away in a little viewed area.

With online advertising there are different ways of charging – there are things like directory entries where your company details are listed on a site for a given period, for a fixed fee and then there are banner and panel adverts where you might be charged on the basis of how many people click on your ad. Make sure you are clear what you are getting for your money.

9. Can I get a discount?
Don’t be shy – ask if there’s any kind of discount. Often there are discounts for advertising on a regular basis or placing more than one ad. It helps to have a budget in mind – and see if they can come in within that.

Certainly in the world of print and radio advertising the ad space is sold by sales people. They all have targets to reach and normally are willing to offer you some kind of incentive to get you on board.

10. Could I get the same result from some other form of marketing activity?
Having considered what level of response you are hoping to get and how much it’s going to cost you to advertise you can do a bit of a cost benefit analysis. How much is it going to cost you per lead, per sale, per click through, per download? Is it worth it? Could you get the same or a better result by doing something other than advertising or using a different form of advertising?

Once you’ve gone through this process a few times these questions become second nature and you go from 1 – 9 while you are on the phone discussing the rates. But unless you also consider question 10 you’re not really going to know whether you are spending your advertising budget wisely.

Further Reading

Article written by Teresa Harris, Second Opinion Marketing. Teresa is an independent marketing consultant working with professional practices, small businesses and public sector bodies to develop effective marketing plans which achieve their business objectives.

Article first appeared in Practical Marketing E-bulletin October 2008. Subscribe to Practical Marketing here.