Get Maximum Profit
from your Advertising
Tips
to ensure your ad dollars go further
Most
small businesses operate with very small advertising
budgets. It is critical to the success of any business
to ensure that their advertising dollars deliver as much
value as possible to the bottom line. Here are some
steps that you can take to make sure you get the most
bang for your advertising buck:
Target
your Advertising
– Ideally, every ad that you place would be seen only
by potential customers for your business. In reality,
you won’t find very many advertising opportunities
that deliver such a utopian business proposition. The
real key is to locate advertising opportunities that
will target your potential customers as closely as
possible. When evaluating every advertising offer, ask
yourself “How closely will this hit my target
audience? Could I do better?”. If you are advertising
your new website that offers a new vitamin supplement
for dogs, advertising on a pet website would not be as
advantageous as a dog related website. A website on the
topic of dog food and nutrition would be even more
targeted, as almost 100% of the visitors to that site
would have some interest in dog food and nutrition
That’s exactly the audience you are looking for.
Vary
Your Offers –
Remember that your well-defined audience is comprised of
certain groups, each with its own reason to buy your
product. On the dog food and nutrition website, you may
encounter breeders, veterinarians, family pet owners,
and breeders. They all want the same thing (a healthy
happy dog) but for different reasons. The breeders wants
their prized stud to live a long life and have lots of
puppies while the veterinarians are interested in
offering the best possible advice on nutrition to their
clients, and so on. When you are composing your ad copy,
keep these different groups in mind, Write an ad that
speaks to each of their buying motivations and rotate
your ads to ensure you cover all the potential buyers
for your product.
Don’t
Over-Commit –
Many small businesses jump at the chance to buy ads at a
volume discount, cutting their cost per ad buy
purchasing 6 months to a year’s worth of advertising
up front. On the surface this may seem like a good way
to maximize on your advertising dollars. However, if
you’ve done a good job of targeting your potential
customers, you may be purchasing too much advertising.
It is said that it takes 7 messages from a company to
get the average customer to act and actually purchase
their product. As you define your target market more
effectively (from pet websites to dogs to dog food),
that number decreases, as you don’t need to do as much
“convincing” to motivate a potential customer to
purchase your product. Your advertising dollars,
therefore, would be better spent in 3 month advertising
programs. After the 3 months, move to another website or
magazine, and continue to rotate your ads to maximize
the reach of your message.
Measure
Your Results –
Without tracking your ad responses and measuring your
results, you’ll never know how well your ads are
performing. It
is critical to track your response rates, primarily
though the use of tracking URLs. (www.mydomain.com?ad1).
This URL will still direct surfers to your site but it
will also capture the site from which they came, giving
you some valuable feedback on the performance of your
ad.
Many
people measure ad placements, but this is only the
beginning. You must also evaluate ad copy, timing, and
layout. Ads may have seasonal fluctuations in responses
rates and your potential customers may respond
differently to a change in your ad copy. So keep a
detailed tracking spreadsheet to record your ad response
in all of these areas. This will give you the
information you need to make informed decision about
your small businesses advertising budget.
Article
contents © 2007 by marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
Will
Dylan is the Author of “Small Business Big
Marketing” a powerful e-book for small businesses
available through his website www.marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
. You can contact Will at askwill@marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
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