Given the competitive nature of business these days, advertising is one thing you can’t afford to overlook. On average most companies spend between two to five percent of their total sales on advertising. However, according to the SBA, businesses that generate an income of less than $5 million each year should spend between seven to eight percent on advertising and it can be hurting their businesses instead of giving them the advertising boost they need.
Regardless of what revenue percentage you spend on advertising, without the proper strategies, it will all go to waste. For your advertising to bear fruit, you’ll need tried and tested strategies that will give your business an advertising boost.
So what are these tried and tested advertising strategies that everyone keeps going on about? We’re glad you asked. Keep reading because, in this post, we’ll be highlighting 14 incredible advertising strategies that will take your company’s advertising to a whole other level.
1. Targeting Is Everything
You’re not doing any advertising if you’re not getting your message to the right people. If you want to advertise with intent, direction, and to reach the right people, then targeted advertising is the buzz word.
Targeted advertising is advertising that focuses on a particular customer base. This means that the advertising captures the interest, habits, and preferences of that specific customer base. Customer base could mean a certain age group, gender, location, and other demographic traits.
There are countless ways you could set up your targeted advertising, but the best approach is to be creative. With contextual targeting, you can make your ads appear on sites that are relevant to your product or service. The Google display network is an excellent tool that can help your ads reach the right people.
When it comes to targeted advertising, the more specific you are, the more customers you’ll attract. Also, mix up your contextual targeted marketing strategies for the best results. These days, companies are seeing considerable success with behavioral targeting.
2. Make Your Ads More Personal
Personalizing adverts is one way to increase engagement and drive your sales. What’s more, ad personalization is simpler than you’d think. Thanks to cookies, real-time information, and other data, it’s now easier than ever to personalize your ads. Get personal to gain the advertising boost your brand needs.
Your big data has incredible sales potential, but only if you get the right information to the right people at the right time. For instance, you can clamp down on customers that show interest in a particular product you have. You can link product descriptions to your ads, which they will likely click on and hopefully purchase that particular product.
3. Brief and Concise Adverts
Your ads need to be brief and should get straight to the point. Most businesses go wrong when they try to fit all the information about a product in a single paragraph. However, no one has the time nor patience to read an entire paragraph regardless of the product you’re selling.
Remember, you want an ad that will capture consumers’ attention and hold their attention for just long enough. The average person has an attention span of about eight seconds, down from 12 seconds two decades ago. That means that your ad should convey everything the consumer needs to know in eight seconds.
This doesn’t mean that ads longer than eight seconds won’t attract any customers. It’s just that most people don’t have the patience for very long ads. If it’s a YouTube ad, try to make it brief but concise, for graphics and text ads, make sure they get straight to the point.
4. Have Goal-Oriented Ads
Whenever you want an advertise boost, make sure you have a specific goal in mind. Directionless advertising rarely translates into actual sales. Maybe your goal could be pushing a new product or announcing offers, discounts, and promotions.
Once you have a clear goal, you can craft your advertisement to align with these specific goals. This entails using clear words and graphics that speak to your target consumers. Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer; if you were a consumer, would you be drawn to that particular ad.
Even though you want to sound hip, it’s a good idea to avoid using jargon. Most of your consumers might not get the message. Also, do your best to avoid anything that people may consider controversial; it could be devastating for your business.
5. Embrace Retargeting to Seal the Deal
Retargeting is getting back customers who’ve already visited your site before. It’s nothing new in business, but nowadays, businesses are more aggressive with their retargeting.
Cookies are at the core of retargeting and they work like a charm. That’s the only surefire way customers will get relevant ads based on their browsing history. If you advertise consistently enough, consumers will return to your site to complete their purchase or make another one.
6. Don’t Forget the Metrics
The only way you can tell if your advertising strategies actually work is by measuring their success. Thanks to the internet tracking advertising metrics is a walk in the park. Closely monitoring these metrics is the only way you’ll know what works and if you’re throwing money down the drain and hurting your efforts to gain an advertising boost.
There are tons of metrics you could monitor to gauge the effectiveness of your ad campaign. These include Google ad metrics, Facebook ad metrics, and even YouTube ad metrics.
For Google advertising metrics, you should pay attention to the following:-
Total Site Traffic– This tracks the number of unique visitors who visit your website over a given time.
Page Value- This is an average of the number of pages a user visited before reaching the goal page.
Bounce Rate– Bounce rate is how many users visit your website and leave immediately without performing any action. A high bounce rate indicates there’s something amiss with your site.
Impressions– Measures how many paid ads have appeared to people when they visited third-party sites. Impressions give a measure of your brand awareness.
Note that metrics are only useful if you track and monitor them. Inconsistent metrics are as good as no metrics at all.
7. Narrow Down Your Advertising Channels
In advertising, the more the channels, the merrier, right? Wrong, the more advertising channels you have, the less your ads convert into actual sales. A good approach would be to narrow your advertising to just a few mediums to you heavily invest in. We like to call it “Aim Small. Miss Small. Win Big.” when you narrow down your channels to get an advertising boost.
Using as many channels is a good idea when you’re doing experimental advertising. That’s the only way you can know which strategy works best for you. Once you have a clear picture of your customer base, you can whittle down to two or three channels that are popular with your audience.
If one advertising medium doesn’t work for you, don’t be afraid to switch to another one. You can use the trial-and-error approach until you settle on the right advertising channels.
8. Go to Where Your Core Users Are
As earlier mentioned, blind broadcast advertising rarely generates any leads or significant sales. That’s why it’s so important to advertise where your core users or consumers are. In doing so, you’ll get the maximum ROI for your advertising.
If your customers spend most of their time reading the dailies or magazines, then you know where you should advertise. If you want to build an online following, then you should shift your focus to stuff like SEO and Google Adwords.
9. Stress on the Benefits of Your Products
Features are great and all, but if you want to capture your customers’ attention, then advertise the benefits. Remember, we talked about how good advertisements are brief and to the point. Your customers care less about the features of your product but want to know what it will do for them.
Since you have limited time and space for your ads, make sure you advertise the benefits first. That way, you can capture your customers’ attention. Once you have their attention, you can move on to explaining how the product works and its features.
Remember, customers can always get more information about the product on your website. Advertising the benefits gives potential customers a taste and makes them want more.
10. Don’t Forget About Social Media
For effective advertising, go to where your customers spend most of their free time. No, don’t go to the beach or the park, don’t even go to the mall. Most of your consumers probably spend much of their free time online on various social media platforms.
Did you know that 76 percent of consumers purchase products that they discover on social media? So if you want your products to fly off their shelves, then social media is the way to go. What’s more, you can advertise on as many social media platforms as you want, but Facebook and Instagram are great for a start.
Facebook is an especially ideal platform for your advertising. First, Facebook has more than one billion active users and also has specific features that are useful for business advertising. Facebook uses data from its users to ensure your ads reach the relevant people.
11. Use Email Marketing for Your Remarketing
Remarketing is similar to retargeting, but this time, remarketing focuses on targeted ads. One excellent remarketing technique you should consider is email marketing. All you need to do is capture the visitor’s email before they leave the site, and you’re all set.
Although email marketing is a pretty effective marketing technique, you have to be careful not to overdo it. Inundating potential customers with marketing emails is likely to annoy them. Instead, send marketing emails once in a while when you have something worth emailing.
You can also use the users’ emails to stay engaged with your visitors for the long term. However, make sure you get explicit permission from the users before you can send any marketing emails. There are tons of ways you can collect permission; even a simple checkbox can suffice.
12. Real-Time Advertisements Increase Engagement
Embrace real-time bidding to help generate leads and drive your sales. The benefit of real-time bidding is that it shows your advertisement at the perfect time and location. In fact, real-time bidding can have engagement levels up to ten times the industry average. RTB has been a secret weapon for a lot of businesses looking for a great advertising boost.
If you can tie your advertisements with major company events, then the better it is for your lead generation. Customers are more likely to buy if you can make all the necessary information, say product details, easily accessible on demand.
13. Content Is King
Any worthy marketer knows the secret to incredible display advertising is the content. No one wants an annoying, bothersome, or boring advertisement. So you have to make sure that what’s in your advertisement is actually useful to the consumer.
It seems simple enough, but unfortunately, advertisement content is where most businesses go wrong. You must put a lot of thought into what goes in your advertisements. Go through product data, real-time info, and customer behavior insights before creating your display ad.
You can’t put something like “please copy these exact words, or I will reject them” on your ads and expects any leads. Instead, you have to be more personal and creative and, at the very least, talk about the product.
If you can nail your display ads, you don’t even have to look for many mediums for your ads that’ll be enough for an advertising boost. That’s because social media will be ablaze with your ads.
14. Advertise for Long Enough
This doesn’t mean that your advertisement should be long. It means that you should advertise until you reach a large enough target audience. Think of advertising as a hit or miss endeavor, and the longer you advertise, the more consumers you hit.
Advertise over a reasonable period and get any relevant information. In doing so, you can gauge the effectiveness of your ad campaign, and also reach enough people.
A Good Strategy Will Give You an Advertising Boost
The above strategies will give your business that much-needed advertising boost. You can use a combination of the above for the best results. Remember, it’s completely okay and advisable to invest in your advertising to increase sales.
Also, it’s never a bad idea to seek professional help with your advertising. If you get the right people, then advertising for you will be a breeze.
