How to determine the best advertising vehicles

When choosing the advertising vehicle or vehicles that will best serve your purposes, there are three factors that you need to consider: (1) your target market, (2) your product, and (3) your advertising budget. Unfortunately, far too many decision-makers find themselves seduced by marketing campaign presentations that are appealing to the business owner, yet utterly fail to impress potential customers, much less drive sales. In some cases, such miserable results leave the business owner cynical about the value of advertising as a whole; after all, if a campaign developed by seasoned professionals doesn't work... In truth, however, the failure is not the fault of marketing as a whole, but rather of a lack of insight as to the objectives upon which that marketing effort needs to be focused. In order to develop and implement an effective ad campaign, both the message and the medium must maintain a clear and objective view of those three factors and concentrate all energies upon them.

Know your target market, and the best (and cheapest) way to reach them
If you can identify your ideal customer, it becomes much easier to figure out how to reach him or her. If your customer is a younger individual, say between the ages of 18 and 35, he or she has likely been heavily exposed to the Internet, and relies upon that medium for a great deal of information. This individual will be most likely to run a web search to find a service provider or product retailer. Your most effective medium for reaching this customer would be by increasing your online presence. Beyond having your own professional-looking and information-rich website (which can be likened to having an ad - along with a billion or so others - in an un-alphabetized Yellow Pages), you will need to ensure that people searching for products and services like yours will actually be aware of your web presence. This is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. There are many ways to approach SEO, from learning the basics and doing it yourself to retaining the services of one of the many SEO optimization companies competing for your dollars. One common-sense criterion for sorting through the many companies would be (obviously) to run a search on multiple search engines (Google, Yahoo™, Bing™) for SEO services. It stands to reason that the ones that are most effective (or who had paid Google for a high ranking) would appear at or near the top of most searches. From those, you can seek out customer feedback, as well as determining whether their fees are within your budget.

On the other hand, if your ideal customer is much older, he or she might not be as prone to seek information online. For such people, Yellow Pages listings, newspaper ads, and magazine ads and articles might be more effective. As with the web pages discussed above, the more information you provide your prospective customer, and the more you position your company as a valued resource rather than merely a purveyor of goods and services, the more likely the customer will come to you when ready to make a purchase.

Broadcast media such as television and radio can reach a huge audience very quickly, and for companies that depend upon high volume/ high margin sales, these vehicles can be very effective at reaching the desired audience. Obviously, the high cost and temporary nature of broadcast media exposure does limit its viability somewhat, especially where a smaller company - with a limited budget - is concerned.

Finally, there is the option of generating print and electronic mailout campaigns, whether to targeted demographics or broader-scope mass mailings.

Your product must be more than a product
No matter what form of advertising is being considered, it is essential for the advertiser to remember that while the final decision to purchase might be based in logic, the initial desire to purchase is emotionally driven, rather than intellectually driven. As such, the consumer looks not so much to have a pragmatic need fulfilled as to have an appetite sated. The prospective customer might not even be aware of the underlying emotional cravings that drive his or her purchases, but it is essential for the retailer or service provider to not only be aware of those cravings, but to consciously address them and offer what is necessary to satiate the hungers.

You need look no further than the ongoing "burger wars" to realize that what is being sold is not merely a product, but an identity to which the customer can relate. Where McDonald's™ focuses its marketing upon preadolescent teens and the hip younger adults, Jack in the Box™ gears its ads to appeal to the tastes of the more sophisticated "baby boomers." Both serve similar products, yet their respective marketing campaigns are dramatically different, simply because they are intended to address something beyond the physical hungers their products satisfy.

Ultimately, the success of any advertising campaign is dependent upon many variables that are beyond the businesses' control. However, by being as objective and well-informed about who your customers are, what they really want, and what you can offer them, you can greatly improve the chances that your advertising dollars will be returned via significant increase in your customer base and the resulting sales. Choose the right medium for the market and product and deliver the right message, while still staying within your budgetary restraints, and your advertising efforts will be successful. Fall short in any of these areas, and you'll only be wasting your money, and possibly turning potential customers away in the process. And those are the two things no business owner can afford to do.