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Ready, Aim, Fire! Using Advertising Strategy to Target Customers
March 11, 2005
By Kathy A. Johnson
kathy.johnson@hqpublications.com
Business programs columnist
A customized advertising strategy should be part of any company's sales and marketing strategy. Instead of blindly experimenting, here's how to develop an advertising strategy to make the most of your advertising dollars.
Reaching customers through sales and marketing is one of the most important facets of any business. And a large amount of the marketing budget will be devoted to advertising. Here are three steps in developing an advertisting strategy to target your customers.
Ready
Before you spend any money on advertising, you must determine several things:
Who are you trying to reach? Established or new customers? Do you need to advertise in a specific geographic area? Or are you conducting business on the Internet and need to reach people all over the world?
What is your purpose in advertising? Most likely, your ultimate purpose is to increase sales. But you also may be using your advertising strategy to build brand recognition, educate the public or promote your company's image.
Aim
Determine where to advertise and what type of advertising would be the most effective. For example: Will print ads, direct mail, or banner advertising on a Web site - or some combination - be right for you?
As Roy H. Williams says in "How Advertising Fits Into Your Marketing Plan" (Entrepreneur.com), "Every type of advertising 'works' to one degree or another. What you're looking for is the best long-term use of your ad budget."
Fire
Proceed with your advertising strategy and evaluate the results. Some methods of measuring effectiveness are as simple as asking new customers how they heard about you, or using reply coupons or coded advertisements.
Give advertising time to work, though, especially if yours is a new company, cautions Rieva Lesonsky in Start Your Own Business: The Only Start-Up Book You'll Ever Need. "One study showed that an ad from a new company has to be noticed by a prospect a total of nine times before that prospect becomes a customer," she adds.
Target your customers with a solid advertising strategy and make the most of your advertising dollar. Ready, aim, fire!
About the Author:
Kathy A. Johnson is a freelance writer and editor based in Florida. She has worked as a writer and editor for several publications, writing articles on a wide variety of topics. She is currently the features editor of Forum, a bimonthly publication of the national mothers group, Mothers & More.
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