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Posted by Sarah Brown on 31 Jul '17
5 ways to stop wasting money on advertising
1 Know where your audience is
There is no point in advertising in a place where your audience doesn’t go. Radio advertising will only reach certain people, similar to Facebook or LinkedIn. In theory, Google should reach anyone, but you might not be able to afford the searches your potential customers would make.
Tip – push whoever is selling the advertising for data on who will see or hear it. Even a bargain page rate in a magazine is a waste of money if people don’t read it.
2 Know what will get the attention of your audience
You need to understand what pain you will be solving for the people you are targeting or hope you will be fulfilling, then you can produce an ad which is of interest to them. You need to attract their attention and they will only be interested in things that are relevant to them.
Tip – listen to your customers and try to use the language they use rather than your own language which may be too technical.
3 Have a call to action
Give people a reason to act – a discount or deadline.
Tip – make it easy for them to respond in whatever way suits them so provide phone and email or a simple button with a strong message – think Amazon One Click.
4 Have a means of measuring whether the ad has worked
Test, test, test. Be able to measure the response you get and how much it converts to in money so you can see if you are getting a return on your investment in advertising. You can test different elements of the ad one by one to see if, for example, a headline change or an offer change improves response.
Tip – when considering return on investment, don’t just think about the immediate sales you get. Calculate the value based on how much you will earn from the customer over their lifetime of buying from you.
5 Don’t just advertise to raise awareness of your company
All the above mean that you should never just advertise to raise awareness because you won’t be able to track if your investment is working so you will waste money.
If you found this interesting you may like these:
What is sustainable profit? – a blog with a quiz to help you judge your sustainability
Pricing strategy – download a free tool on revenue models
Yorkshire really is the best county to do business in – a blog celebrating Yorkshire Day