Paid Advertising can be a Smart Way to Expand Your Business
Paid advertisement is an important piece of your marketing budget. Most businesses rely on advertising to either project a well-targeted and tightly, branded message or to grow their reach. Whether you’re aiming your advertisements to current clients or for lead generation, it’s important to understand your purpose and intent for said ads.
Two main types of advertising:
Advertising to current clients
Advertising for lead generation
Advertising is a proven way to control the flow of the conversation when it comes to your brand. With consistent, cohesive messaging, consumers grow to recognize what your business is about and what you do.
By using specific words, emotional feels, and colors, you can set the tone and mood for your brand. Are you a formal business, playful, helpful, or disruptive company? Do you want to stand out, blend in, or be seen as a new, different option in your industry?
Each of these components are important when considering your advertising. Your branding should be on point by the time you’re working with paid advertising—just remember that if you go off brand, you may end up confusing your current and potential customers.
Questions to ask before creating your ads:
What message do you want to project?
What mood are you setting?
What emotion do you want your potential client to feel when they see your ad? Confidence? Joy? Relief?
Are your ads consistent and easily recognizable?
If you’re advertising to current clients, your message may be different than those you’re seeking for lead generation. Split testing is a great way to see what resonates with each segment of your market.
Media and Paid Advertising
Consider the potential markets where you can advertise, whether it’s online and digitally versus traditional methods such as print ads, billboards, or other venues. Consistency is still key as is a cohesive message, though different advertising channels may require unique methods. What works on a billboard may not have the same impact on a small ad seen on somebody’s mobile phone.
We know that today, more and more people begin searches online, which means you don’t want to overlook this vital marketing channel. It’s hard to ignore the numbers. It’s also become the leading method for advertising in today’s market.
Whether you’re looking to build brand awareness, grow your bottom line, or increase your base of customers or clients, advertising is a path to success.
Reasons to advertise:
Build brand awareness
Build engagement with customers
Income/business growth
Lead generation to expand market growth
Reach a targeted audience
Can work faster than organic marketing
Let’s face it, organic marketing is critical to success and doesn’t cost you money hand over fist. But, it can be tedious and slow to see the growth that paid advertising can offer you. Balancing both is an important part of your company’s growth.
What Exactly is Brand Awareness? And How Does Paid Advertising Help?
Branding is who your company is, and what it stands for. The problem comes in when your client or customer thinks of your company as something other than what you’re intending. This can happen through word-of-mouth, poor messaging, or news stories that may put a spin on who you are as a company.
Maybe you are focused on making sure you’re a 50% environmentally friendly company by the year 2025, and you thought that was your message. Only, the local paper focuses on the fact that you’re 50% unfriendly to the environment. It’s an extreme example, but as you see, it only takes a small slant and the message changes. It’s like the old saying about a glass being half empty or half full.
When you take control of your brand’s messaging, through different means, including advertising, you get to control the conversation. That means that you’re putting out who you are, how you want to be perceived, and have a better chance of guiding the conversation, rather than playing defense and answering to what other people choose to say about you. Reputation management is another important factor when it comes to brand management.
Remember, the most important part of marketing and advertising, rather paid or organically, is in keeping a consistent message so that people don’t have to think about who you are or what you do. It should be automatic. When they see something from your company, they should automatically think—“Oh, that’s that company that…”
What are clients and potential customers saying about you?
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