Welcome back, I’m glad you could join me for a few minutes and what is article number three in our series of ten, on the Top Ten Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them.
As we saw in Articles 1 and 2, we talked about testing and the critical importance of identifying each and every ad you prepare. Those should be the basis of everything that goes on the market.
A challenge that I have encountered several times is that my clients have seen themselves as the target group. And while that may or may not be the case, in most cases you’re selling a product or service to solve someone else’s problem, and your tastes as a solution to the product or service are probably very different from those of the recipient you need. Your experience, your product. your service.
I had a client who was infamously attached to a particular medium, and it’s a very good medium, but it was the only one he used because it was the only one he felt delivered the message he would see.
My challenge to him was very simple, Ian, please remember. you They’re not the target audience for what we’re trying to sell, and I applaud them for being so attached to this particular medium, but it shouldn’t be the only vehicle we use.
Now he finally relented and we used a mix that included his favourite, but we used media mix to reach a broader platform and still stay within budget.
I think it’s a critical component for too many advertisers. Unfortunately, and without realizing it, sometimes they have blinders on and only want to use the media that they see, recognize, understand, appreciate and know about, and that’s great.
It’s always a good comfort zone to use something you know, like and trust, and more importantly, if you’ve tried it and it works, you keep using it. I don’t have a problem with that, however I want you to make sure you don’t discount or rule out other opportunities.…because I never read that magazine, I don’t listen to that radio station, I never get home in time to watch TV.
You’re right! You do not! But you’re not selling to yourself, you were selling to the hundreds, thousands, millions of thousands who are interested in your product,
at their service and they really don’t care what they would see. What you want to do is get your message in front of them on the platforms and times that resonate with them.
If you get a chance to watch it, great, and you’ll see the commercial before it airs and we can give you a schedule of when it will air if you’d like to take the time to record it and watch it later. .
We can give you a list of the websites we’ll be appearing on if you’d like to come in and see it yourself, that’s great. But don’t dismiss other media options just because they’re unfamiliar to you. They are familiar to your audience. Your media professionals should be able to present you with empirical data that shows why you need to use radio as well as magazine.
Why online platforms are going to be a powerful aid to the magazine and the foreign campaign. Whatever it is, it must first be measurable, empirical to justify it, but most importantly it must reach your preferred target group.
So, as I mentioned at the beginning, you are most likely not the target group for your products, so don’t just rely on your gut feeling or your gut feeling or your own taste in the media to place the ad.
For God’s sake, I’ve placed hundreds, maybe thousands of ads in media that I know from the buyer’s point of view and not necessarily from the user’s point of view. And that’s okay because like it or not, I’m not always a target group for this or that product.
But I know the right ways to get your message to the right recipient.
So when you’re developing who your audience is, take the time to be as specific as possible. You don’t want to become so finite that you end up with a universe of twelve people, and I’ve seen that happen.
But don’t pick the wrong place or the wrong target group or both and then wonder why this is such a mediocre answer. Man, nobody is buying my new space age shovel, my post hole diggers, whatever, they need to know that you are providing them with a solution and the solution that you provide has to be what they need, and it has to be in the media. that they will respond and act.
One client in particular was a true sports fan and also yours. Absolutely choose, a sport and I’m there. But they put the ad on the sports radio network because that’s what they hear. However, its primary audience was younger women who had little to no interest in most of these sports shows. It’s disappointing because it was a very powerful campaign if it had been properly targeted to the right audience. So this is what I want you to do.
To correct mistake number three, do the proper research to find out who is actually buying your product or service. And maybe it’s a survey, an in-store intercept survey, an online survey, an email, something that actually tells you who’s buying your product or who you think your candidates are.
You can be as specific as possible by gender and age, by income and lifestyle, and a host of other demographic details that will help you zero in on them. As much as you can. Please don’t trust the universe for a sampling. Well, my mom liked that. Oh perfect. She loves your mom. You should always love mom, but mom doesn’t necessarily buy the new car ramps or the trampoline for the kids.
That’s not to say they aren’t influencers, but it’s important to understand who will be making those decisions. If it’s mom, great.
If you’re dad or dad and mom or if you’re the boss or if you’re the treasurer or your financial officer at the company, you really need to know who you’re after to make your ads work better, have more impact, and what’s more important, they cost It costs you less, yes, it costs you less.
You’ll get a better return on investment and give you more to spend on future marketing if you take the time to identify who you want to go to. What message do you want to put in front of them and what means to best reach them. Trust me, after three decades, I can tell you that it pays to do your research to get to know your audience.
Okay, so what you’re looking for are some characteristics that consistently define your audience, then you can craft the message using the right radio station or website, outdoor media, newspapers that reach them efficiently and effectively.
Also, as I mentioned at the beginning, take the time to test the ad. Or several small-scale ads to see what works. You’ll have a lot of coding in place and a lot of planning to do, but it will pay dividends when you hit the sweet spot of the ad, or the ad on the right media, or the media mix that attracts customers.
By the way, many of the local media sales reps should be able to give you detailed profiles of all their resources to give you a clear idea of who you’re looking for.
Let them do a little footwork. Tell them who you want to reach and in many cases you’re looking for a very specific age range and income range and you want to see how well your media is doing, whatever the radio station, magazine, newspaper, whatever want. See how well your media is performing in front of audience members and eyeballs on a regular basis and you can keep track of how well it’s performing.
Respectfully I don’t mean alone ‘Tastes’ that’s true, KPI that seems to be a hot button and that’s great. But that’s not really a true measure of how well the product is working. You want a measurable return on investment. You want to be able to say we spent $1,000 on this ad and it generated $2,000 in new business. Perfect.
If all you get is 500 likes or 35 shares etc, that’s fine. That’s not what your marketing should be about. It should return you at least one dollar for every dollar you invest. So when you’re testing your ads, take the time to do it on a small scale. Here’s the best analogy I’ll leave you with, you don’t need to eat a whole bowl of soup to tell if it’s salty usually a tablespoon or two will tell you
You will then decide whether or not you want to eat the rest or move on to something else. With that I say goodbye to you for number three. I hope to see you in article #4: learn to be consistent.