6 Easy Steps to a Winning Advertisement Strategy

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 6 Steps to Create the Best Advertising Strategy for Your Business
  • Decide on Your Objective
  • Identify the Target Audience for Your Business
  • Come Up with a Plan and Create a Message
  • Plan Out a Media Strategy
  • Budget-Well
  • Implement the Marketing Strategy and Analyze the Result
• Benefits of a Good Advertising Strategy
• Key Takeaways 
• FAQs

A winning advertisement strategy can provide your business with more customers and boost your sales. When it comes to advertising and marketing, businesses are often unsure where to spend their resources and time. There are millions of places, including social media, blogs, and videos, where you can invest your marketing budget. But, many times, businesses fail as they focus on a single tactic instead of having a strong advertising campaign. It is best to start with an advertising and marketing plan to set the business up for success and ensure you are investing your marketing money wisely. 

Whether you are planning a single marketing campaign or a strategy for the whole year, you need to make sure it covers all bases. Efficient planning uses resources optimally without ever compromising on quality. With the right advertising campaign, you can reduce the cost of marketing and reach out to the right target audience. Moreover, your strategy should be based on research and a deep understanding of the potential customers and the business landscape. 

If you are new to this and don’t know how to go about it, fret not! We are here to help you out. In this blog, we will take you through the 6 easy steps to create an effective advertising strategy. 

6 Steps to Create the Best Advertisement Strategy for Your Business

1. Decide on your objective

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Every advertising and marketing campaign you come up with should be based on a specific objective and budget. Your objective is to get qualified leads; it can be to get your old customers to buy from you yet again or convert leads to customers. 

No matter what your objective is, you should budget according to what you want to achieve. You can decide on an annual budget and divide it for each campaign. Or you can have an advertisement campaign scheduled in the yearly business plan. 

To decide on the advertising and marketing budget for your business, here are a few things you need to consider:

• Set the budget as per the task
• Match up to the budget of your competitor through an estimation
• Check the sales percentage

Small Business Administration states that businesses should spend 2 to 20% of the projected sales for advertising and marketing. But the budget you allocate to advertising and marketing is based on the industry your business belongs to. Also, the newer the company, the higher will be the projected sales requirement to succeed. 

To develop the right objective for your marketing strategy, you have to start mapping out a plan. Maybe your company is meeting the revenue goals, but you would like to scale it up a little, or the business might not be meeting the goals. 

Formulating an effective strategy starts with setting the house in order. This can be done through an analysis of the situation. Most of the information is available in the business plan. Make sure you are honest about what works and what doesn’t. 

2. Identify the target audience for your business

So, now you have a clear idea about the budget and your creative strategy in advertising. It is time to identify your target audience next. Your target audiences are other businesses or people to whom you will address your best advertising campaigns. If you can correctly determine your target audience, you can get a higher return on your investment. 

To identify the target markets, you have to check the psychographic and demographic characteristics of the buyers. Also, you should consider geography as a primary factor. If it is a B2B business, it will involve the company size, industry, location, and other factors pertinent to the advertising campaign. The more information you can gather from your potential customers, the easier it will be for you to develop a successful campaign. 

Older customers respond favorably to traditional purchasing habits, while young customers react more favorably to digital ads. 

But by analyzing your target audience, you can come up with a sound marketing strategy. As you try to identify the target audience, you have to find out the type of media to get the expected response.

3. Come up with a plan and create a message

Now that you have identified your target audience, it is time to have an effective plan and message. If you don’t, it will fizzle out soon after the launch. As you design, launch, and promote the marketing campaign for the business, you have to make an effort to come up with a strategic plan. It should be able to guide you through the different phases of the marketing campaign. 

Some of the things you need to include in your advertising plan are:

• Information about the target audience
• A content or promotion calendar 
• Your budget
• A list of people who will help in getting the word about the campaign
• Tools that you would like to use for the promotion

When you are done planning, you can now focus on creating the right messaging. It is the most fun part of the campaign — pitching your products and services to potential customers. When creating a message, the two factors you need to consider are the unmet needs of the customers or a problem they would like to fix. 

The message that you finalize has to appeal to the target customers and evoke an emotional response. Begin by empathizing with the issues they are encountering. They should feel that your business knows what they are going through. It helps in building trust and engaging your target customers. 

The message you create should tell your prospective customers how your services or products can solve their problems. The images and words you use should tell them how your business can improve their life. 

Lastly, your message should provide credibility. It can be in the form of endorsements from market leaders or customer testimonials. Credibility gives your customers a reason to believe in the product or service you offer. 

4. Plan out a media strategy

You have the message that you would want to communicate to your target audience. Now, you have to consider how to deliver the message to the target audience. Selecting the right platform can be daunting. It is the most challenging aspect of the advertising campaign. There are several channels to choose from, and making the wrong choice will waste time and money. 

While you are performing your research for the best media, you should distinguish between fad and trend. Remember, fads are temporary, but trends are here to stay. Look at the numbers to decide on the right channel for your advertisement strategy. 

The channel you choose for your business largely depends on the budget you have. If you have a bigger budget, you can opt to advertise on several channels. But that might not always be the right thing to do. You need to keep in mind that the number of channels you choose is not as important as finding the right channel to interact with your target audience. 

No matter what your budget is, online marketing can be a good channel. Almost everybody spends some part of their day online. These days social media advertising draws in maximum customers. Buffer’s 2019 report says that 73% of marketers feel that their social media marketing has been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.

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If you are looking for a low-cost investment strategy, email marketing can also be a good option. 

But the channel that is right for you depends on the industry your business belongs to and the product or service you offer. 

5. Budget well

One of the best advertising tips for your business is its affordability. Don’t forget, even the right advertising tactic will take some time to show impact. Thus, it can be difficult to measure impact immediately. 

When planning your budget, make sure you consider the effect of not having an advertising campaign. As you choose the right advertising strategy for your business, make sure you factor in the special offers provided by media channels from time to time. For instance, you can use coupon supplements and online ads. 

Using a Purchase Order system makes sure you don’t overspend. It helps in avoiding overruns of the advertisements. 

6. Implement the marketing strategy and analyze the result

The easiest part of the strategy is to implement it. But you need to have the right team to do so. Plan and schedule the activities for each aspect of the marketing campaign. 

However, having the right marketing team is not enough. You also need to have the right finance and account managers to check the marketing expenditures. 

Ultimately, when the plan has been implemented, it is time to measure and analyze it. Without analysis, you won’t know if your plan is working or not. It will also highlight the target customers that responded the best to your marketing campaign and the channels where you could reach the maximum target customers.

With an insight into the effect of the marketing plan, you can make the required changes and start planning the next advertising idea. 

Benefits of a Good Advertising Strategy

Advertisement is a part of marketing and advertising campaigns. If used efficiently, it can create brand awareness. Your creative advertising ideas should align with the overall marketing goals of the business. This ensures you enjoy great benefits. Here we are going to take a look at a few of them. 

1. Increased brand awareness

Are your potential customers aware of your business? If not, advertisements have proved to be highly effective when it comes to creating awareness of new brands or their new products or services. It can also highlight the competitive benefit of using a product that already exists and adding the features to an existing product. 

Limited discount offers requiring immediate response from potential customers are possible through advertisement, particularly digital advertising, such as social media. 

2. Retain old customers and attract new ones

After your customers become aware of the existence of your business, advertisements can play a significant role in promoting your customers to take further steps into the sales funnel by attracting new customers while retaining the old ones. 

An advertisement can do the following:

• Branches or increases traffic by highlighting information about business location in the ads and spreading the word about coming up with a new branch or store to generate more leads through an advertising campaign. 
• Using suitable advertisements for improving engagement and communication with potential customers. 
• Growing the follower base of customers interested in your business on the right social media platforms. 
• Increase email marketing campaign subscribers and email newsletters periodically. 

3. Standing out from your competitor

New alternatives to your products are being introduced in the market every day. This leads to increased competition. To reach out to your customers, you need effective and innovative advertising and marketing solutions. Tailored advertisements can prove useful in this case as they emphasize the competitive advantages of products and how suitable the product prices are for their budget. 

4. Educating business customers

Only when the customers are completely satisfied with the products and services you have to offer, do they complete their purchase. Advertisements are useful for educating customers regarding product availability. It tells them how they can trust what you have to offer and how it solves the problem they are facing. 

Informative content associated with the problems and needs of the customers will display the industry or thought leadership for the business and boosts customers’ trust to choose your business. 

Key Takeaways

• Decide on the budget and learn about your target audience.
• Develop a strategy based on the target audience you want to reach out to and the business objectives. 
• Proper advertising can increase brand awareness. 
• Advertising helps in educating customers about your business or the products and services you have to offer.
• The ultimate objective of advertising is to increase sales and make the business successful. 

FAQs