Which type of advertising should you use for your business?Many business owners will tell me, “Advertising doesn’t work!”I hear this frustration a lot from clients and prospects. So why is it that the majority of advertising doesn’t work?There are two types of advertisingType 1: Is image advertising
Type 2: Is direct response advertisingWhat is the difference?Image advertising is what you are most likely seeing when you see advertising. It’s the lone Beer can that say’s the brand name across the bottom of the page, or something else trying to be clever in the ad.Image advertising is the beautiful woman holding the shower gel trying to make you think, “If you use it, she will come to a shower near you.”Image advertising is all about getting the product out in front of you to make an impression. You may hear an advertising rep tell you that you will get 30,000 impressions per month when you advertise with their company.Wow! 30,000 impressions, that’s awesome you think to yourself. That’s a great number if you just want potential clients to hear, or see the name of your company.Image advertising is the main type of ads you see big companies run to get their name in front of you, and hopefully get “Top of Mind” awareness for their product when you’re shopping.This is OK I guess, if your marketing budget allows you to put millions of dollars into ads without any real accountability to know if the ad is working for you.
Your ProblemIf you own a small business, you may not have millions of dollars to put into advertising. Especially if you don’t know if it’s working for you.How much money do you and your company make based on an impression?I’ll let you decide on that number.The number I would encourage you to become friends with, is how many impressions convert into paying clients?So I bet you’re wondering about type two advertising, direct response, aren’t you?This type of advertising has some call to action, or “Direct Response” when your target audience see’s the ad.This could be as simple as “Call for our free report”, or “Click here to download the Top 10 Reasons your husband is a slug.”Go and do a search on examples of advertising and direct response ads. Then look at the samples and guess which one is all about the image, and which is asking for you to take action.If you see an order form on any ad, you know they are asking you to take some kind of action.When you see only the company name in an ad, this a classic example of image ads.What does the company want you to do when you see this ad?If you hear someone say something to the effect of, “I want them to think of us the next time they are shopping”, it’s most likely an image ad.Are you ready to take action on your ads?Here’s what I want you to do (I’m giving you your action step).Any time you decide to do advertising, ask yourself the following question.”When people see your advertising, what action do you want them to take after seeing it?”It should be an action that you can track to measure how much business did your advertising generate for you. This is how you make your marketing plan work.Measure the results of your advertising, and it will start working for you. If it doesn’t, you will know to stop running the ad.