The Magic Formula for Advertising

To maintain and grow your market share, you need to market hard, maximise the response from your marketing.  So here are some magic tips:

 Marketing Budget

 Do you have a planned marketing budget or do just adopt a knee-jerk reaction advertising? Many say, “Oh, we’re quiet, let’s splash some dosh on marketing and the business will come in”.

 Set your marketing budget as a percentage of your forecast sales. So, if you have a projected turnover of ￡100,000 and you feel 7.5% is the right amount over the year to invest in marketing then you have a budget of ￡7,500.

 What’s the Point?

Even professional marketers, find it saves time and effort if they spend a few moments writing down a few key pointers: what the objective of the advert is, e.g. to promote a special offer, build brand awareness, sell a specific product or service.

 Second a description of what will go into each section of an advert.  Most good adverts follow the same structure - a formula called AIDCA.  That’s: Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction and Action.  These can be highlighted in a few points, but, remember, in adverts, size, colour and visual impact are still important.

Consider your audience’s needs

Ask them a question.  Tell them what problems (fears?) they, and others like them, face.  Get their attention and hold it.

Show them how you can help them

Tell them the solutions they could adopt, and, particularly, the solution you are offering.  Make it interesting to them.

Tell them the Benefits

Create desire.  People buy the benefits of a product or service: what it will do for them, personally.  Explain how you can save them money and time, simplify a task, be easy to use, save them hassle…

Call to “Action”

Tell them what to do next.  Lead them to a decision.  Make the buying process easy for them.  Provide an easy reply mechanism: a phone number or e-mail.  

The magic template:

Headline

Sub Head

 Message

* Bullets

* Bullets

* Bullets

* Bullets

 Comfort details

 Call to Action

 Name & Contact Details

 Use your headline to attract attention such as “Act Now and Save ￡￡￡s”

 The subhead reinforces; “So exactly how much do you want to borrow?”

 Give a simply message of how the reader will benefit, “What better time of year is there to…”

 Reinforce visually with positive bullet points. How many people use big negative dots use a positive tick.

 The “Call to Action” tells the reader what they need to do e.g. “Call Laurie today on 07973 361 994 for your free marketing consultation”.

 Now have a look through various publications for examples of what looks good (and bad) then judge why.

Next time you produce an advert consider the impact from your customers view point. Do they want to know your name or what you can achieve for them? Now you have discovered the “Magic Formula for Advertising” look to apply it to all your promotional and communication tools.

 Prepared by Laurie Bernard, business and marketing consultant at The Business Services Partnership. Please contact Laurie for further details or marketing help on: 07973 361 994 ? [email protected] or via www.thebsp.co.uk