Effective advertising is essential for companies to raise the public’s attention to their goods or services. A persuasive form of communication,  it reaches out to the company’s target audience to inform and influence them to purchase or consume the company’s goods or services.

Usually, the process of advertising would require the advertiser to create a message, buy media slots and monitor the performance of the advertisements.  Hence, advertising would usually cost a fortune. Therefore, businesses, especially SMEs, need to be aware of effective advertising. Effective advertisements not only help the company attract more customers and increase sales but also, to save costs.

Advertising methods

In today’s context, with the rise of digitalisation, there are plenty of advertising methods presented in our daily lives. Evidently, we can see advertisements almost everywhere and anywhere, as illustrated below.

Advertising methods can be broadly categorised into the following: 

1. Print advertising

Print advertising is one of the more traditional advertising methods, where advertisements are printed on paper. For example, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, flyers, etc.

2. Outdoor advertising

This type of advertising refers to advertisements that reach out to consumers when they are outside of their homes. Some examples are bus shelters, digital screens, static billboards, etc.

3. Broadcast advertising

Broadcast advertising refers to the advertisements aired on television or radio. Common examples are commercial advertisements on television and air time during radio programmes.

4. Digital advertising (Online)

Advertisements found on the internet are digital advertisements. It appears on web pages or as pop-ups and users of the internet would see them. For example, Google Adwords and Adsense, Linkedin advertising, social media advertising, etc

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5. Mobile advertising

This advertising method is similar to digital advertising. It is a type of digital advertising through mobile devices such as phones, tablets, Kindles, etc. The current trend for mobile advertising is mainly on social media platforms. In this day and age, every individual owns a cell phone and uses it every day. The usage of social media platforms has also been growing. Hence, mobile advertising is on the rise and gaining importance as a channel to reach new customers.

Tips for Effective Advertising

Here are some tips on the different stages of advertising.

Know your target audience

When brainstorming an advertisement, it is important to identify your target audience. Knowing your target audience allows you to use the most suitable marketing channel to reach out to them. Usually, your target audience focuses on only one or a few segments of the population.

Know what your customer is looking out for

It is important to know what your targeted customers are looking out for to craft an advertisement which can attract their attention. It can be done by learning how they got to know similar types of product or services, and how they usually get persuaded to buy it. After knowing how they usually get attracted to a product, it is easier to create an advertisement that is more persuasive using the right keywords and approach to reach out to them.

Choose the appropriate advertising method

The right place to advertise one product or service isn’t always the best place to advertise another. Choosing an appropriate advertising method for your product allows your advertisement to be more effective. By choosing the right advertising method, your advertisement will more likely to reach your target customer. For example, if your target audience is teenagers, it would be wise to plant your advertisements on social media platforms as teenagers are frequent users of social media. Alternatively, if your target audience is the elderly population, it will be more effective if the advertisements are placed on newspapers.

Decide on the purpose of the advertisement

You need to decide what information you are trying to portray in your advertisement. This is because your advertisement needs to bring across a clear message. For instance, perhaps you are launching a new product, the message you should bring across should be on the new product itself instead of the past seasons. Some common purposes of advertisements are attracting potential customers to visit your shop, use your service, or when your company is having a promotion sale.

Monitor, test, and measure

After creating and putting up an advertisement, you need to monitor the traction of advertising. How many people clicked into your advertisement? Did the sales for that month have a significant increase? Furthermore, you have to test the effectiveness of the advertisements by posting with various contents, formats, and advertising methods. The results of the different advertisements can be tested with their performances recorded. By monitoring the advertisements’ performance, you can then conclude which way of advertising is the most effective for you and hence focus on it.

Drawback

As mentioned above, advertising requires funds to buy advertising slots, some trial and error, or engaging marketing professionals to craft a good advertisement. Hence, one downside of advertising is that it is rather costly. This is a problem for companies, especially SMEs, who already have insufficient working capital.

However, if advertisements are used effectively, it would bring in far more benefits. Advertisements expose the business to different market segments and help create brand awareness. By reaching out to the targeted audience effectively, it brings in sales and at the same time aid the company’s goodwill. These in return will increase the demand for the goods or services of the company. Although the company would require more working capital to cope with the advertising costs and the increased demand, it in return will bring in additional profits for the company. At the end of the day, effective advertising benefits businesses to a great extent.

Advertising effectively helps the business grow and bloom. It is important to plan a flexible advertising budget and allocate an appropriate amount of money to it, to prevent over-spending on advertising.

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