To develop a successful advertising campaign and hoping people to notice it, you would need much more than just a nice poster or a video shot with $ 2,000 camera. The campaign should be related to your target audience and how exactly you are going to reach your audience.
Step 1: Identifying the target audience for your successful advertising campaign
I will explain this simple with life examples so you could understand, what exactly is going on behind the scenes. The most authentic way to communicate with your target audience is to try to find out what turns them on and off as individuals. This is exactly like in sex and one wrong move and you are out right away.
Finding as much as you can about your partner is pretty much the same tactic if you want to find out about your target audience. Find out their age as a start and try to divide the target audience accordingly to genders. Perhaps, you might ask why? Different genders would respond differently to your “message” you want to communicate.
Segmenting is important
A successful advertising campaign would require you to have a clear idea of the above mentioned factors and this might sound so simple and yet most companies still fail to identify their target audience and establish a communication with them.
To find out who’s your target audience, I might dive separately into this topic as this might confuse you a lot and obviously push you off track. However, for the purpose only to get an idea how a target audience research can go, I would give an example.
Back in 1998 couple of manufacturers have sent some of their employees to physically live with families only for the purpose to understand better how their target audience uses their product and in this case vehicles. However, this is the very extreme tactic and today through technology this can be done with few clicks.
Step 2: Establish clear message and budget for your campaign
This section is very tricky and I do believe that if you are not careful this experience might hurt. The ideal plan for this second step would, consist of two major factors. First is what exactly you are trying to say to your audience? what is your “message”?
This might sound stupid to you but ask this question all the time along the way. It is really easy to get off track. The second part is how much exactly you are planning to spend for your “message” to reach your audience in order to achieve a successful advertising campaign.
Constructing your target “message”
Advertising is often mixed with marketing and that is wrong to say. The two concepts are very different one from another. Advertising as element on its own is very limited to what can be achieved, you can advertise all day long to media channels such as TV and Online. However, without the rest of the elements you will be left empty handed and with no money.
Some advertisers would prefer to remind or educate their audience how to use their product. On the other side, you have other advertisers keeping their audience informative and knowledgeable about their product’s features or even how to use it.
Over all the main idea to all advertising is to remind that this product exists and it is the ultimate solution to a problem. Your main goal would be to, identify why your product is better than the competitor’s? Do not go only after, “it is cheaper”!
One successful advertising campaign would never alone try to build their “message” around price. This would be a suicide! Creativity and sharp thinking is crucial in this case. Think about why your product is better? What problem does it solve? Remind the target audience why they should buy your product by giving them knowledge to act!
Budget
Advertising is expensive and there is no shortcut. Your target audience is out there and how you reach them involves planning and money. If you are a small business you can start with google AdWords or even Facebook Ads. The big companies willing to spent billions in order to reach everyone will use all the available.
There is no big science here and it all depends of how big is your bank account and how much you are willing to splash on advertising. Research and planning step by step following this article will extend your chances for survival.
Designing the Ads
Carving a strategy is crucial and this mostly goes back to Step 2: Constructing your target “message”.
This section will briefly touch the surface. This section, perhaps deserves separate blog post of how to design a successful ad.
USP (Unique selling proposition)
Very simple and straightforward “message” when designing your ad. Tell your target audience why your product is better? tell them why should they buy and how it will solve their problems.
Comparative advertising
Very risky method to build your “message”. As it might be clear from the name this tactic brings one or two competitors and identify why this product is better than the other. It is very effective but in the same time very risky. Some consumers might not like the “tone” and the “message”. However, in some countries this tactic is prohibited
Demonstration
This “message” is straight forward. I will give you an example with this article, which main purpose is if you remember the title “How to develop a successful advertising campaign from scratch?”
I am building a step by step guide which can help and orientate you where and what to do. This is what you need to do with your products “demonstrate” the target audience what your product does. My personal opinion is that, one successful advertising campaign must have a demonstration “message” if it is a new product. Otherwise, how would people know how to use it?
Testimonial
Does that look familiar to you? Perhaps it does we do see celebrities all the time. There are countless examples of how celebrities are trying to convince us that this product is actually “amazing”. Excellent, choice of “message” very expensive but effective and it will bring results instantly.
A Slice of Life
This “message” is mostly applied to the day to day products we use in our daily life. For example, we use some shampoo products on a daily basis. In most of the ads, you will see a person taking a shower and what effect it brings by using that particular shampoo. It is only slicing a life scene and presenting it with a product “X”.
Fear appeals
Even though this ad is banned it actually makes me laugh loudly. This tactic is supposed to bring a negative feeling and fear of not using the product itself. This particular example, tells you that if you do not use condoms. Your life will be destroyed from embarrassing situations like in the ad. Of course, this is not the case, hence the ad is banned and only serves as an example. However, for real ad that made it on air. Think about mouth wash products or life insurance.
Sex
Some ads are clearly selling “sex” instead of actual products and it works 99% of the time.
Do you see a man who perhaps is trying to kiss a woman or do you see a fragrance? You get the point.
Humorous appeal
This tactic is very risk and the reason for this is very simple. One person can find it funny, however others might find it entirely offensive and there is no clear formula to that. If you decide to use this tactic, you must have tons of confidence and courage.
Slogans
McDonalds: “I am loving it”, Nike: “Just do it”, Nokia: “Connecting people”.
These slogans can be attached to a brand but also used in a planning for successful advertising campaign model. It might vary and yet again no real guarantee whether that will work or not.
Choosing media channels
Very crucial part of one successful advertising campaign. Depending, where your target audience is you as advertising manager should carefully select your advertising channels. Some of the most popular advertising channels are:
- Television
- Internet
- Newspaper/Magazines
- Outdoor banners or events
There is not perfect written formula if you are looking for one. It all depends on your target audience and as mentioned above, it is crucial to know “who are they?”. It would not be wrong if you decide to choose all of them or only one, it only depends on Step 2: “Establish clear message and budget for your campaign”.
Testing
There are the certain available tools accordingly to the media channel you decide to use. For example, to test a particular article which for instance is a “product” solving problem based on search queries coming from Google. The internet marketers use tools such as Google analytics which is common tool used to test and identify. It is very useful to track results. If you decide to use Facebook and you do not have a website. Facebook offers testing and analytics tools integrated into your admin panel.
Analyse
In order to achieve full successful advertising campaign. The person responsible for the advertising campaign must analyse every aspect of the campaign.
The numbers will “speak” for themselves. What do I mean by that?
How many people have actually seen your ads whether on TV or Internet according to the media channels, the insights are available to draw a very clear and conclusive picture.
Obviously the most obvious indicator of whether you succeeded or failed will be on your balance sheet.
Advertising is not an easy job. There is not a precise formula for success. The best thing is to follow this guide, do your research and observer, where others have failed. Testify your strategy and introduce improvements if possible.
