Advertising Guide: How to Advertise your Business Effectively?
Last update: 3 October 2024 at 12:07 pm
5.00/5Advertising has been around for years. In fact, it can be traced back to ancient Egypt, where a form of print advertising was found that promoted the capture of an escaped slave. However, many people tend to confuse advertising with marketing. These two terms are related, but they do not mean the same thing. The former is actually a subset of marketing as it implies all different forms of paid marketing. In this Advertising Guide, we will take a deep dive into what it means and how you can implement it in 2024.
Read on to find out how you can use advertising to build brand image, promote a product or service, generate leads and reach relevant audiences.
What Is Advertising? How Does it Work?
Advertising refers to the paid forms of marketing. While these forms have changed over time (from flyers to social media ads), they still have the same goal: to capture the attention of the public in order to attract, interest, engage, and sell (product, service, brand, offer, discount, etc.).
An important detail to keep in mind is that advertising always involves paying for the ad placement. Whether it’s on a billboard, radio, television, social media or Google, you have to pay for it to appear and reach a specific audience.
The whole goal of this form of marketing is to reach relevant audiences and make them aware of your product, service or special offer. Advertising, when done correctly, has a positive impact on your business:
- Increase brand awareness
- Improved brand reputation
- Product and service recognition
- Lead generation
Advertising vs. Marketing: What’s the Difference?
Now that you understand what advertising (paid advertising) is all about, it’s important to clarify how it differs from the term “marketing”.
Marketing
- Includes everything from market research to branding to customer service.
- It is an ongoing, long-term process.
- Metrics include customer satisfaction, brand awareness, or overall engagement.
Advertising
- Focuses primarily on attracting attention and persuading potential customers to make a purchase.
- Advertising campaigns have a specific start and end date.
- KPIs include direct metrics such as click-through rates, conversions, or ad recall.
In other words, marketing is a much broader term that encompasses everything from target and product research to the creation and implementation of strategies to reach potential customers.
Advertising Rules and Frameworks You Should Know
Advertising is more than just paying for an ad to run on one platform or another. It is about carefully understanding your audience so you can create strategic messages and creatives (images and videos) to drive them to take a specific action. Because this concept has been around for quite some time, authors have taken the time to create frameworks and principles to guide you.
Let’s take a look at them!
What Are the 5 A’s of Advertising?
Dr. Philip Kotler created the five A’s of the customer journey. He states that the customer journey is made up of five stages: Awareness, Appeal, Ask, Act, and Advocacy. This framework makes it easier for sales and marketing professionals to understand customer needs and priorities at each stage of the buying process.
It’s important to understand that not every customer goes through every stage before buying a product or service. They may skip one or the other, especially depending on what they are buying. For example, someone who buys a banana at the grocery store may not go through all the stages because it is a common thing they want to eat. But someone buying a security system for their office will.
As someone interested in running an advertising campaign, you need to spend time understanding each of the five stages for your customers. That way, you can craft messages that will get them to move forward and take action.
- Awareness: Prospects are first noticing your company. While they may be interested in one of your products or services, they are not ready to buy. They are more likely to visit your social media accounts and website and ask for references.
- Appeal: At this stage, they have found something interesting on your website and are continuing their research project. They may participate in free activities such as a webinar.
- Ask: Now they begin to compare your products and services with the competition. They are looking for specific characteristics or features. And they may even schedule a call or contact you for more information.
- Act: This is where they make the purchase. It can be online, through your sales department, or at your store.
- Advocate: The final stage is when they become advocates or brand ambassadors, recommending your brand to friends, family, colleagues, or anyone who can benefit from what you have to offer.
Have you identified how these stages play out in your sales process? What specific information are they looking for? Who do they compare you to?
What Is the Rule of 7 in Advertising?
The Rule of 7 states that a potential customer needs to see your brand’s message at least 7 times before making a purchase decision. Repeated exposure increases the chances of recall and retention, elements that build familiarity, trust and credibility.
To achieve this goal of having the same person see your messages at least 7 times, consider the following:
- Use a multi-channel approach. Have different messages circulating in different channels (billboards, social media ads, Google ads, podcast ads, etc.). They all have different levels of impact.
- Vary your message. Use different wording in each ad. Make sure it matches the way people communicate on each platform. This will help keep your ads fresh.
- Be consistent in your communications. This will help you reach the number of times someone should see your brand messages before they buy.
- Pay close attention to feedback from your audience.
In short, running different ads on different channels is perfect for building brand awareness and trust. Remember, this is a gradual process. It takes time, persistence and, of course, a deep understanding of who your target audience is.
5 Advertising Methods in 2024
In today’s world, there are many different ways to promote your products, services and brand. Let’s take a look at the 7 most popular on the market. Remember, with the help of an advertising agency, you can create a mix and match of methods to attract, retain and convert more customers.
Print Advertising
Print advertising is a form of marketing that relies on publications such as newspapers, direct mail, magazines, billboards, and brochures to distribute ads. The advertisements are printed in hard copy and give you the perfect opportunity to reach your audience in a different and targeted way.
While online advertising is becoming more and more popular, it’s worth mentioning that businesses still rely on print advertising as it is:
- Has a higher recall by viewers.
- Builds trust more than online video, radio ads or billboards.
- Triggers an emotional response.
- Has high conversion rates.
A good advertising agency can incorporate print advertising as part of your overall campaign to promote your products, services or promotions.
KitKat has a perfect example of how great print advertising can be. They created bus stop billboards that featured an agenda filled with Zoom calls. In the middle of the afternoon, they added a break showing a KitKat bar.
TV Commercials
TV commercials have been around for decades, and while they have changed over time, they are still one of the most common forms of advertising.
Companies like yours simply need to pay a TV show or network to run your ads between shows. This allows you to reach thousands of people and capture their attention for 30 seconds or so.
What makes it so powerful is that the viewer is watching, listening, and having a multi-sensory experience with your brand.
A great example of a TV spot is the one CeraVe created for the 2024 Super Bowl. Michael Cera, a well-known Canadian actor, tells the story of “his” brand CeraVe and how it can help you.
Radio Advertising
Like TV commercials, radio advertising has been around for decades. It gives you the opportunity to announce and promote your brand and products to radio listeners between shows. What makes it great is that it is more memorable than other forms of advertising and has a better return on investment than print and TV advertising.
Radio commercials give you the opportunity to repeat the same message to listeners over and over again. This allows you to increase your chances of being remembered by your ideal customer.
The iconic McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle is proof that a short and catchy tune can be quickly memorized by thousands and remembered over time.
Event Advertising
There are many ways to promote an event. You can host or sponsor your own event, buy a booth, and speak at someone else’s event. Each has its costs, benefits and challenges. But they represent a great opportunity to get your brand in front of a very targeted audience.
Apple’s iconic product launches are the perfect example of how an event can help promote and advertise a product. Every year they spend weeks building buzz around the event. Once it happens, the news, social media, and people talk about the new features and how it compares to other products on the market.
Online Advertising
Finally, we have online advertising. This form of marketing is one of the most important in the world we live in. With people spending about 7 hours a day on the Internet, it is the perfect place to promote and advertise your business.
In the next section we will review the different forms and shapes you can run an advertising campaign in the digital world. Remember, just because you have one online advertising campaign does not mean you can ignore the others. In fact, if you remember the Rule of 7, you are most likely to be successful if you have marketing efforts and ads running in different places at the same time.
Digital Advertising: A Must Have in 2024
As you prepare to design and implement an advertising campaign, you should strongly consider running ads on the Internet. For one thing, they are highly targeted, allowing you to be very specific about who you want to reach. They are also a cost-effective way to promote your brand. TV and radio commercials, print ads, they all require you to spend a significant amount of money to create the ad itself. Digital advertising can be done with a designer who understands the dimensions and criteria to launch a campaign online.
With this in mind, and considering the amount of time a single person spends online, you can quickly determine that including digital advertising in your next advertising campaign is a must.
How To Create an Advertisement?
But advertising on the Internet can mean so many different things. You can have Facebook ads, Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, display ads, etc. The list grows every day as technology advances.
To determine what types of ads you want to work with, you first need to have a clear set of goals (generate more leads, increase conversions, increase brand awareness, increase website traffic, etc.) and understand who you want to target. Beyond demographics, you want to focus on their online behavior.Where do they spend the most time? What social networks do they prefer? What kind of content do they consume the most? These answers are key to understanding where to spend your money.
Let’s take a look at the options.
Social Media Advertising
Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest allow you to run ads and reach a specific audience. As a marketer or business owner, you should strongly consider them as part of your advertising campaign. While ads behave differently on each social network, they all have one thing in common: when set up correctly, they put your products and brand in front of potential buyers. Plus, you can deliver that message throughout the various stages of the buying process.
For example, you can set up a campaign to create buzz around a new product and include a remarketingcampaign to those who somehow engaged with your initial ads. This way, you increase the chances of conversion and make it easier for them to buy your products.
Social media advertising campaigns allow you to do this:
- Create brand awareness.
- Increase the number of social media followers.
- Improve sales numbers.
- Drive traffic to your website.
- And much more!
In other words, you can set up your ad campaign to meet your ultimate marketing goal. It also allows you to be very specific about your target audience, add creative (images, videos, copy, and call-to-actions), and set your budget and length.
Paid Search Advertising
Another way to advertise on the Internet is through paid advertising. This means running ads on a search engine (while Google is the most common, some brands have found it useful to run ad campaigns on Bing and Yahoo!).
Basically, you need to determine which keywords you want to bid on to get your ads displayed. Your ads will then be shown to users who match your targeting and use the keywords you choose. Each time someone clicks on your ad, you will have to pay Google or the search engine you are working with.
What makes this form of advertising so interesting is that you only pay per click received and you can target people based on their demographics and search intent.
Native Ads and Sponsored Content
Sponsored content has been around for years. How many movies or TV shows have you seen where the actors endorse a particular brand or product? The same thing is happening in the online world. The difference online is how you actually do it. In the digital world, you work with sponsored video content, sponsored blog posts or articles, even sponsored infographics to promote your products.
Just make sure each sponsored piece of content aligns with your target audience’s interests, pain points, and goals. You’ll also want to make sure you’re paying a site or influencer that they value highly.
Display Ads
Finally, you can create a display ad campaign. This is very similar to search engine ads, but instead of a text-based ad, users will see a banner promoting your brand or product on various websites they visit.
These banner ads can appear at the top, bottom, or sides of a web page. And they allow the visitor to click on them and be redirected to your website or landing page.
Advertising Tips for Success
Advertising sounds simple, but when it comes to real life, there are so many different details to keep track of. Words play a big role. So do video and images, calls to action, placement, and budget.
Working with an advertising agency not only simplifies the process for you, but gives you access to a team of professionals with a proven track record. They have copywriters, designers, video editors, analysts, and more. This allows you to create highly relevant and engaging ads and closely monitor them to make the necessary adjustments to improve performance and results.
That said, there are a few tips we would like to share with you.
- Always work with a clear message about your company and what you are promoting.
- Include your unique selling proposition.
- Create attention-grabbing headlines.
- Include eye-catching images or videos.
- Work with your brand colors, fonts, and styles. Be consistent.
- Always include a call to action.
- Make it seem urgent.
- Make sure your website or landing page is ready to provide more information and close the sale.
- Include your contact information.
Key Takeaways
- Advertising is a subset of marketing. Advertising specifically includes paid forms of marketing designed to attract attention and drive sales, while marketing encompasses a broader range of activities such as market research, branding, and customer service.
- Dr. Philip Kotler’s framework outlines the customer journey as awareness, appeal, ask, act, and advocacy. Understanding these stages helps advertisers tailor their messages to effectively guide prospects through the buying process.
- The Rule of 7: This principle suggests that a potential customer needs to see your brand’s message at least 7 times before making a purchase. Repeated exposure can build familiarity, trust and credibility.
- This guide discusses various advertising methods, including print, television, radio, events, and online advertising, each with its own strengths and target audiences.
- Online advertising is a critical component of modern marketing strategies. It offers highly targeted reach, cost-effectiveness, and diverse formats such as social media ads, paid search, native advertising, and display ads.
Conclusion
Use this Advertising Guide as a starting point for designing and implementing your next advertising strategy. Make sure you have clear goals, a buyer persona, and a budget. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to determine where to place your ads and what message to deliver. Remember, the key to success is to make sure each potential consumer sees your ads at least 7 times before they buy. So running ad campaigns on multiple channels may be the perfect thing to do.
Don’t forget, if this all seems too much to handle, you can always work with an advertising agency. They have the experience, the team, the tools and the system to design and implement a campaign that gets results.
