Articles

By Shar Shingler, KeyLight Advertising Partner

Marketing Objective

This needs to be your focus: What do you want to achieve through this campaign and in what time frame?

There are two types of marketing:

• Immediate Response
• Image Marketing

Image marketing coupled with immediate response gives you the greatest results.  Advertising is laying a foundation for your clients to let them know that your are here to stay.  Most people don't want to do business with "fly by night" types of businesses (there are a few exceptions to this in certain products that don't require repeat business).

What target audience do you need to reach for this campaign?

Target Audience is ranked by:

• Age
• Income
• Education
• Lifestyle.

Now you need a "hook". 

• What can you say that will motivate your clients to respond to your advertising? 
• People respond and buy for two reasons: You’ve created a need....You’ve created a desire.

Customer Base

• You must understand their buying trends. 
• Evaluate your customers. 
• Get market research. You really should study what products were sold in what months in your own company and worldwide.

Creative

Hopefully, you have a group of people in your organization who will sit down and "think tank" with you to come up with advertising ideas and campaigns that work.

Prospective Customer

First of all, the only thing that works in advertising is what you say times how many times you say it.  It's all about frequency and the trick is learning how to make your advertising dollars work for you. 

• Message
• Frequency
• Consistency

Media Choice

• Radio
• TV
• Internet
• Billboards
• Newspaper, Mailers
• Movie Theater
• Yellow Pages
• Outdoor
• Etc.

Once you've done your market research and decided what direction you plan to take, commit to it and invest in it. Do not invest in newspaper one month and billboards the next and then radio or television the next.  You didn't build your business in a month and that's how you must look at your advertising budget.  Think of your advertising budget as an employee.  Budget a certain amount (should be about 5% of your gross) each month and stick to it.