08 Jun 4 Advertising Tips Every Business Should Follow
Many small businesses take a haphazard approach to advertising, which is understandable—whether you’re a solopreneur or simply have a small team, it can be difficult dividing your time between your core product or services and marketing them to potential customers. If you need a more deliberate, focused advertising strategy, here are some tips every business should follow.
Know Your Audience
You can’t (and shouldn’t) formulate an effective advertising strategy without knowing your customers or clients first. Start by doing a deep-dive into any relevant demographic data. Who lives in your community? What types of people use your services? What needs do they have that you fulfill? By understanding your audience, you can better understand where you need to be advertising your business and the types of messaging that will be most effective.
When you bring on the team from Spencer Lewis to develop your advertising strategy, we always begin with a careful analysis of your current and potential customers. Our clients often find that our fresh, outside perspective on their business helps them identify new markets for their services.
Get Social
Advertising on social media can feel like throwing money into thin air if you don’t have experience with targeting and messaging. It’s also important to take a step back and think about which social media platforms your customers are most likely to use. Many small businesses make the mistake of assuming that they need to advertise on every platform, but a money manager who wants to target retirees is much better off spending all of their advertising budget on Facebook, rather than dividing it between Facebook and Instagram, which tends to skew younger.
That said, advertising on social media is highly effective, affordable, and has the potential to yield immediate results. There’s no other advertising option that allows you to target your audience so precisely.
Don’t Neglect Print
Depending on the nature of your business, print advertising can be quite effective. Sending postcards or flyers with coupons or discounts is a sure way to get noticed. Community magazines, mailers, and booklets make print advertising easy, but at Spencer Lewis, we have a great deal of experience creating a wide range direct mail campaigns. With our direct mail advertising services, we handle the process from start to finish, including your strategy, messaging and graphic design, and targeting.
Set Goals and Measure Results
No advertising strategy is complete without goals—and those goals should be specific. There’s no good way to measure your ROI if you have a vague goal like “increase business” or “get more customers.” For that hypothetical money manager mentioned above, a goal might be to bring on 20 new clients within two months of their advertising campaign. Other goals might be to have a certain number of people redeem coupons, sign up for a newsletter, or schedule an appointment for a consultation.
You should also set aside time to evaluate the efficacy of all of your advertising campaigns once they’re complete. This will help you run more effective campaigns in the future. Every campaign is a learning experience that gives you valuable data about your audience and what resonates with them (and what doesn’t).
Get Help With Your Advertising Strategy
To learn more about how our team at Spencer Lewis can help with your advertising strategy, contact us today at 909-945-5247.