A fundamental tool in marketing is advertising because it helps you create and improve the relationship of your brand, product or service with your potential customers. Do you want to sell? You need marketing and advertising linked.
What is an advertising campaign?
It is a broad set of business strategies that want to publicize the product or service that you are looking to offer.
This is achieved through different but related announcements, which appear in one or more communication channels during a specific period.
The campaigns are strategically designed to impact a segmented group of people and solve a crucial problem. It is a short-term plan that mostly works for a year or less.
Here we show you five keys to generate a successful campaign:
1.The objective of the campaign
Depending on what we want to achieve, the campaign objective will be defined with different structures.
Although 90% of the cases what we are looking for is to attract customers and obtain sales, there are other types of objectives.
For example, there are campaigns that intend to do branding (publicize the brand), others are made to associate that brand with certain values or feelings. Here we have some examples:
- To make a new product known
- To position your company and make it more popular
- To increase your sales
- To attract more visits to your online or local store (and to become potential customers)
- To compete with other businesses that are subtracting buyers and sales
We could list many other examples, but the most common objectives are attracting new customers, launching new products and promoting products in stock.
2. Define the target.
We will have to define a number of factors, such as the age, gender, social class, marital status, and some essential habits that we will need both for the design and for the planning of the media.
Imagine this: you want to promote your business to sell some cell phone accessories, mostly aimed at women between 18 and 35 years old.
The most logical thing would be that your message goes directed at these young women and that you use media to insert your advertising such as Facebook, Instagram, or women’s magazines, which are the sites that the public you are looking for uses.
It would be a waste of time and money to put an ad in a blog about sports and food aimed at men because is very normal that this audience is not interested in technology (except the one that they use to exercises) or products aimed at women.
3. Choose the channels.
The third stage is the definition and planning of the media. To define it, the correct evaluation of the previous point is essential and depending on their habits and tastes, the target audience segments use different channels of communication at different times. Some of them are:
- Traditional media such as television, radio, written press, magazines.
- Internet, social networks, blogs, and YouTube channels
- Through email or advertising in postboxes
- Fairs, conventions, tasting stations
- Signboards on the street, flyers, product catalogs
Never forget this: it is essential that you guide the choice according to the target, otherwise you will only lose your investment.
4.Communication.
We talk about the way you conceive the message you want to launch. The only way to get the clients interested in your advertisement is to do it thinking about what they need.
5. The design.
The colors, the photographs, the language or the spot, the way the texts are introduced in the communication, the type of font, the textures, the sizes, all these aspects are key to achieving communicate the advertising message successfully.
If you want to make an advertising campaign with a dress picture and a text that says “the best women’s clothes at the best prices”, it is important that you use that same phrase with that same image in all the places where you are going to promote it (Facebook, Instagram, magazines, posters, etc.).
It is necessary that you do it to establish that publicity as yours and get your audience to remember it no matter where they see it.
6. Determine an advertising budget
Here you must decide how much money you are going (or can) invest in your advertising campaign. Maybe you are the owner of a company with good profits every year, and you have enough to spare no expenses and advertise on television.
But as equal, you may be a small entrepreneur who has started a business recently and you can not afford to spend too much.
Whatever your situation, it is important that you make a budget to see later what options you can handle, even if you only have $40 to invest in advertising.
Do not worry if you do not have much money: at the end of this article, we’ll give you some solutions to advertise practically free anywhere you want.
7. Launch your campaign
With all the previous steps already, now you just have to launch your campaign in the different media you have chosen.
In this step, it is important that you think both the start and end dates of your campaign and how many times you want your message to be repeated in each site throughout the day.
Be careful not to be too repetitive or you will end up boring your target audience.
8. Evaluate the results of your advertising campaign
Although this last step may seem insignificant to you, it is important to know if your campaign has worked, or not, and if it was able to make changes or repeat the same strategies in the future.
It is a good idea that after launching your ad you keep a record of everything that happens.
Check if visits to your online business or your local increase, if there is a rise in your sales, if your number of followers in social networks is higher, or if more people call you, send an email or ask you about your products or services.
If someone makes a purchase and mentions that it’s because they’ve seen your advertising, you can ask what they liked about the ad and what would be improved.
Do not be ashamed! It’s a great way to change your mistakes for the next campaign you do.
en Mérida, Yucatán