Make the most out of your Advertising   Here are some simple guidelines on how to make the most out of your advertising budget. Despite being so simple they are not followed by the majority of small businesses - and many large ones! Know and understand your customers How can a business best satisfy the needs of their customers if they don't understand who the customer is and what they really value? As approximately 80% of a business's sales and marketing budget is spent on reaching and communicating with customers and prospects, you will be wasting much of your effort and money if you're communicating the wrong message in the wrong medium. Get to know your customers as much as possible. You need to construct a profile of your target market before you can reach them effectively. Create a survey for them to fill out. Ask them: what websites do they visit? what radio stations do they listen to? what newspapers or magazines do they read? are your customers unhappy for some reason? is your competitor giving them better service or a better product? Maintaining contact will allow you to know the answers to these questions and it will show each customer that you are interested in their business. One of the simplest and most cost effective ways of learning about your customers is to collect information about them. Invest in database software that is suitable for your business, and make sure it can integrate with your business framework, eg. both your retail outlet and your Internet site. Many businesses spend so much time trying to attract new customers that they forget the loyal customers who made them successful. A famous Harvard Business study found that it takes six times as much effort to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Having a well-maintained database will assist you tremendously in achieving this. Treat the information like gold and mine it regularly, keeping in touch with your customers. Make sure to get permission to communicate with your customers (it is now illegal not to and hefty penalties can be incurred). Make sure your communication adds value to your customers and prospects. Provide rewards such as special offers and competitions and you will start to form a relationship with your customers that will lead to loyalty and higher sales. Track your advertising results Reaching your target audience is on average going to take about 80% of your total Sales and Marketing Budget, so to not know how well or poorly this investment is working is a recipe for disaster. In many cases business owners have no idea how to track results and adjust their advertising efforts to be more productive. They advertise in the local paper or on the radio, distribute brochures, and then hope this works. Key your ads / communication pieces - put something in each ad that will alert you to the fact that the customer is doing business with you because of your ad. You need to be able to analyse your advertising efforts to know why the advertising is, or is not, working. Too often advertisers stop an advertisement without giving it a chance to work. There are 3 basic reasons why your advertising may not be working: The advertising message is in the wrong place and has not reached your target audience, or Your advertising offer is not what customers are looking for, or The advertisement creative execution was very poor and was not noticed by the intended recipient. Until you have a good understanding - through testing - of what works and what doesn't in your business, do not advertise or communicate through more than one or two channels so that you can properly track your advertising responses. Rather than sending out an offer to all of your customers, first test it on 10% of them, see what the response is and then adjust it to improve. This way you will save money and generate higher sales by learning what works in your business and what doesn't. Don't try to reach more people than your budget will allow Many small businesses adopt a shotgun approach to communication and end up wasting their hard earned dollars. They create ads instead of campaigns: It is foolish to believe a single ad can ever tell the entire story. The most effective, persuasive and memorable ads are those that are like a samurai sword: They make a single point, very sharply and powerfully. An advertiser with 7 different things to say should commit to a campaign of at least 7 different ads, repeating each ad enough times to stick in the prospect's mind. This is called Frequency in "ad-speak". For a media mix to be effective, each element in the mix must have enough repetition to establish retention in the mind of the prospect. Too often, however, the result of a media mix is too much reach and not enough frequency. Will you reach 100 percent of the people and persuade them 10 percent of the way? Or will you reach 10 percent of the people and persuade them 100 percent of the way? The cost is the same yet one is effective and the other is a waste of your advertising budget. Make an effort to do one form of communication well and there is every chance that it will place you ahead of your competitors. Sell benefits not features So many ads just talk about what a product has, not what benefit it delivers. No one ever buys a product for the features it has. People buy a mousetrap not because they want a mousetrap but because they want an absence of mice. People buy a shovel but they need a hole in the ground. Evaluate every product and service you offer. What is the real benefit of each to the customer? Are you showing these benefits in your ads? If the answer is no, then you are not tapping into the core needs that your product or service satisfies and you are not giving your communication effort the best chance of generating leads, responses and sales. Many businesses resort to using scare tactics and a negative tone in their advertisement. Copious amounts of research prove time and time again this doesn't work and turns off your prospects. Others over-promise and under-deliver by making unsubstantiated claims. Advertisers often claim to have what the customer wants, such as "highest quality at the lowest price," but fail to give any evidence. An unsubstantiated claim is nothing more than a cliché the prospect is tired of hearing. You must prove what you say in every advertisement. Do your advertisements give the prospect new information? Do they provide a new perspective? If not, prepare to be disappointed with the results. Have a clear Call to Action Many businesses fail to clearly communicate their Offer and Price and do not provide a peace of mind through a Guarantee. Here's an example of a business that gets it. They changed their headline from: "We guarantee the quality of the diamonds we sell" to: "If the Gemmological Institute of America doesn't confirm our diamond's colour, clarity and carat weight to be at least as good as we promised you, we'll buy back that diamond for the price you paid, reimburse you for the cost of grading, and pay you an additional five thousand dollars. If other jewellers aren't willing to match this offer, you've got to wonder why." Another solution is to increase the urgency of your offer. If a limited quantity is available, name the exact number. Being specific is much more powerful. If your offer has a time limit, say so. "Offer ends soon" will be perceived only as shallow hype. Be specific. Be accurate. Tell the truth. "Offer ends Saturday the 17th at 5.30 p.m." Tell the truth, even when it hurts. The fine art of hype has been perfected and refined. Consequently, we've developed immunity to "ad -speak," the language of hype. Consumers see the half-truth of hype as a fact of life and they ignore it in greater numbers every day. Our society is suffering from time-poverty, so we're looking for experts we can trust. Does your advertising convince your customers they can trust you? Today's customers have had a lifetime of experience sifting the truth from a world of hype and empty promises. Your customers are already trying to figure out the downside. Why not just tell them? It's the best possible way to protect you from the backlash when they finally figure it out for themselves. Here is an advertisement from an air conditioning and heating company that hits the nail on the head: "We install the same units and charge the same prices as everyone else. The difference is that we're actually going to show up when we said we would. Always on time, or you don't pay a dime. Seriously. If we aren't there within the exact hour we told you we were coming, you pay nothing. Whatever you need is FREE. No charge. Sorry we were late. We are really sorry. One Hour Heat and Air understands that time is money. Your time. Our money."

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