You Can Afford TV Commercials (But Should You)

Not too long ago, we mentioned the shotgun versus the sniper approach to advertising: The idea that it can be better to target your potential customer by speaking directly to them than by blanketing a community hoping to turn a stranger.

In either case, you can go after big game without spending all your capital. A service that helps is Spot Runner

They offer any potential advertiser a series of templated ads that can be customized to fit specific advertising needs, then allow the advertiser to place those ads in discounted locations within their targeted television markets.

So now you can afford to make an place a television ad. If only there was some way to evaluate that ad's effectiveness. . .

"Kill Your Darlings" - Making Creative Ads Work

In writing courses, you'll hear the phrase "kill your darlings," and often wonder why you're supposed to do away with the things you care for most.

The phrase has less to do with how you view your pets, children or relatives, and more to do with the way that once you fall in love with an idea, you can't look at it objectively.

You've probably seen an ad that just makes no sense. Why shoot a hamster out of a cannon in a Superbowl commercial, in order to promote a web-hosting service?

The concept of "kill your darlings" is one that's important to keep in mind when developing new creative advertising. You want to remember that no matter how cool/fun/interesting your concept may be, that if it doesn't move the potential customer closer to doing business with you, you're wasting your money.

You may think that having a half-naked model in the middle of an intersection is a great visual, but it'd take some work to get that image to bring people into your accounting business.

Great creative is the combination of cool ideas and effective ideas.

And of course, when you're ready to measure that effectiveness, there's always AdSymetrix.

Location, etc. etc.

The old real estate joke - that never seems to get funny - says that only three things matter when buying or selling property: location, location, location.

And sad as that warhorse of a joke is, there's truth to be found in it. The same thing happens with advertising. You want to make sure that the ads you place are in the same location as the people who are most likely to respond to them. Finding that meeting point of your ads and your potential customers is one of the biggest challenges you'll face.

Set aside the topic of what the ad says because we've got plenty of time to get into that later. The thing to think about today is where your perfectly crafted ad should go to generate the best results.

Look at your own life. Think about where you go and what you do and how you find out about new products. Do you see a billboard about a radio station as you're driving around town? Notice all those debt consolidation commercials on television during the day? The full page ads in the Wall Street Journal just before you get to the stock pages? Each ad mentioned was placed there specifically because the location met the audience.

But even then, it's a bit of smoke and mirrors. Who's to say that the person watching Jerry Springer in the afternoon isn't a wealthy aficionado of daytime television, or that the radio station on the billboard can't be heard by people driving by that billboard or that the only people who opened that page of the WSJ were making paper hats. What's needed is a way to test the efficiency of these ads. To give them a way to tell the audience about the product in the ad, but also a way of telling the advertiser who saw the ad and was moved to make contact from it.

And again, that's where we come in.

AdSymetrix is helping to bridge that gap, and in doing so helping you - the advertiser - make better decisions about where the location of your ad placements.

Shotgun or Sniper

No, this isn't a post about how to attack your competition. Instead, it's about how targeting your advertising makes for more effective advertising.

AdSymetrix is based on the idea that the more you know about your advertising audience, the more you'll be able to sell to that audience. So that rather than just running around town throwing flyers at unsuspecting strangers, you're able to speak directly to the people most likely to respond to your message.

We think it's better to target your potential customers. Directly going after them where they are most likely to be. This is a sniper approach. Focusing on the best location for that single most effective ad that easily converts to a sale.

You can, however, do the shotgun approach. Throw a bunch of messages out into the public and hope that someone is hit. It's the difference between hiring someone to talk to your potential customer or buying an ad on the superbowl, hoping to get the same message out.

So when you see an article like this "TV Spots for Small E-Commerce Firms" in a recent inc magazine, you have to remember that just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Yellow Pages: Not Our Caller

Yellow Pages: Not Our Caller
from cincinnati enquirer

Small businesses have been targeted in a new advertising scam. An unsolicited advertising salesperson will call and suggest that the business sign up for the local Yellow Pages' online directory. Seemingly, this is a fine idea. Small businesses should have some kind of entry into the local Yellow Pages' website. However, in the case of ads solicited by NetOpus.net, the ads come at a heavy price.

Usually, the local Yellow Pages will include all of its listings in the online directory. This increases the value of the online site to potential users, thus increasing the likelihood of advertisers choosing to pay for more elaborate ads. The only group you should talk to about getting into that particular directory is publisher of that directory. NetOpus set up a foreign call bank to push their services, created an opt-out-only contract and had all associated charges added to the small business owners phone bill. If the NetOpus bill wasn't paid, the phone lines would be shut off.

And in the end, none of the ads sold via NetOpus were included in the online directory.

5 Things You Shouldn't Spend Money on When Starting a Business

5 Things You Shouldn't Spend Money on When Starting a Business
from instigator blog
Good advice on how to keep more money in your pocket until you have people putting money in your hands.

In-Game Ads Burrow Deeper

In Game Ads Burrow Deeper
from wired news
TiVo has helped to kill the concept of passive ad watching. You don't have to sit and wait for the commercial to end before you get to enjoy your show, now you can fast-forward through those pesky ads. So, advertisers are looking for other ways to get their messages before your eyes. One of the more popular ways is to place their ads inside the entertainment you're watching. From the cell phone your favorite character uses to the bilboards behind the gun-toting car-theif you're playing on your PS2, ads are showing up in unexpected areas.

Advertising versus Branding

You know an ad when you see one. Either it's in a magazine, or on a bus stop, or above the article you're trying to read online or on a t-shirt, or interrupting your favorite television show. The message is there to remind you that a certain business exists, and that it may have a product or service that you want to buy or use. It's a stake in the ground that shows who you are and what you do.

But it's just that. A single stake that shows one aspect of your company.

Branding is different. A lot of people see the word 'brand' and think either of what happens to cattle or of a particular type of soda. Branding is more inherent to your business than you probably realize. An ad will tell your customer what you're selling, your brand tells the customer who you are.

Think about a friend of yours. You know, when thinking about this friend, how they're going to act, what their going to do in given situations and what you can expect from them over the course of your friendship. Some of your friends you'd feel perfectly comfortable asking delicate favors of, others would cause larger problems.

If the personality and character of your friend helps you make decisions about what you do and don't do with them, then the brand of your business helps your potential customers make decisions about whether or not to do business with you.

Brand strategy is the simple idea of defining how you want your customers to view your company and then aligning your business to that definition.

Advertising stems from branding. Once you know who you are, you can start talking to people about what you do. By understanding your company's character and personality, you can more clearly explain to your customers why they should decide to do business with you.

Each ad you place needs to not only place that stake in the ground explaining your business proposition, it also needs to evoke and build your brand. That way, the money you spend on your ad not only helps that sales cycle, but also helps create ongoing relationships with your customers.