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Does Your Brand Get the Right Amount of Advertising?

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night-692261_640Depending on the size of your business, you may or may not have a tight advertising budget.

No matter where your budget falls, you hopefully know that advertising (and marketing for that matter) is of major importance in your ability to spread your brand’s word.

Minus advertising, you then have to rely on word-of-mouth from satisfied customers. Although such advertising can work to a degree, getting your brand’s name, phone number, website address etc. out there for countless eyes to see is imperative.

Keeping that in mind, is this the year you up your advertising ante, looking to get added bang for your dollar?

If so, determining just where those ads will be placed is the crucial decision at hand.

Where Do You Get the Most Eyes and Ears?

Knowing where you are likely to get the best results for your advertising efforts will, of course, play into how you go about promoting your brand.

On the one hand, you could allocate more funds towards the web and mobile devices, especially given how many consumers use both to browse for and ultimately buy goods and services.

On the other hand, have you opted in recent years (unless of course, you are just opening up a business) for billboard advertising for your brand? If not, look below to the different advantages it offers.

They include:

  • Constant 24/7 exposure until your placement runs out;
  • Competitive prices depending on which advertising agency you go with;
  • Advertisement placement where you may not have direct competition from others in your industry.

Lastly, billboard advertising gives you the opportunity to get it right the first time around, typically with little chance for error.

As an example, how many times have you seen a brand advertise its products or services in a newspaper or magazine, only to see a misspelled word or two? When this occurs, the brand has to ask for a correction. By then, the damage may already have been done.

Even though the brand itself may very well not be responsible for the gaffe (in many cases, the individual at the newspaper or magazine typing in ad copy is responsible), many consumers may pause and giggle about the mistake.

In many cases, the brand has left an impression, one which will not exactly win it lots of new customers.

Where Should You Locate Your Billboard Message?

As important as your brand’s message is with billboard advertising, where exactly should your ad be placed?

Where that billboard message goes and how it is designed will, of course, be determined by several factors.

They include:

  • Whether you want in town or leading into or out of town. Your message will obviously play a role in this.
  • Do you want your billboard near a director competitor’s billboard and/or their office or store?
  • Are you looking for a rotating billboard message, one that is lit in the evening hours, and a message that offers imagery of someone from your company or a local model or actor?

Lastly, determine whether or not you want to add your website address to the billboard or not.

In today’s digital age, it is almost a surprise when companies do not add a website listing to a billboard.

When people are passing by (typically in vehicles); it can be difficult to jot down a company phone number. Your company’s web address should prove much easier for the consumer to remember.

In order for your brand to get the right amount of publicity, billboard ads can do wonders for your business.

With that in mind, are you building more recognition for your brand this year?

Photo credit: Pixabay

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers business topics on the web.

 

Irresistible Value Proposition … Won’t You Always Wonder What Might Have Been?

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The Proposition of the Old Spice Super Bowl Man

blockquote>Designers of the former type loved the theater of their demos. They loved an audience. They loved performing. Designers of the latter kind of demo preferred participants to spectators. They wanted to watch people having fun with their inventions instead of putting on a show. Their demos weren’t props — they were playgrounds. — Let Your Customers Persuade Themselves

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Both can work. Yet both depend on how well the features of the product are communicated in the demonstrations. These days allowing people to interact can have limitations … such as getting the people and the product into the same real time space.

Either way, could bring a customer to find what we’re selling is remarkable and worth purchasing. But neither will necessarily about the irresistible value proposition … that we, our brand, or our product knocks all competition out of the field.

For that to be so, we need to add one further idea that this ad from Old Spice does beautifully.

The message is in every frame:

  • he gets it — seamless, flawless work.
  • he sees you need — heart.
  • and you’ll have getting things done with him.

Did you notice how it doesn’t seem self-promotional or pitchy? Despite the humorous over-stating of his abilities. Imagine just walking into meeting and talking about who you are, what you brand and your products do that the others can’t. When we are fully expressed in our message it looks like that.

Simply stated it sounds like … “Work with all of the rest, they aren’t me.”

Look at them. Look at me.
Look at them. Look at me.
Won’t you always wonder what might have been, if you choose other than me?

A true value proposition sets you apart from the rest of the world.

And delivers on that promise consistently.

What’s your irresistible value proposition?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want help with your value proposition? !!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Register Now!! for sobcon-vmc

When we want to get a customer interested in ourselves, our brand, or our products … common wisdom has been that we can sell them — give them a demo and tell them — or we can let them sell themselves, give them a problem and let them use the product to solve it.

Measuring What We Care About Is Not the Same as Caring

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Does It Have to Be So Complicated?

Yesterday my day started with this lovely message.

chislett@lizstrauss your talk of “visible authenticy” & more present conversations through reflection is prompting me to tune in to you more often.

Thank you, Peter. I write this for you.

What’s So Hard About Putting a Heart in What We Do?

Today at Ad-Tech, I heard a lot about data and leveraging the digital space. The word insight came up often, but like a buzz word, not like an idea.

Let me say I believe in ROI. Nothing is a good idea if it doesn’t sell. I get that. Profits make progress. I like to pay the rent and pass out raises.

I heard words like engagement. I saw professionals trying too hard to micro analyze behavior.

It’s not that hard to explain people.

Human nature hasn’t changed and neither have the priorities required for successfully conveying your message. — David Ogilvy

So much talking today sounded like broadcasting …

  • Talking about how to engage consumers.
  • Talking about how to measure conversation.
  • Talking about hopes to get “consumers” talking to their “peers.”

It was stunning that everyone seemed to have forgotten that consumers are people.

People talk to friends and family, not peers. People give meaning to what people do. Your brand, your campaign, or your engagement does not.

No one cares what you do or know until we know that you care.


Measuring what we care about is not the same as caring about us.

Surely you know that.

1110700_heart

Can you find the heart in the data?
Why does it have to be so complicated?

I make connections …
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz to be present.

Got Clients? Advertising Is for Boring Businesses

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Think About It . . .

“GET” STICKY!

I’ve been hearing myself repeat the same thought lately. It’s something that Andy Sernovitz said when he spoke last May at SOBCon07. Andy knows a few things about what people talk about. He wrote the book, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. What he said was . . .

Advertising is for boring businesses.

Andy was making the point that if our product or service was compelling, interesting, people would already be telling each other to check it out.

In his book, Word of Mouth Marketing, Andy explains that to people talking about us and our stuff, we need to know what people talk about. We talk about three kinds of things.

    We talk about other people and their stuff.

    We talk because it makes us feel smart, important, and helpful.

    We want to feel part of a bigger group.

Talking to each other is what we do . . . on a regular basis.

Interesting, exciting, satisfying, compelling products that do what they promise are sticky. They get us talking. We share experiences that we find remarkable and defining.

Obviously Andy’s talk was anything but boring. Here I am telling you about it 5 months later. He doesn’t need advertising. His message stuck with me.

What was the last product or service you talked about? What about it made you want to tell the story?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

High Times Shopping In The Sky Mall

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Sometimes I Don’t Get Marketing

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are some things I just don’t get.

One Way to CC It logo

For example I don’t get most things that have to do with home decorating. When Christmas rolls around my wife will take some classy looking ornaments and, say, arrange them on a side table over a snazzy table cloth with some glass bead strings snaked around the table.

It looks great! But I never would have thought to do that on my own. To my way of thinking ornaments belonged on a tree. Arranging them festively on a table would never have occurred to me.

This sort of thing has become a running joke in our marriage. We’ll see something along those lines and she will turn to me. Do you get that? You don’t get that do you?

Nope.

It looks great and all. But that someone would have taken the time and effort? Don’t get it.

I’m really OK with not getting some things.

I get most things about business. But there are some things about the whole marketing thing that I just make me shake my head. Nope. Don’t get that either. [Read more…]

How to Undo Reverse-Wrong Zig-Zag Marketing in 5 Easy Steps

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I’ve Been Thinking about . . .

Personal Branding logo

. . . about a conversation in college.

“Susie B., ” I said. “I envy you.”

“Oh, really? Why?”

“You’re the kind of person who knows exactly where you’re going. You move through the alphabet from A to B to C and so on. Me? I have to go from A all the way to Z and then I land on B just like you. Then I’m off again to Z before I can find my way back to C again.”

. . . about the interview question.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

The right answer is NOT “It depends.”

. . . about a recent comment from a friend.

“I’ve never seen you do anything in a straight line. You’ll always be such fun to watch.”

On good days, I think of it as creative, flexible, and original. On not so good ones, I think of it as chaotic, undisciplined, and unrefined. I’ve learned you go with what you got — manage to your strengths and shore up your weaknesses.

For me that means, stopping often to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

This time it’s serious. I’ve been doing Reverse-Wrong Zig-Zag Marketing.

No wonder folks don’t understand.

If you’re having a problem defining your brand, turn the page and read on.
[Read more…]