BLOG: More Advertising Basics: How To Stand Out

If you're advertising a product or service, ask for action.

If you want people to request a free brochure, say so. Tell the reader to contact you for more information, or drop by and see you. An ad is what you use when you can't afford to have a salesperson reach all your customers and prospects. A good salesperson will always ask for the order.

In industrial advertising, the function of an ad is to create interest or awareness. Hopefully, it will also lead to buyer interest in gaining more information the next step in the selling process.

In retail marketing, most ads should help build store traffic and increase on-shelf "turns." If you don't have a good location, you have to offer far more incentives and advertise much more than if you did. Or, you can employ some guerrilla tactics where you can get "rub-off" value from special promotions done in conjunction with larger, better known firms who DO have good locations or better awareness.

This is one of the secrets of smart retailing you don't HAVE to be the Lone Ranger and spend lots on promotion if you use the right tactics. Often, a single suggestion from a small business consultant can mean thousands of dollars more a year in additional sales.

In selecting advertising print media, what you pay per thousand readers is important, but not everything. Targeted marketing is important, too. You pay more per person reached, but, considering the demographics and psychographics of the highly-qualified audience that you reach, it is often worth it.

In print advertising, it is sometimes more important to reach readers with a whopper-impact, huge ad once in a while-and then go "dark" for a period to offset the cost than it is to hit them daily or weekly with the same small , hard-to-find ad that you've been running forever.

If you have questions, or need help with your marketing plan (You DO have one written out, right? .), please contact me: Bill@Koelzer.com