Over the past few weeks and months – whether planning for 2017 or while you were watching a recent American Football sporting event – you might have been thinking about ads. Maybe not the $5 million ones (ouch!), but perhaps something a little more affordable to give your business a nice boost here in Q1.
But hold your horses for a second – we’re sharing today why buying just one ad isn’t a good idea, and some things to think about before you put your ad budget to work.
#1) What’s your strategy?
Before you spend a dime on advertising, make sure that you’ve got a tried and true communications strategy in place. What are your goals? Who are you trying to reach? Where are you most likely to find them? What channels are you considering? What are the steps your audience takes from prospect to paying customer? What’s the one thing you want them to do upon seeing an ad?
Take some time to answer those questions – chances are you’ll find that your ad strategy needs some tweaking – and you need more than just one ad to accomplish your goals.
#2) You can’t tell a great story in one placement.
With the rise of content marketing, storytelling in advertising has found a great home. Prospects are generally willing to invest a little more time for more value. And we all love a great story.
Our ads should share our story in ways that allow our prospects to become part of the narrative. And that’s tough to do in one placement. Instead, build a calendar of placements that allow you to share elements of your story, your history and your future, and how your target audience can be part of it all.
#3) It’s tough to learn anything from a single placement.
A single placement doesn’t allow for any message or image testing, and you’re very dependent on distribution or traffic at the moment of that one ad. A wider calendar allows you to test messages, imagery, various placements and more, so you can take action on what you learn!
As you build out your advertising calendar for the year, keep these tips in mind. They’ll help ensure that your budget is well-spent, and your ads are well-received – and hopefully quite successful at accomplishing your business goals!
