Advertising Agents Southampton

10 QUESTIONS TO ANSWER BEFORE YOU ADVERTISE
Acting as the marketing department for a number of clients I realise how often your business must be approached with apparently un-missable opportunities to advertise in this magazine, that newspaper or increasingly now online – on directory sites and other people’s websites.

But before you commit to what could be an expensive marketing investment you really should stop – and go through this set of questions to satisfy yourself that you really are going to get the best return on that investment.

1. Who reads the publication or refers to the website?
Ask about the target audience – there’s no point advertising top end furniture in a newspaper that is read by people on a low income or listing your specialist consultancy firm on a site read by consumers.

Newspapers and many magazines will be able to share profile data with you – by way of the age, sex, socio economic grouping – for their readership. Websites can provide less data – but if you review the site yourself you’ll be able to get a feel for who you think it’s targeted at and whether that matches your target audience.

2. How many people read this media?
Newspapers, national magazines and commercial radio stations should be able to provide audited readership and listening figures for you. Even local publications will be able to tell you their circulation figures.

If you are considering advertising on-line on a website, ask about the number of unique visitors they get each month and for any further breakdown they can give you on visitor numbers. Don’t be fooled by being told how many ‘hits’ they get. This is a nonsense figure which counts every web page visited whether by a real person or a search engine spider.

Failure to supply you with meaningful readership figures should ring alarm bells.

3. Have I got something worth offering?
The most successful advertising, unless you have the luxury of being able to afford advertising purely to raise brand awareness which of course most smaller businesses can’t, is an advert that has a compelling offer for the reader. It might be a price or promotional offer, but it could be that you are offering a unique product or service. Think hard about what will arrest your audience on the page.

4. What will my call to action be?
What do you want people to do as a result of reading the advert? Do you want them to call you, visit your showroom, request a quote, click through to your website - what?

Be clear on your call to action and perhaps even get others to review your ad to make sure the call to action is as clear to them as it is to you.

5. What do I want from the ad (leads, sales, downloads)?
This is critical if you are to judge the effectiveness of your advertising. Do you expect to make a sale straight off the page – or will your advert simply generate a lead which will need to...