Failure To Launch: Part Two

I have expanded on the four rules guiding the decisions around the advertising process. If you work your way through this process using these basic principles you will have a much better idea on which medium(s) to use and the kind of message that will resonate with your audience.

Understand The People Who Buy Your Products or Services: To help you make the right decisions you need to understand people who buy your products, note that I used the term “people” … not clients, customers or consumers…but people! Understanding what people want, how they will use your product, what is motivating their buying decisions, how external market forces are affecting them, can help frame your advertising decisions.

Develop Clever Product Incentives: Look at the features and benefits in your products and match those against why your clients are buying your products and how they use them to develop some sales incentives. These can take the form of cost reductions on volume, additional features added at the regular price, packaging the product with another to create value. Using a unique and surprising message to deliver the news about your incentives can enhance the response of people who buy your products.

Recognize Strengths and Weaknesses: this process is often called a SWAT analysis but a simplified version is to simply recognize what the level of help you need and what you can contribute effectively. Delegating advertising decisions, allows companies to improve the quality of decision making as it relates to advertising. Leaders can sometimes be too close to a process and rely on statistics rather than a deeper understanding of the buying decision - as an emotionally driven process.

Multi-Channel Advertising program: Using a variety of mediums to reach the people who buy your products or services is important. While there may be a core advertising strategy; say like using web based marketing through e-mails, banners, social networks etc.; this should be complemented by a broader initiative that includes some of the more traditional methods of advertising. Repetition creates greater awareness and results in better sales.

The effectiveness of advertising is often defined by its emotional impact on audiences. The steps I have outlined, offer a means by which you can set a frame work for developing an effective advertising campaign but keep in mind that an advertising campaign’s success is most often defined by the budget you allocate to a campaign.