subject: Get More Out Of Your Advertising Dollars: Advertise Smartly [print this page] Ever since the 1920s advertising and marketing has become a major force in the economy. As people begin to afford more, and as producers scurry against one another to get more customers, advertising has become, for most companies, the sharpest sword in the armory.
If you are launching a new product, or trying to infuse new life into old ones, then you will need proper advertising punch to spur new sales and consumer awareness. At this point, your success could very well depend on how well you put your advertising dollars to work.
If you are looking for pointers as you start your advertising strategy, then look at the following.
1. Know Your Product Just throwing money at every advertising opportunity would not be wise. The best thing to do is to know your product and know the market you are trying to reach. Then you can think about how you can put two and two together.
If you havent done so, create a SWOT analysis that is, make a matrix of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your product. This will give you a good idea of what your product is good at, and what it is bad at, what opportunities lay ahead in the future, and what things seem to threaten its success.
When you have done this, you will be better equipped to handle your products advertising because you now know how to best magnify your products strengths and minimize its weakness.
2. Know Your Market If you do not understand your target market, you will never be able to successfully sell your product to them. Understanding they desires and buying patterns will help you maximize your product placement to increase the probability that they purchase it.
Most advertising agencies study this so that they can plan their advertising plans to take advantage of this information. They may even do studies to verify such. This is a very handy technique when starting an aggressive marketing and advertising strategy.
Knowing your market will give you ample opportunity to focus your efforts on that segment of the market. This is good because you are able to channel all your resources on a segment that is most likely to purchase your product, as opposed to shotgunning your advertising efforts over too wide a spectrum of the market.
3. Choose Your Media With the advent of the information age, there has been a rise in the number of media available to market a product. In the older days, you had to settle for brochures, flyers, billboards, and newspaper ads for media mileage. This was, and is, a very effective method at getting respondents and product recognition. However, by todays standards, they tend to be expensive.
Today marketing and advertising can be accomplished by a plethora of methods. You could use television, and the internet to spread the word about your product. While television is still prohibitively expensive, it is very effective, especially if your company is on the rise.
The internet remains an outsiders favorite because of its low cost and ability to generate intense interest and consumer awareness. This is a great way to increase awareness of ones product and can be used to great effect without much of the worry attached to other media.
Conclusion
While advertising can markedly increase ones products mileage, if done improperly, it could lead to wasted money instead. A proper marketing plan is important to use this resource better.