Is your advertising working for you?
Test and measure all your advertising. This is very important otherwise you will not know if it is working or not. You need to know how many people have responded to it, how many have converted into a sale and what the sale is worth to you.
Place your advert on the right hand page. There will always be a higher response rate if your advert is placed on the right hand page. If it’s not a full-page advertisement it must be as high up and to the right as possible. Your eyes are always drawn to the right hand side of the page when you flick through a newspaper or magazine. Just look at the type of businesses who advertise on a right hand page – they are almost always the larger companies who know what they are doing.
> See our Advertising Design Samples
Top tips and value ideas for saving money on advertising
If it’s not working then STOP IT! This will probably save you thousands of pounds! If you can’t accurately measure if your advertising is working, then you must stop it! It doesn’t matter where you advertise, you have to know for sure if it’s working or not . Whether it’s in magazines, newspapers, on posters, billboards, even taxis and buses. Don’t fall into the trap of running your ads because you feel you ought to or just because your competitors are advertising using the same media. They might not know if it’s working for them either!
Set up a system. Ask people who contact you for the first time where they heard about you. This can be automated to a certain degree – you can set up a separate telephone number specific to each advert you test. If you are directing people to your website, create a specific landing page that only the people who see your advert will visit. You can use website analytic tools to measure how many people visit this page, unique to your advertisement, and see very quickly if it has been successful or not. Again, if you’re not getting the response to make it pay, then stop throwing your money away!
Don’t pay the full rate for advertising. The sales person selling you the space will know that you will always ask for a reduction in the price. You can always negotiate, especially when the deadline for placing the advert is looming. The sales teams have always got targets to meet and will be more flexible with price closer to the copy deadline.
Don’t depend on it! Do not rely just advertsing for the success of your business. If you get it right it can work wonders for you, but generally advertising is one of the least effective ways of getting new business, especially if you’re not sure what you’re doing. Once you’ve found an advertising formula that works for you, do more of it! Begin rolling it out on a bigger and bigger scale, measuring the results all the time to keep it on track.
Before we put pen to paper for any advertising design project the best way for us to help you at the start is to understand as much as possible about you and your business. Also, we like to learn about the relationship you have with your customers as well as the products and services you sell. We want to find out about your competitors too so we know who you’re up against.
Do your advertising campaigns work hard enough to deliver the response you deserve?
We have helped local businesses in and around Milton Keynes, Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire with advertising design solutions that help deliver the returns they can measure. At Palmiero Design we will develop the concepts and take care of design and artwork for any advertising medium; from printed newspapers, magazines and posters to internet advertising (and pay–per–click campaigns).
> See our Advertising Design Samples
