With all the focus on digital advertising, it’s commonplace for business owners, especially Gen Y and Millennial entrepreneurs, to diminish the importance of traditional advertising resources.
In rural communities, small towns and even mid-size cities, traditional advertising still moves the needle for many consumers. The printed page lends weight to your product as your potential customer not only sees your offer but physically holds it in their hand. In the ephemeral, chaotic online universe, out-of-sight, out-of-mind is a quick click away. But consumers are able to re-discover your ad on the page, perhaps relocate a coupon they clipped and even can hand off their copy to an even more motivated consumer.
Although traditional media boasts its own unique selling points and can be very effective, no form of marketing rewards a lazy concept or bad execution. So before you invest or re-invest in traditional advertising, make sure your imagery and messaging works for 2018. Here are nine tips for those diving into traditional advertising for their brand.
Tip #1: Design or Die
Top notch design is one of the keys to success in the traditional media space. In a newspaper, your ad is competing for the eye’s attention with compelling news stories, photographs and other advertisements, which all may occupy the same page as your promotion. So your ad’s design is key to winning a glance from potential customers.
Take a good long look at your proposed ad. Does the layout abide by design principles that increase engagement? Have you chosen a compelling central image to grab the audience? Is your logo the right size? Is there a good balance between image and text? Is the font powerful and expressive of your brand? Do you have the right placement for the headline, images and text? Each and every one of these design questions is important, even crucial to the success of your ad.
If you fail to develop an effective visual vocabulary, your business risks coming across as amateur hour, which can defeat the whole purpose of marketing to new consumers (i.e. it’s better to make no impression on a new client than a bad impression). If you’re not naturally a visual person or aren’t willing to take an online course in basic design principles, consider hiring someone else to do the job for you. Even a modest media buy will be completely wasted if the design is so ineffective that it invokes negative or neutral associations with your brand.
Tip #2: Second Person Singular
You should be writing your ad in second person singular. Forgot where you stashed away your 9th grade grammar book? Don’t worry. The opening sentence and question of this paragraph were both written in second person singular, so this should give you a good example. The ‘you’ pronoun employed in second person singular makes you feel as if you’re being addressed personally, even though you’re actually across the digital divide.
Why is second person singular best for ad copy? If I were to write the ad in first person singular, I’d just go on and on about how much I love the ad and the product and then it’s all about me, me, me. A third person singular approach might come across as cold and distant, because no reader or author is directly referenced, implying that a big corporate entity wrote the ad rather than a human being. But you know better than to use either of those forms and are smart enough to stick to second person singular to craft ads that directly address your audience.
Tip #3: Identifying the Right Traditional Advertising Strategy
With traditional media, like a newspaper, you’ll need to decide when to run your ad and how big the ad should be. Are you an underdog political candidate with a bold, provocative statement? Maybe it’s better to take out a full-page ad on one day to really strike a conversation. Are you promoting a restaurant that offers a special deal every Tuesday? Maybe you should buy ads on Tuesday and be consistent about it until everybody in town remembers your “Two-for-One Tuesday” offer. Are you a realtor on a budget? Maybe it’s better to have a small ad that runs daily in the real estate classifieds so that by the time your potential client decides to buy a home, your name is the one they automatically recall, perhaps without remembering why it comes to mind! Think through not only the ad itself, but how to prioritize your dollars in terms of a media buy.
Tip #4: Track Your Progress
One aspect of digital marketing that appeals to ad agencies and entrepreneurs alike is its powerful ability to track results and clicks. But just because you decide to go with traditional media doesn’t mean you can’t gather data about your campaign. It just requires some forethought, resource allocation and a little bit of creativity.
A newspaper ad can promote its own unique discount code or an assigned, specialized url so that you know traffic derived from the traditional media ad or its resulting word of mouth. The same strategy can be employed with a phone number. Set up a new number through Google Voice that’s exclusive to your traditional media campaign and you’ll be able to tell quickly and easily how effective the ad was in generating a response. It will also relieve you and your consumer from the sometimes annoying question, “How did you hear about us?” If you plan ahead and cleverly assign discount codes and url’s tailored to each ad….you already know how they found you.
Top #5: Play the Long Game
If you’re advertising in a local weekly newspaper, odds are you are getting in front of the same potential clients week after week. That provides a great opportunity to reveal many facets of your business that might compel consumers to use your services. You might start out succinctly describing your service with a great, eye-catching image. The next week, perhaps your ad focuses on an endorsement of that service. The third week, perhaps you offer a discount code for the service. The fourth week, you mix it up and take up a full-page ad (rather than a quarter page) that lists all the ways your service makes life easier for clients. By creating a long-range marketing plan, you maximize your chances of entering the headspace of your audience.
Tip #6: Role Play
It’s always worthwhile to reconsider your ad from the point of view of someone in your audience. One fun exercise is to act out a scene with a co-worker where one of you pretends to be someone in your target audience while the other one shows off your great new ad. In character as Joe the Customer, ask questions about the product and express your opinion about the marketing. You’ll be surprised what comes up. Other than a good laugh at acting a little silly, this exercise might show you that you’ve completely ignored information that Joe the Customer really wants to know or – even more common – that you’ve loaded the ad with information that the audience doesn’t need. This is also a way of avoiding one of the biggest traps in advertising. There’s a difference between what interests YOU and what interests your audience. So….place yourself in the shoes of your potential clients and see if that doesn’t teach you something about what your ad needs to communicate.
Tip #7: Let Others Brag About You
“Three out of four dentists agree…” We’ve all seen endorsements used in advertising and here’s why. It works. For newer businesses, it can be vulnerable to let go of control and allow an endorsement do the talking, but the credibility that comes from having outsiders speak on behalf of your brand is immense. But not all endorsements are equal! An endorsement accompanied by a picture is generally more powerful, especially if your product is something that can make use of a before/after picture. And let’s face it, some customers are better at phrasing endorsements than others. So begin gathering endorsements months or weeks before your campaign so that you have several choices. If you can only choose one endorsement quote for your ad and have two or three good choices, consider the influence of the endorser and go with the person more likely to move the needle for your business.
Tip #8: Cross-Platform Doesn’t Always Mean Digital
When considering traditional media advertising, don’t forget that the weekly newspaper isn’t your only option. Sometimes, a coordinated campaign across several forms of “old school” will serve your business best. Perhaps the day your ad drops in the paper, you should reinforce the message through a local billboard. Or, if your newspaper ad reveals a new tagline, maybe it would be effective to make a memorable jingle out of it and roll it out with local radio spots. Sometimes, television stations will work out favorable deals for ads, especially if you’re a first-time advertiser. Some television stations will even shoot a 30-second ad for you, if you buy a large enough block of ads. Just remember, again, that if you’re going to expand to billboards or radio/tv spots to make sure your messaging and visuals are effective enough to justify the media buy.
Tip #9: Don’t Forget Digital
What?!??! I thought this article was focused strictly on traditional advertising. Any overall advertising solution must take into account a cross-media strategy. Often, traditional media outlets, like your weekly newspaper, will work with you to come up with a package that includes both digital and traditional outlets. So don’t leave opportunities on the table. Ask. Do I also receive any digital presence for purchasing this ad? The publication might be willing to highlight your product online in addition to the paper version. If they do, be sure to consider what adjustments are needed to maximize the effectives of both the digital and print version.