B Squared Ads

Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

You’ve spent the money, you’ve generated traffic (or sales) and now you want to know what worked and what didn’t in terms of your advertising dollars. So now what?

In general, we advise clients to use traffic reports as a guide — not gospel — when evaluating media plans, as not all media is created equal.

For instance, magazine advertising is generally used for image building and branding. If you didn’t get a large response of people reporting that they saw your ad in one of the various magazine pubs you used, don’t be surprised.

Newspaper advertising is highly ranked, because people tend to report the reason for their visit (or sale) based on the last thing they saw or what they had seen most often. Since newspaper advertising is run frequently, people remember the ads more often.

Also, people may have seen or heard your television ad, radio spot or saw your banner ad, but if it wasn’t the last thing they remember it most likely will not register as the impetus for their action. This also explains why signage is most often sited as a traffic generator. Typically, advertising signage is the last thing a respondent sees before taking action.

Another consideration is that repeat customers may claim the reason for their purchase or visit is because they are already clients. Keep in mind that your radio ad, television ad, web banner, email, signage, school flyer’s, etc. may have prompted their most recent action.

Advertising works best when it is part of a wide media mix, enabling you to reach as many people as possible in as many ways as possible. This is why your entire advertising budget should never be allocated to a single medium. (And yes, that includes the web.)

Your brand is your image, a reflection of you. If you’re known for your pearls and cashmere sweaters, you wouldn’t suddenly dye your hair orange, pierce your nose and start to wear camouflage. It doesn’t mesh with your image.

Likewise, you shouldn’t mess with your brand. In fact, you should take your brand as far as you possibly can. Companies such as American Express are known for sending a voluminous book to advertising agencies outlining brand standards and stipulations, ensuring that every time a customer sees the American Express brand it looks the same. In this way, you guard the brand with your life.

Your brand is the hardest thing to establish and the easiest thing to dilute. This doesn’t have to mean that your brand’s logo should always be shown in red, white and blue. It can appear in black and white and it can have different variations and configurations. But in whatever way those features manifest themselves, they need to be utilized consistently. The font shouldn’t change. The PMS colors should remain consistent across the board, from Your website to your billboard and to your packaging and your eblast. Think of Nike’s swoosh. It is universally recognized. Why? Because the brand never varies from one usage to the next.

Similarly, your brand logo should automatically communicate a single message of who you are and what you stand for.

An ad campaign won’t tell you it’s past its sell date. It won’t grow cobwebs, sprout mold or start to smell.
In other words, it’s up to you — the business owner — to decide when a campaign has run its course.

Even the best crafted advertising message will begin to grow stale as new events and cultural shifts change consumers’ buying habits. In today’s 24/7 environment that can happen pretty quickly.

Even so, a well-designed campaign can still last two to three years before its message begins to sour. When changing ad campaigns there are many things to consider, such as:

1. If you find traffic is starting to fall off, the original message may not be resonating with consumers. It could be a matter of revamping the advertising message or taking a harder look at what you’re offering.
2. There may be changes in the marketplace which results in your messaging missing the mark. Is your current  relevant to the current market? For example: Real estate used to be sold based on emotional appeal. Today emotions take a back seat to dollars and cents; hence, you need a dollars and cents message.
3. Color schemes and graphic designs tend to change with the times. What was popular three years ago in colors and fonts may not be popular today, and the last thing you want is for your ad to look dated.

Above all, keep your eye changes in your market. Chances are, that change will force a fresh look at your advertising and marketing campaign.

Having spent the last decade working in the real estate and development industry we think we can say with some measure of certainty that the real estate tide has turned for the better throughout the state of Florida.

Just look at what’s been happening recently:

• A large developer we represent – Codina-Carr – on the East Coast launched a brand new community consisting of single family, estate and townhomes in January of 2010. With initial price points in the upper $200s, Monterra has sold 400 homes to date and is averaging traffic of 300 people a week through the doors.
• We launched a new community last July called Central Park. Developed by Neal Communities, this was the first new home project in Sarasota’s Lakewood Ranch in years. Price points of just $120,000 helped attract over 4,000 people opening weekend and in just one year, more than 125 homes have been sold and closed.
• Closer to home, B Squared Advertising has worked with Moraya Bay since January of last year. This 72-unit beachfront condominium project sold out in 2006 only to have more than half its contracts fall out at time of closing in 2009. Since then, however, a new branding campaign heavy on the internet side of things has resulted in average weekly traffic over the past two seasons of 75 people and to date, more than $80 million in sales.
• Further on down the road, Vineyards is another client who reports a remarkably better sales season and recently reported that sales in the first 90 days of 2011 have surpassed those of the entire year in 2010. Not too shabby.

In light of all this activity, we definitely believe the worst is behind us and have true life experiences to back up those beliefs. So shed those blues from the last three years of a sagging real estate market. The best is yet to come.

Remember newspapers? Television and radio? Those humble staples of the mid-century have gotten plenty of grief of late as bygone utilities of a bygone age.

This became more apparent when social media took control of our networking lives, garnering a lot of credibility as an advertising medium. Suddenly no one was reading a newspaper or listening to the radio anymore – or so we were told. Anyone under the age of 30 was getting all of his or her information from the Internet, and Facebook was the means by which everyone was finding out about everything.

Well, as swiftly as that cultural turn took place, it seems another has occurred just as quickly. Or maybe the turn never really occurred in the first place because it seems members of the younger generation – get ready – are still watching TV.

Lately there’s been a lot of chatter about social media and social networking in general and the mad dash to connect via Twitter, Facebook and with blogs. (Ok, we’re guilty of this as well.) While these tools should be a part of every advertising and marketing plan, companies cannot afford to ignore traditional  advertising mediums. Recent articles have come to the conclusion that members of Gen Y, born after 1982, get their information on new products and services from TV, not the Internet.

And newspapers are the number once source of information for first-time homebuyers.

The bottom line is create a well-rounded ad and marketing program that encompasses both traditional and new forms of communication. It’s never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, not even in 2011.

There’s nothing that can level the momentum of a good company and its products more than a ludicrous ad that promises the world and doesn’t even deliver a tiny patch of grass. In today’s society, people listen when you tell the truth and tune you out when you’re not.

The loud, obnoxious pitchman approach to advertising is a method of sales that the baby boomer generation finds quite distasteful. Remember images of the medicine salesmen from the Old West? Selling their hair tonics and promising a new head of hair within days? Or a remedy for every single ailment under the sun?

That’s the kind of hard sell that will make your customers run for the hills. As another, modern day example: If you’re selling a product that promises to reduce wrinkles or fade the signs of aging, that’s one thing. If you’re selling a product that promises to make the customer look 25 years younger, that’s not only impossible, it’s unbelievable, and to some, a little insulting.

There are FTC laws regulating deceptive advertising claims; an ad, according to the FTC’s Deception Policy Statement, is deceptive if it contains a statement – or omits information that is likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances; and is “material” – that is important to a consumer’s decision to buy or use the product. In short, truth in advertising is very important in a skeptical world. Belief in your product is one of the main ways you keep customers coming back.

That’s not to say limits can’t be pushed. But you have to know when to stop. Connect with your customer on an emotional level and be as truthful and honest as you can. You’ll reap the rewards and develop a loyal following.

Billboards may look like the perfect place to wax eloquently about everything your company does. But don’t pen your great American success story just yet. In the case of billboards less is more.

Despite the size of the canvas, the fewest words have the most dramatic impact. There is a tendency for people to think of a billboard in the same manner they do a print ad. The result? A big mess with everything in it but the kitchen sink. In fact, there should be no more than seven to eight words on a billboard.

Because you only have a little over two seconds to capture a driver’s attention,
billboard advertising should not be used as the primary engine of an advertising strategy. They’re more of a recall medium, designed to piggyback on an overall print, broadcast or online advertising campaign. The billboard needs to be a part of a family of advertising mediums. If ‘Joe Consumer’ reads a full-page ad in the newspaper and, as he’s barreling down I-75, sees a billboard carrying the same – or similar – message, something will click. And if the message is delivered well, it will etch a lasting place in the consumer’s mind.

However, it’s not only the words that need to be finessed – it’s the colors and the visuals. If you’re attracted to rich tone-on-tone colors in your home, save it for your bedroom not your billboard .

A billboard’s colors need to be high contrast, such as yellow and black, which are best for visibility. A case in point is pest control giant Truly Nolen, whose corporate colors are black, yellow and red. They’ve built an image across the country with a brand and image building campaign using three simple words on their billboards. Other ways to put billboard advertising to use is as a directional: next exit, turn left. Photography’s doable but the image better be strong.

However you convey your billboard message, remember this colloquialism that speaks volumes in the world of advertising: short, sweet and simple.

Society puts a lot of emphasis on starting over. New year, new you. Out with the old, in with the new. Don’t look back, look ahead. Now that we’re a few weeks into 2011, is it worth completely putting 2010 into the shredder or bringing its lessons into the new year … with a new twist?

Granted, the new year brings an entire new set of possibilities and deserves a new approach. That said, there’s still a breath of fresh air left in things that have been tested and true – all you need do is tweak them and give them something new to wear so they reflect more of where you want to go.
Here’s three things to remember when setting your advertising goals for 2011:

1. Out with the old, in with the new? Not exactly. Old can be turned around and evolved into something new and enhanced. Look at where you’ve been and freshen it up. Nothing’s wrong with print advertising but it’s not a bad idea to also embrace the possibilities in promoting your business through one of the social networks.
2. New year, new you. If you get too new, your customers may not recognize you … or may resent such a drastic change. Don’t mess with what gave you your fame but add to it incrementally.  Advertising and marketing goals should be realistic and in step with your current business model; it’s great to shoot for the stars, but remember just how far away those stars may be.
3. Don’t look back, look ahead. When planning business goals for 2011 you need to look back in order to look ahead. But don’t look too far back; the landscape was different in February 2010 than it was in November. Plan a strategy that takes into account recent developments in the marketplace but also reflects changing dynamics and trends in your particular business.

Establishing new year advertising goals is not as much about cleaning house as it is rearranging furniture. A new coat of paint or a new arrangement  might be just what you need to move ahead in 2011.

Upstairs is a room called the attic. It’s a hodge-podge of pieces of your life: furniture, clothing, nick-knacks. It’s a story of who you are, all tossed into piles. Maybe a few cobwebs.

It’s OK for your attic to be cluttered – it’s even charming. Muddle in your advertisements isn’t quite the same. Your customers can’t wade through every pile of what it took to get you to where you are and what it means to keep you there. Building a website or print ad involves careful deletion: consumers don’t care about every piece of information that tells all about the what and where and when and why.

So when you think about building an advertisement, don’t toss in every piece of information you can think of. And definitely leave out the cobwebs.

Ads aren’t effective if they look like ransom notes: overflowing with information with no dominant message. The way to build effective communication is to remember that you only have a few seconds to grab someone’s attention: with billboards it’s fewer than two seconds and even less on the internet. People are overloaded – a nanosecond is all you have to make them stop and pay attention. A company needs to create one main visual: a picture with a great headline or fluid, clear copy. You can’t clog your advertisement with everything but the kitchen sink. That creates chaos. Your viewer will lose patience and you’re a click away from being dumped into oblivion.

Something must jump out and make a statement; if it doesn’t, the ads becomes one big blur. You need a dominant image – be it a headline, picture or simple, engaging text — to engage the viewer and give them a reason to take action.

For example: in every GAP e-blast there’s one main visual – sometimes a young girl wearing a scarf or a huge banner advertising 50 percent off or free shipping. Whatever else is happening on the page, one dominant item always gets the consumer’s attention.

Give the consumer just enough information to whet their appetite but not so much that they won’t pick up the phone or place that online order.

There’s a phrase in our society that describes the behavior of people reacting to a stressful situation. It’s called fight or flight. Apparently, in prehistoric times, people either fought when threatened or ran like hell. Ergo: the fight or flight response.

Today, people engaged in business need to fight and also engage in a little bit of flight. Or more to the point: flighting. It’s  a way of getting your business out ahead of the pack without resorting to a duel at dawn.

Flighting, in the advertising vernacular, is a term for a timing pattern in which commercials, or ads, are scheduled to run during intervals that are separated by periods in which no advertising messages appear for the advertised item. Any period of time during which the messages are appearing is called a flight.

The advantage of the flighting technique is that it allows an advertiser who does not have the funds to run spots continuously to conserve money and maximize the impact of the commercials by airing them in flights.

How does it work? Take a 12-week budget and instead of dividing it evenly, double it up every other week. Study reach and frequency: you may well find you’ll find an increase in both.

The upshot is that advertisers will often enjoy residual benefits during the times of advertising inactivity. For the perception will be one of a constant on-air or online presence even though the media buy is not. You’ve  fought the battle of the bad economy and won.