An effective advertising campaign is the ultimate goal of every marketer, regardless of age, experience, and areas of activity. The question is how to create one? What obstacles can be faced on the way to perfect advertising? If you are new to marking and all this ad thing, or you are an entrepreneur and want to know more about advertising bear with us. Today we are going to discuss the fundamental steps toward effective advertising, so this thread is for you.

There are lots of different strategies for creating an ad campaign. Nevertheless, it will take at least six steps to start getting a clue what it should look like and how to work it out.

1. Research and Budget

The whole charade starts with some marketing research. You need to understand how your main competitors are penetrating the market and which goals they have achieved there. Proper analysis can tell you many things, such as customers’ feedbacks on competitors, or which channels they use for their promotional messages, which mistakes they have made and so on. Simply copying someone else’s message doesn’t work, though. To improve and become more efficient, one definitely needs to know what in advertising works and what does not. Define the budget, set it up from the beginning and make sure to follow up with the next steps.

2. Set the Goal

Since increasing sales or brand awareness are different stories, one should be able to figure out the sole aim of their campaign, what’s its purpose? One can do some math here. E.g., may the budget be convenient or not? If you plan to increase your sales, with how many percents could this be? Beware that in a perfect world all your marketing efforts do pay off.

3. Know the Target Audience

Every product or service has its target audience. In particular cases, segmentation may be so diverse that it is quite hard to totally reach all segments with only one campaign. On the other hand, when a product focuses on one gender or age segment, it allows the advertiser to examine the target group more precisely: its interests, aspirations, and problems. Trying to cut costs or lower the efforts on this stage won’t make any use at all. Getting as much information as possible about your customers is vital for the success of your campaign.

4. The Product Customer Connection

By now it must have become clear what drives your customers and what might bother them. The next task is to create the right proposition, prove that only your product will solve a customer’s problems and close their current needs. By defining the product’s benefits a more effective result should be the outcome. A warning is at its place: do not try to overwhelm your customers with too many benefits, it can sound “too good to be true”.

5. Shaping the Campaign and Message

Now you can put all the previous efforts into creating the actual shape of the campaign. Work on the message you want to deliver and make sure it is clear, catchy and credible. One should not forget that the form and the content of the message depend on the type of media you are going to use. If you are planning on covering various media types on different platforms, the campaign has to be adjusted respectively.

6. Testing

You do not want to go wrong, do you? So before the actual launch of a campaign you better run the tests to be sure that the advertising message transits smoothly and your audience loves it. Here and now is your last chance to fix something in your campaign or even start all over again if things do not turn out as planned – when your budget allows it, this is.

Sounds all quite manageable, does it not? Right, it is not rocket science, but a holistic approach makes use.

Authenticity and Uniqueness

Not all brands and products are unique. However, a unique proposition makes it easier to attract potential customers and sell products. You can try to dig up some product features, which helps you to stand out, but there is no need to reinvent the wheel or imagine features your product does not have. In most cases, customers will appreciate you for telling them the truth, while they may even reward you for some add-on creativity, which can make your marketing message special and the advertised product desirable.

Brand Awareness

A great slogan, a powerful logo, a catchy song and even smell can bring up positive memories related to a product. Try to find your angle, something special, which is so much you. Even after the campaign, make your audience remember your product!

Word Of Mouth

We all know about Word-of-mouth (WOM) and how beneficial it is. WOM is the most effective and oldest form of marketing. This method has been working well for many brands and for many decades. In general, the campaign should be so vivid and fascinating that people would want to share it with others. In other words, we want you to ‘go viral’. Click here to read more about viral advertising.

Family Values Matter

Psychological triggers and family ties still work wonders, especially when they match up with your audience and the product itself. The presence of cultural and family values can touch the most intrinsic and secret springs of the soul. By doing so, an advertiser may approach its customers at a subconscious level.

At the Right Place at the Right Time

Do not forget about the holidays or any large-scale national events that take place on the geo-location of your brand. This way you positively connect your product or service to overseas customers. We all remember the Coca-Cola commercials, do we not? The music and images created a real symbol of Christmas and New Year for many people.

Stop at Nothing!

A successful advertising campaign is all but a token that you can sigh with relief and chill. Once you hit your first promotional goal there are few next issues just around the corner, so you should never stop developing your brand, product, and its promotion. How do you feel about the following question? “Do sales generate advertising or advertising sales?” We believe in the latter, and therefore one must keep on going.

The days when advertising only had to demonstrate a solution to problems or to highlight the most positive feature of a product have passed. With the entire media buzz and constant ad interruptions, these days only meaningful work will catch the eye of red hot prospects. You should not fear to change the consumer’s perspective on a product by displaying its more authentic side. Experiment boldly (within reason)! Having said this, bear in mind that there always will be trends, which are ever-changing, and therefore, the process of optimising your advertising never ends.

We wish you good luck and highly effective ads which go with outstanding results!