Part 3 of 4
In case you missed any of my emails in this series, I’ve covered image building (name recognition), traffic building, competitive edge and reduced inventory ¬ type ads. Today I am going to cover image (credibility) and target market type ads. These are very specific ads and can be very effective if used correctly.
Image (credibility) ads – Has your company ever received a special recognition or award? How about when you’ve added a new associate or an employee has been recognized for their service to the community? Perhaps you have made some changes to your organization. Maybe an employee has done something that really impressed a customer above your normal customer service and they wrote a beautiful testimonial to praise the employee and/or the company.
These are the starters for an Image ad. It should always be about the event, employee, award or testimonial that you have received. No offer should be made, although a testimonial about an offer you’ve run can be very effective. These can go a long way to building a case to those that don’t use your products or services to show them why they should be doing so.
These ads are all about telling a story. It may be the testimonial reprinted with a photo of the person sending it and the employee that went out of their way to help them. It may be about the service that got your company the award. If someone in your company has completed training on something that enhances how you can help your prospects, use that. Tell the story. Use room to make it big. This is important! Leave lots of white space in the ad. It makes it stand out. Tell the story all over your market area and to everyone that will listen (prospects, past customers and current clients).
These should generally be larger ads but use size appropriately. Photos help tell the story – don’t forget to use them. You don’t need to sell yourselves – the story will do that. Mountain America CU did this when Sterling Nielson (president & CEO) was named one of the most influential people in Utah by Utah Business Magazine. They used several quotes from the article and a quote by Nielson about MACU. Very well done and it brought a lot of notoriety to both MACU and Nielson. If you would like to see this ad, let me know and I’ll email it to you.
Target Market ads – Do you have a certain demographic that you target or that uses your products or services? A quilting shop has a specific demographic for 95% of its customers. No matter how hard they try, very few men will use their services or products.
Perhaps your target market is senior citizens. Maybe it is the children of senior citizens. It is important to know what and who your target audience is.
Once you know this, you can create ads that will target this demographic. This is not a bad thing. I have had some people tell me that they are trying to capture the attention of everyone with their ads. The purpose of ads are to get the attention of those that could be interested in your product or service and get them to work with you. This can be done with several types of ads but let me illustrate the importance of target market ads:
A quilt shop is having classes for beginning quilters. If they design the ad to attract 18-35-year-old women, they are targeting a demographic. If they are having a store wide blowout; every scrap of fabric and thread is on sale, this would be an inventory reduction sale. It may be going after the same demographic but everyone is needed to participate and they will widen the target range.
Another example might be an insurance agent that normally sells to anyone that has a vehicle. Perhaps they want to promote a special to those with teenage drivers. They would target the ad to parents of that age group. Perhaps they want senior drivers, again they should change the ad to target the prospects.
Target market ads are very specific to a group of people. They can still have offers and build your image but only those within that demographic will really notice the ad.
Another way to use this: When I go to a chamber lunch, I usually say something like “While most businesses can use my services, I am looking for auto repair shops today.” This gives the people in attendance the opportunity to think along that one line and say, “I know someone,” where before they were saying “I really don’t know anyone that I can refer to you.” This is a bit different than the examples above but works the same. It gets people to be focused on a market you need help with.
I hope these tips help. If you have missed any of these articles, please email me and I will be glad to get them to you. If you want more info, let me know and I’ll be glad to answer questions and if you like I, or one of my consultants, can come meet with you to help you with this.
Best regards,
Boyd Petersen
Certified Marketing Coach