Effective advertising makes people remember your name

(sources from Wolters Kluwer)

Effective advertising reaches potential customers and informs them of your products or services. Ideally, advertising should capture the prospective customers attentions attention and entice them to use your product. Regardless of the method, all your advertising should be clear and consistently reflect the unique positioning statement of your business.

Advertising is communication intended to inform, educate, persuade, and remind individuals of your product or businesses. Advertising must work with other marketing tools and business elements to be successful. Advertising must be interruptive — that is, it must make you stop thumbing through the newspaper or thinking about your day long enough to read or hear the ad. Advertising must also be credible, unique, and memorable in order to work. Like all effective marketing support, it must be built upon a solid positioning strategy. Finally, for any advertising campaign, enough money must be spent to provide a media schedule for ad frequency, the most important element for ad memorability.

Word-of-mouth advertising has existed as long as mankind has communicated and traded goods and services. Word-of-mouth advertising is considered the most effective form. It has the desired qualities of strong credibility, high audience attention levels, and friendly audience reception. It features open-ended conversation with questions and answers about the product, psychological incentives to purchase, memorability, efficiency and frequency. Word-of-mouth advertising passes product information to many other potential buyers (and may even include promotional trial demonstrations and free sampling), at little or no cost to the business. Whenever possible, a small business should build an advertising program that results in word-of-mouth advertising. Satisfied customers are your best advertisements.

Guidelines for successful advertising campaigns

Here are some guidelines for creating memorable advertising that really sells:

• Make sure your ads are "on strategy" with your business positioning.

A good positioning strategy ensures identification of the correct target audience for your advertising, along with a listing of meaningful features and benefits. It can provide reasons why the product is superior and unique, along with an advertising "personality."

• Communicate a simple, single message.

People have trouble remembering someone's name, let alone a complicated ad message. Use the "KISS" principle for ad messages: "Keep It Simple, Stupid." For print ads, the simpler the headline, the better. And every other ad element should support the headline message, whether that message is "price," "selection," "quality," or any other single-minded concept.

• Stick with a likable style.

Ads have personality and style. The Pillsbury Doughboy becomes a beloved icon; the Quiznos "sponge monkeys" nearly sunk the brand. Find a likable style and personality and stay with it for at least a year or more of ads. Changing ad styles and personality too often will confuse potential buyers. It also fights against memorability.

• Be credible.

If you say your quality or value is the "best" and it is clearly not, advertising will speed your demise, not increase your business. Identifying and denigrating the competition should also be avoided. It is potentially confusing and distracting and may back fire on you by making buyers more loyal to competitive products, not less.

• Make sure the ad is competitive.

Do your homework. Examine competitive ads in the media that you are planning to advertise in. Make sure your ad stands out from competitive ads. You can use personal judgment, ad test exposures to a small group of target buyers (i.e., qualitative research), or more expensive, sophisticated quantitative test methods. Compare ads for uniqueness, memorability, credibility, and incentive to purchase.