Test your marketing savvy! Choosing the most effective ad.
A: Selling Your Company, Not Your Product
Selling your company instead of your products or service is a pretty common mistake. You might want to show off your new logo, or company name but that is not what your customers care about. In this ad the logo is the dominant element and the services are listed smaller and underneath the logo. This format might work well for the door of your business, but not for an ad. You need to get your customer’s attention first, then get them to care about the service or product you provide, and then let them know who you are. You may get calls or attention from an ad like this, but we think there are better concepts out there.
B: Listing All Of Your Services
Ad space isn’t cheap, this tends to cause companies to want to list everything they do to try and appeal to as many people as possible. This usually yields few results. Why? Because people aren’t going to search through your ad to find the product they are interested in, or the service that applies to them. Remember your ad is being seen right next to other ads, in the same place as hundreds of other ads, if you can’t get noticed is 2 seconds, than you won’t get noticed.
C. Selling A Single Service
You are right!… (Or at least you chose the one we think would get the best response rate.) Highlighting one of your key services or products and targeting a segment of your clientele is the strongest approach. Why? Well lets start at the beginning. We opted for one of our primary services, and chose a headline that addresses about the additional features that come with our web sites. And by narrowing the subject of the ad we were able to send astronger, more specific message.
If we talk hypothetical numbers for a moment, with ads A and B we are targeting a large pool of clients with a less powerful message. So we might expect to see a response rate of 1% out of say 1000, which would give us 10 leads. If we ran ad C to a smaller targeted market, and addressed more specific needs, we would expect to see a higher response rate of say 3% out of a smaller pool of 500, which would give us 15 leads. You can see how decreasing our audience and creating a stronger, more specific message to a targeted segment can actually increase our results.
So try casting a smaller (tighter) net for your next campaign. A precise message can be just the thing you need to drive home sales. And get the attention of customers who need what you are selling, and who care about your message.
DISCLAIMER: There is a saying in marketing “50% of marketing works, but no one know which 50%”. If you agree or disagree or have more to ad, please feel free to leave comments.
