Marketing |PR | Advertising

Direct response advertising – making it pay

Make your direct response advertising pay by NOT confusing it with – brand advertising.

Brand advertising is used by major corporations such as Pepsi-Cola to increase awareness of their brand, but for a small business it can be a waste of money.

The only type of advertising the smaller company should consider is direct response, and the great thing about direct response is that you can tell almost immediately if it is working. It either produces a response – or it doesn’t.

Test and Measure

It is essential that you test and measure all your advertising to track its effectiveness. You need to know how many people responded, how many were converted to a sale and what revenue was produced. Then you can compare that figure to the cost of the advert and work out how profitable the ad was – or whether it was unsuccessful.

It’s worth setting up a separate phone line with a number that only appears in your advert, and if you’re directing people to a website set up a special web page that also only appears in your ad. This means you can clearly identify when people are responding to your advertising.

GRABBING ATTENTION

The most important part of any advert is the headline.

A headline should grab people’s attention and get them to read your ad. If you’re advertising on radio it’s the first thing people hear and if it’s a TV ad it’s the first thing viewers see and hear. Surveys have proved that one change in a headline can produce a 50-100% increase in response.

Be adventurous with your headlines, too. Test different versions to see what works best. There are no rules – except what produces results.

If you’re buying newspaper or magazine advertising, the golden rule is to shy away from then left-hand page. When anyone reads, their eyes are automatically drawn to the right hand page as they flick through. So that’s where your ad should be.

Never pay the full rate for advertising. Most rate cards are far too high and you should always negotiate. The closer to their deadline you book your ad, the better. All media sales teams work towards targets and as the deadline approaches they get desperate to fill the ad space – and more willing to negotiate.

If you are aiming your product or service at an international market, it’s worth considering advertising on websites. The big advantage of this approach is that you can reach a massive global audience on a relatively small budget. More and more businesses are finding that the internet is a highly successful form of advertising and have switched away from the often less effective print media and TV.

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