How To Build an Advertising Strategy for Your Business

25 Apr How To Build an Advertising Strategy for Your Business

What is an advertising strategy?

Let’s break it down. Strategy is a plan of action that includes tactics to achieve a defined goal.

When building a strategy I like to start with the goal and then work backwards to define the steps you’ll take to achieve that goal. Our goal with advertising is to convince potential customers to purchase our goods or services.

Our advertising strategy should be tailored to attract the audience that we think is most likely to find our good or services desirable.

There are many factors that we have to consider as we craft our tactics for our advertising strategy. Some of those factors can include geography, types of offers and the demographics of your target audience. You’ll also have to evaluate which advertising media, such as billboards, websites, or television, will be best to promote your advertising message.

You will also want to take a look at what is the strength of your business. What makes your business better than the competitors? You should also take a look at your business’ weakness and see if there is a way to reposition it.

Think about the branding for your business. Is your business upscale or casual? What are the benefits that your business brings to your customers? Is your service fast? Are you the only game in town in your industry? Do you carry unique or extremely popular products?

Focus on that branding and positioning and make sure that everything you do in your advertising strategy reflects the goal of promoting that positioning.

Look at the universe of people who are your potential customers. Which group of them will benefit by your branding and positioning? How will you reach them with your advertising message? What are their lives like?

If you can solve a problem for them, they will respond to your advertising.

So let’s say you have a local pizza shop. You decide that in order to stand out amongst the other pizza places in town, you will position your shop as super speedy and a great way for busy moms and dads to grab dinner for the kids.

Your product is loved by the kids, so it solves the problem that mom and dad have with the kids being picky eaters. It’s fast and easy. Mom can call on her way home and dash in grab her order and get out quickly. You could even set up a special line with a velvet rope for phone orders that you call family fast pass for those rush hour to-go orders and throw in something free, like a bag of garlic knots. Plus your dinner is inexpensive.

You can also offer it up on social media. If you have a special facebook only deal, people will definitely share it. Use a picture and you can share on Instargam, Twitter, Pinterest and more.

That’s a killer positioning and promotional idea.

You can then advertise that on the radio during rush hour so mom and dad will hear it. Local radio is very very affordable and you can really get memorable with a great slogan and a jingle for your commercial.

You could also advertise in the town newspaper. You know the one, it has lots of pictures of cub scouts and all the pictures of local happenings. Super affordable and moms alway check it to see if their kids or any kids they know made the paper.

Now these are just some quick advertising ideas for a small local business, just to give you an idea what a specific advertising strategy might involve. Take this framework and adapt it to your business. Remember, advertising strategy is all about identifying your target customer, identifying a problem you can solve for them and then letting them know via advertising promotion.