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Placing ads is a common way to try to spread the word about your small business. However, it can be hard to know if you’re getting a good return on your investment. After all, how do you know if someone calls you due to an ad or for another reason?
Also, ads don’t work as well as they used to. There are simply too many ways to skip ads, block them, or ignore them. This is true both online and offline.
Fortunately, there are ways to make your ads effective so they help you grow your business. Here are some tips you can use today.
No ad will be effective if it doesn’t address a core need or desire of your target audience. Marketing today has become highly personalized and targeted, so the more specific your message, the better.
The best way to understand your audience’s needs is to ask, “What do they lie awake at night saying, ‘If only I could….’ ?” Then create a marketing message that shows how your product or service allows them to reach that goal.
When your marketing addresses a real need that your audience has, it will be ignored far less often!
There’s something special about your company that none of your competitors have. That’s your unique selling point (USP). This is the answer to the question, “Why should a customer buy from your company instead of someone else?”
If you’re a plumber, there are other plumbing companies. Why is yours special? Understanding what makes your business unique will help you capture attention with your advertising and help make it effective.
When you combine meeting your customers’ needs with highlighting your unique selling points, you’ll find that the answer to “Does advertising work?” is a resounding yes!
Does advertising actually work? It’s hard to know unless you measure your results.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure, so if you want your advertising to be truly effective, you need to know how well the ads are doing. You can measure some things, like how many times an ad is seen on social media, or how many times people click the ad to visit your website or landing page.
However, the real results you want are leads and sales. How can you tell if a lead or sale came due to an ad or something else? By using specialized discount codes or referral codes on each ad. Different codes can be tied to different ads so you know exactly which ones are bringing real results.
Once you know, adjust your investment accordingly. If no one has called in with your billboard code in a month, end the billboard contract and focus elsewhere! Similarly, if one ad on Facebook is performing better than another, discontinue the poor-performing ad or tweak it to improve it.
Advertising is a merciless master. You have to continually pay to get attention, leads, and sales. If you stop paying, you disappear. That’s why you can’t afford to rely on ads alone.
Instead, work on your search engine optimization (SEO), which helps your website rank highly in Google search results for relevant keyword phrases. When you rank on page one, the consumers who are looking for information about your products and services will find you quickly and click through to your website. From there, your engaging content will help them understand the value of your offers.
Over time, you’ll build a trustworthy online presence and be able to get a consistent stream of high-quality leads and ready-to-buy customers drawn into your business. This is known as inbound marketing, and it brings in more qualified leads than advertising while also costing far, far, less.
Eventually you can reduce the amount you spend on advertising and focus more on high-quality marketing, which will help your business grow consistently for many years to come.
The best way to use advertising is as a short-term strategy to bring in leads and customers while your SEO marketing efforts are gaining traction. Once you have excellent search engine positioning for your products and services, you won’t need to spend so much money to get the ideal leads and customers you want.
The goal is to maximize your profitability, and the way to do that is to get new customers on a regular basis with as little spending as possible. SEO makes that very easy, while advertising will continue to cost more and more over time.
Are you ready to stop relying on advertising and get ideal leads with less cost? We’re here to help. Local SEO Search specializes in helping small businesses succeed online. We’d love to show you what we can do. Contact us for a free consultation today!
