Focus advertising and PR activities on the venues that count

With advertising and public relations (PR), try to understand your prospect’s lifestyle and business interests, then focus your advertising and PR activities on the venues where common interests reside to maximize resources. If you don’t promote your business, no will know you exist. There are many aspects to consider as you develop and rollout an advertising/public relations (Ad/PR) campaign, but a well run Ad/PR campaign will help educate your target audience on your offerings and business, reinforce your brand, build trust through increased awareness, and convert interest into a sale if the message is compelling and convincing.

Where to start….

Look at your target audience and their customer touch points. Your advertising and public relations campaign should take into account where most of the people with those attributes you’re targeting are found – whether online or offline.  If your target audience is primarily online, you’ll also want to consider websites they frequent and devices types they use.

Find the most cost effective ways to reach your audience

Pursuing public relations or free publicity (i.e. earned media) in addition to advertising in key venues where your reach and return on investment is greatest. Obtaining positive third party endorsements or publicity builds credibility, increasing the trust prospects have in your business.  Avenues to pursue may include:

  • Winning a third party sponsored product quality contest
  • Writing an editorial to educate prospects about the need your product or service fulfills
  • Sponsoring a nonprofit or social cause that your target audience supports
  • Encouraging users to submit their content talking about your offerings for publication on your website or other social media sites

With this background in mind, it’s campaign development time.  Your success will depend upon your campaign rollout.

Messaging tips!

Messaging may focus on building brand awareness or encouraging a specific action.

  • With brand awareness, the focus is on educating your audience on your offering(s), building trust in your brand/business, and trying to shape how the customer perceives it.
  • If encouraging a specific action, the focus may be on a promotion that encourages buying something or providing contact information for future outreach or lead nurturing programs…like joining a newsletter or entering a contest.

Messaging is so important that many companies will test their messages by holding focus groups, conducting customer surveys, and/or implementing multivariant A/B testing on websites to see which messages resonate with their audience.

Discover more…

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  2. BI Intelligence. “The US Digital Media Ad Spend Report: Mobile will fuel strong growth across formats as desktop and traditional spend slow.” Business Insider, Inc. Last modified September 4, 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-will-drive-ad-spending-across-digitial-formats-2015-7.
  3. Gross, Rebecca. “50 Genius Print Ads With Brilliant Design Techniques.” Canva. Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.canva.com/learn/print-advertising-ideas/.
  4. Haileyesus, Samson. “101 Public Relations Strategies, Tips and Examples.” Small Business Trends. Last modified March 9, 2020. https://smallbiztrends.com/2020/03/public-relations-strategies-tips-examples.html.
  5. “How are Marketers Measuring Ad Effectiveness? Very Few Through Attribution Modeling.” MarketingCharts. Last modified July 3, 2017. https://www.marketingcharts.com/advertising-trends-78426.
  6. “Key Metrics for Measuring the Effectiveness of an Ad Campaign.” AllBusiness.com. Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.allbusiness.com/metrics-for-measuring-ad-campaign-effectiveness-1415-1.html.
  7. Newberry, Christina and Stacey McLachlan. “Social Media Advertising 101: How to Get the Most Out of Your Ad Budget.” Hootsuite Inc. (blog). Last modified December 8, 2022. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-advertising/.
  8. Sloane, Garett. “These Are the Digital Trends Everyone in Tech and Advertising Needs to Know.” Adweek. Last modified May 27, 2015. http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/these-are-digital-trends-everyone-tech-and-advertising-needs-know-165017.
  9. “The 12 Ironclad Rules for Issuing Press Releases.” Neil Patel Digital, Inc. (blog). Accessed January 17, 2024. https://neilpatel.com/blog/ironclad-rules-for-press/.
  10. Threlkeld, Bill. “Digital PR and the Velocity Effect.” Business 2 Community. Last modified January 3, 2019. https://www.business2community.com/public-relations/digital-pr-and-the-velocity-effect-02155942.
  11. Wood, Meredith. “Here are 32 Ways to Advertise Your Business for Free.” Fundera (blog). Last modified May 8, 2018. https://www.fundera.com/blog/advertise-your-business-for-free.

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