Our first post in the series dedicated to advertising budget dealt with allocating the amount of money a company is ready to invest into advertising. Today we will focus on deciding how you should spend this money and what to pay for. In other words, which advertising channels and media to select for the best results. Check out the tips below to help you figure it out.
1. Branding, generating leads or sales?
No doubt, if you’ve come this far in setting up an ad campaign, you know what its goal is. Ideally, you should decide what to focus on – improving brand awareness, generating new leads or driving sales. In case your advertising budget isn’t too tight, you can go after two goals, like branding, and lead gen or sales.
For new companies, it is recommended to invest into brand awareness at first (yes, because advertising is an investment, not an expenditure). It may mean expecting very little to no return on the advertising spend in the nearest future, but it certainly doesn’t mean money down the drain in the long run.
2. Create an advertising plan
You can start with an outline of a yearly plan and a detailed plan for the nearest quarter based on the goal you will focus on. This way, you can allocate more resources for the other important advertising goals once the key one has been “taken care of”. For instance, after 3 months dedicated to branding, the remaining budget can be partially spent for generating new leads, with the necessary modifications brought in each month/quarter depending on the results of the previous periods.
3. Select the advertising channels
Not to get lost in the multitude of choices, consider each media channel in view of the following questions: who your target consumers are, what kind of product/service is advertised, what is the necessary geographic targeting and the cost. Check out our previous post on choosing the right advertising medium. Here are some more tips:
- In general, it is recommended to select a combination of media vehicles for a successful campaign.
- Under no circumstances is it worth picking the channels based on their affordability.
- Choose the media that is most likely going to reach your target consumers. While TV may be a great way to become known to the aged audience, young people can be more likely found on Facebook or YouTube and using billboard ads can help reach drivers etc.
- Go for quality, not quantity. Advertising means with extensive reach may be less effective in communicating the message to the right consumers than ads in specialized magazines, even in spite of the size of their audience. So, make sure you don’t waste money in the race for being exposed to more people.
4. Track the results and make corrections
The success of an advertising campaign is extremely unpredictable and depends on numerous factors. Therefore, it is vital to keep track of the performance of each advertising channel in order to spend the advertising budget most effectively. The mediums that are underperforming should be replaced with those that demonstrate positive dynamics, and this process should be continuous.
Ready to go?
If the number of available options and their management makes your head spin, an online solution Tracklam can lend you a hand. This service lets you work with different out-of-home advertising mediums and manage all ads within your profile. It provides detailed stats for each ad, and this lets you determine the best and worst performing mediums to spend the budget effectively, and forecast the campaign results. Sign up right now to discover the simple and effective way of running an advertising campaign with Tracklam!
