Advertising has changed drastically over the past several decades. Many of these changes have been dictated by technological advances that keep opening new avenues for quality brand exposure.
Not too long ago, the chief mediums of advertising were radio and television with no other options. In those days, advertising was more straightforward and much more focused on selling the product or service. In contrast, today’s advertising has a noticeably different function — building a reputation and an identifiable brand status.
The advertising of today also has numerous outlets with social media alone. With all of these options, creating an advertising budget can be frustrating if you don’t know where to begin. Let’s take a look at five ways companies can stretch their ad budget to start building their brand and establishing a reputation with the public.
1. Plan Your Marketing
An overused but spot-on mantra about planning says it all — if you fail to plan, plan to fail. Success doesn’t just happen for most people. Unless you are notoriously lucky, you will need to plan your marketing ads as you would prepare your grocery list. As with your food staples, when an item in your advertising plan is depleted, replenish it if it’s useful and important to you. If you plan to have a unique campaign, you need to make sure you have all of the necessary materials, just as you would if you were making a particular dish for dinner.
Equally as important, every month or quarter, you should be planning for the next month based on the previous month’s or quarter’s data. Knowing what’s working and what’s not from your data is an essential part of creating an advertising budget that serves you well. And this planning also makes it easier to see where you should be spending your advertising money in the coming months.
2. Keep Your Marketing Message Consistent
Having a ton of advertising venues may seem like you hit the jackpot. However, this situation can mean fragmented branding if you are not careful. If your branding is inconsistent across the internet and other outlets, you prevent the public from having an identifiable visual for your company. And your lack of a cohesive presence will most likely confuse potential customers.
Therefore, you should keep your marketing colors, logos, fonts, and tag lines consistent across all platforms. To your customer, this uniform presentation makes your brand more substantial and more trustworthy, not to mention identifiable among the masses.
3. Publish Creative Content
We all know the ads and advertising themes that resonate with us the most. They are the ones that have a catchy slogan or maybe colors and fonts that pop. Every advertiser strives for this type of unique creative content that touches the pulse of the general public. Sometimes this content can be elusive, so you mustn’t settle for the just okay options.
Therefore, be prepared to pull out all the stops by utilizing your team’s strengths to develop stellar creative content that makes your brand stand out among the competition. Generally, your advertising team is comprised of creatives with various talents and specialties. Utilize these gifts, and don’t hesitate to try new and outlandish ideas. Some of the most iconic ad campaigns came from creative teams who dared to push the limits.
4. Use Marketing Automation
Today’s marketing relies on building trust, and trust is achieved with excellent communication. One way to achieve an elevated level of trust is to let your system drive your marketing with simple auto-drip campaigns you set up beforehand and let your automation do the rest.
While automated communication requires time and thought on the front end, it’s well worth the effort. Automated communication allows you to follow up with customers in real-time without lifting a finger. Whether it’s basic customer satisfaction feedback or a simple thank you message, having these created lines of communication provides excellent customer service and is a relatively effortless good business practice.
5. Spread Your Ad Spend
The term “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket” absolutely applies in marketing. The best in the business highly recommend spreading your ad budget across a minimum of three marketing mediums.
The best outlets will vary depending on the nature of your company. However, examples of possibilities include a blend of Search Ads, Retargeting Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn ads, Twitter ads, Call Ads, TV ads, and Radio Ads, to name a few. And, here’s another excellent reason to use a marketing automation system — all of the above ad results are easy to manage because they are all kept in one place.
The Bottom Line
Advertising is big business, but it’s also extremely complicated these days. With so many mediums to work with, advertisers are challenged to create a killer campaign that stretches across numerous venues. However, by considering the tips above, feel confident that you can meet this challenge head-on by learning to stretch your budget as well.
