3. Message
How many times
have you seen a print or television advertisement and wondered, what was it about?
Some of those ads are the most entertaining advertisements around,
but for most businesses, advertising should be
about achieving a positive return on investment for each advertising campaign. While it may not be possible to achieve
this on every campaign, it should always be your goal and over time
your accumulated spend on advertising must result a positive return.
Yes, large
companies can, at times, get away with running vague (but
entertaining), branding campaigns. They have the budget and
resources to make it work with follow up PR and more advertising.
Companies that run these campaigns almost always have a product with
a wide potential market, so that there is a big payoff when it works.
None of these
conditions are true for small to medium businesses (or even most
large businesses). For the vast majority, advertising campaigns can
and should bring about a positive ROI. You simply can't afford to
run expensive advertising campaigns that do not bring in more then
they cost.
Does your message match your market?
When it comes to
search engine marketing in particular, there is a unique opportunity
to match search phrases to specifically designed 'landing pages' with
messages written to target people searching for these phrases.
Considering the potential for success with this strategy, it is
surprising that most small and medium sized businesses fail to
implement this.