2020 was a tough year for many of us, numerous businesses didn’t survive the lockdowns experienced throughout the world. Many industries, such as the travel and tourism industry, have come to a grinding halt. The ripple effect of this is likely to be felt for years to come. If your business did survive 2020 then chances are it may be holding on by a thread. Although advertising has always been important to businesses, this year it may be more important than ever, especially if you’re dealing with a reduced advertising budget. Advertising can be a great way to reconnect with previous clients, as well as a way to expand your client base. Whether you’re new to advertising, or wanting to find a way to make your money go further, here are my top 5 advertising tips for your business in 2021:
1. Be Clear About Your Expectations
If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you plan to get there? It’s important to be really clear about your advertising goals, so you can be sure you find a way to achieve them. What’s your focus? Do you want to get more clients, sell more products, or even potentially go the wholesale route? Many businesses have had to pivot in the past year in order to survive. A local pizza shop I frequent has been significantly quieter during Covid, so they ended up creating frozen pizzas that they sell in a local supermarket here. As you review the best advertising tips, in this part of your planning, you’re going to have to be really clear about how you plan to continue during these unprecedented times. Do you need to pivot in any way to get ahead or is it a simple case of just needing more clients?
2. Figure Out Who Are Your Ideal Clients
Perhaps you’re an online store selling trendy phone cases and the majority of your clients are teenagers or young adults. Perhaps you’re selling an online parenting course, so your target audience are parents. It’s important to take a step back and really think about who you’re selling to. This is essential because depending on your target audience, you might find a particular advertising method works better. In general, the older your audience the more likely that traditional advertising methods may be worthwhile, such as newspaper, TV, magazines and even radio. However with the younger generations, there’s no doubt that Internet and social media based marketing can be extremely cost-effective and successful. Taking the time to think about your audience will help ensure you choose the marketing types that are most likely to resonate with them.
3. Set a Spending Limit
Defining a budget is such an important part of any advertising campaign. While in an ideal world, we’d have as much money to throw at advertising as we want, real life unfortunately doesn’t work that way. It’s also important to have a set marketing budget so that you can analyse what kind of return you’re getting from your spending. Often with new advertising campaigns, especially online, it can take a bit of tweaking to find the parameters that give you the best results. For that reason, careful tracking can help ensure that you’re getting a good return on your spending, while staying within your overall budget.
4. Consider Bringing in an Expert
If your advertising budget allows, one of the advertising tips I always suggest bringing in an expert especially if you’re looking to work on a new type of media. It can be quite affordable to hire someone to set up advertising campaigns for you on social media and this can be a great option if you don’t have hours and hours to spare to learn how to maximise your advertising dollar. You can hire someone just to set up the ads for you, or you can hire someone to work as an advertising manager who will set up the ads, tweak them to see what gets the best results and provide you with an analysis on how your advertising campaign went. The more comprehensive style of advertising management will be more expensive, but it also may allow you to get better results for your dollars spent. If hiring an expert isn’t in the cards for you right now, don’t fret, there’s plenty of information online to help you get started.
5. Finalise the Marketing Plan
With these advertising tips, you’re almost ready to go – you’ve got your expectations outlined, you have analysed your ideal clients, set a spending limit and have decided to bring an expert on board (or not). Now’s the time to finalise the marketing plan, including designing any visuals that you’ll need to get your message to your ideal clients. If your budget is low, you might want to create your own visuals on a program like Canva, but if there is room in your budget I do think it is always worth investing in a designer. A good quality designer can make you visuals that grab the attention of your potential clients and help make your advertising campaign more successful.
These are 5 critical steps that are essential to creating a well rounded marketing campaign that will allow your business to thrive during these difficult times.
