There are three primary objectives to keep in mind when it comes to advertising — to inform, persuade, and remind consumers about your brand and products. Advertising is meant to increase your sales overall, but it can also be a means of building meaningful relationships with your consumers and even make your company shine among top talent (more talent interest means better productivity and results!).
It does this in a variety of ways and approaches. First, there’s the Illinois Lottery “You Can’t Hide Winning” campaign ads that showcased the excitement of winning despite a time of quarantine and masks. Then there’s the highly emotional and powerful “Not Fair” ad by the University of Chicago Medicine that focused on patients getting life-threatening diagnoses.
Either direction you go, the advertising message was created with an intended goal and purpose. With that being said, let’s dive into the goal of all advertising.
Advertising Defined
Advertising is any paid medium that’s meant to increase your sales or develop your business. Although it often gets merged with all marketing efforts for your business, it only encompasses any controlled and paid form of communication. Other marketing efforts (some paid and free) are considered promotions.
Ads can come in a couple of ways:
- Radio — you can use live-read, sponsorships, or a produced spot.
- Television — TV advertising can include commercials for comparisons, testimonials, topical, performance, and more.
- Print — this can include magazines, newspapers, direct mail, or brochures.
- Digital — includes pay-per-click (PPC), social media ads, banner ads, banner retargeting, and more.
Channels like social media, however, are only included if you use their paid ads. Having an active social media presence falls into a grey zone in terms of being defined as an ‘advertisem*nt.’ Likewise, having a website is also not considered a form of advertising. Having a strong website is certainly crucial marketing, but it does exist outside of advertising.
One of the most important things to remember about advertising is it’s continuously growing and changing. For instance, influencers are increasing in popularity but fall outside the traditional concept of ads. Moneyless, they are a ‘paid medium.’
The 3 Goals Of Advertising
By now, you likely understand that advertising increases sales. Here are three goals, in particular, to successfully advertising your brand and business to consumers.
1. Informative Advertising
Informative advertising is meant to inform consumers of your new products or businesses. You can do this to spread brand awareness in a new area (or lift it in the same one), highlight new or noteworthy features and benefits of your product, etc.
Take, for example, advertisers launching a branding campaign using radio. Very different from an action advertisem*nt, you would use a branding campaign to either introduce your brand or re-establish your market position.
In this case, we’ll use an example of a new furniture store coming to Chicago. No matter what tactic they use (sponsor, live read, etc.), they’ll need to introduce themselves to Chicago listeners in a way that informs who they are. They also need to communicate what sets them apart from the already established furniture stores in the area like Furniture Outlet Chicago, LLC and Milwaukee Furniture.
2. Persuasive Advertising
Persuasive advertising involves more direct calls to action. It’s meant to drive sales more directly and convince consumers that one brand or product is better to make them buy from you, switch brands, try a new offering, or establish customer loyalty.
A great example of digital advertising encouraging consumers to take action would be Digital Marketer running a Facebook ads campaign captioned, “LAST CHANCE! Ticket sales for Traffic & Conversion Summit 2017 end on the 23rd…” Using an almost depleted iPhone battery and an urgent CTA, viewers are immediately persuaded to take action.
3. Reminder Advertising
Reminder advertising maintains consumer awareness to keep your brand top of mind, so they remember the benefits of using your products or services. It’s not as heavy on the advertising front since your targeted audience either purchased from you before or has already heard of you. This type of advertising is strictly meant to nurture and remind your customers about you and nurture them into lifelong customers.
Take, for instance, the opportunity to sponsor an event to remind consumers of your brand name without heavily informing them of who you are. Great event sponsorships in Chicago include (but are not limited to) working with:
- Get A Vet A Pet
- Grab Your Bag Tournament
- Chicago Craft Beer Fest
- Shed Zep Giveaway
The key is to find an event relevant to your brand and industry, so it is your target audience that will be there and be reminded of what you have to offer them.
Honing Your Ad Strategy
Using a combined ads strategy ensures your most significant chances of success, especially if you have multiple sets of ads to target different audiences at various stages of their customer journey. After all, research shows that it takes at least 5 to 7 impressions for people to remember a brand.
You can accomplish this by combining your radio and digital ads — increasing your brand awareness with radio and encouraging action with digital. There are also additional benefits to this combined strategy, including maximizing your reach and increasing your ROI. Pairing radio and digital efforts can get you as much as $12 back for every $1 spent.
With all that in mind, it’s hard to see why anyone would ever choose not to advertise. A good mix of informative, persuasive, and reminder ad copies combined with efficient advertising forms and strategies make for a significantly increased presence among your target audience. Since the purpose of advertising is to grow your business by increasing sales and ensuring that people are aware of who you are, it’s safe to say this is the way to do it.
