How to Create Functioning Advertisement for Your Company

This article follows up our articles How to Eat an Elephant and Welcome to the Marketing Jungle.

Our experience is that small and medium-sized businesses usually don’t have their own Marketing Departments and their marketing is neither systematic or well-guided. It is often done by the CEO or Managing Director, Business Director, or, with all due respect to this position, the Secretary. Marketing is often performed without the necessary knowledge, means, resources, and well-managed processes. Our aim is to bring fresh ideas and inspiration on how to be effective in marketing and advertising.

The lack of a system in marketing often leads to the fact that those who are supposed to create an advertisement for you don’t get the right assignment.

Let’s think about a relatively easy thing – creating a visual and text draft of the thing you need. It can be a PF for your partners and clients or a product offer that should attract new customers.

You know what I’m talking about.

You wanted a simple picture - something that characterizes your firm and could be used for your website, Facebook, poster, or billboard. But the thing you’ve been given…is a joke. Now it’s making you angry, and nobody’s laughing.

The draft is not about you at all. That’s not us! That doesn’t represent our product! Didn’t they understand what we want and who we are speaking to?

Apparently not.

It may have been a mistake by the person creating the draft, and the graphic designer can be easily replaced for sure.

But think twice before doing that.

The truth may be that although the Art Director or graphic designer didn’t do a great job, you contributed to the bad result. You may think: “Me? How? If I could draw, the result would be much better.”

And how exactly would it look? What would your picture say?

That is key.

You should always strictly define what you wish to express.

It is ideal to have one thing in mind, or at least one main thing… not twenty things at a time. That leads to a scattered result.

So, what do you wish to communicate? Your company as a whole? Its particular unique selling point? Your product, your service?

Choose one main thing and write it down. Saying too much at once means saying nothing at all.
You can only focus on this one thing now.

Good. The next question is – What do you wish to accomplish by your communication?

Do you want to show that you are better than your competitors? Make your employees proud? Attract new clients? Speak to a particular group?

Every goal is legitimate if it makes sense to you and is in compliance with your long-term strategy.

Let’s say you want to address clients.

Think deeper. Which ones?

As many as you can get? Those you already have? Those that haven’t used your service for a while or bought your products? New customers? Young ones, old ones, or a group characterized by something else?

Think hard and define the people you wish to attract in a very specific way.

It can also be more than one group. In that case, each of them has to be defined very specifically.

Are you done?

Now, when you know what you want to communicate and to whom, it is time to think about the communication channels. Are the ones you have been using suitable?

Next time, we will talk about the message itself - that meaning what we want to tell the chosen target group. It’s key to communication with clients, employees, journalists, or whoever else you might want to reach.

When our small series of articles for companies is finished, you should understand how to define what you want to communicate and how to create an assignment.