Advertising is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. There are two major things adverts can do for your business. The first is simple: they tell your customers about the products and deals you have on offer. This basic information can provide major boosts to your revenue, as it drives customers to buy those specific products.
The other function of advertising is more subtle and useful even if a specific customer does not act on the advert to buy your products. Adverts are a way for you to communicate your brand values to your customers, to strengthen your brand, to make more people feel like your business is the right place to spend their money.
You can’t make a brand on your own – in truth, your customers are the ones who create your brand, putting together every interaction they have with your business, from direct experience to word of mouth, to media reporting. Advertising is merely the most direct way you must directly communicate your brand values to your customers, and it would be risky to through away the opportunity.
Getting it Right
If you communicate inconsistent brand values, you could undermine the brand you’ve built to date and cost yourself customers, in a way that it takes a long time to repair.
Getting your communications right takes two things, and a good market research team can help you with both. You need to understand what customers think of your business and to test your adverts before you launch them.
Brand trackers can help you find out what your customers value about your business; what they think your brand is. They are a vital tool in the arsenal of everyone trying to optimise their relationship with their customers. They’re surveys that ask respondents to rank your business for certain key qualities, and then to position it against your closest competitors in the field, exposing the most important values you need to lean into, and the competitors who you have an opportunity to usurp.
Creative testingis a way for you to ensure your adverts will have the effect you want when you launch them. There are lots of techniques that go into providing you with a clear understanding: focus groups that discuss your advert and how the people respond to it; surveys asking for reactions to individual elements of your adverts and A/B testing, whether small scale launches of different versions of your advert can tell you which is the most successful at connecting with customers.
Using all these research techniques, you can feel confident that your ads won’t just tell customers about deals, they’ll build your brand to stand the test of time.