Page 166 - Duct Tape Marketing

Run Advertising That Gets Results

that works. It is nearly impossible in the context of this book to tell you
exactly where you should place your advertising, as every community,
industry, and market segment has different advertising opportunities.

You should, however, look at your advertising from a return on
investment (ROI) point of view. You want the greatest bang for your
buck when it comes to advertising. So often advertisers can’t tell you
what the return on their advertising is. One of the greatest things about
the two-step approach outlined in this chapter is that it offers a chance
to understand exactly how your advertising is performing. Three prin-
ciples come into play when trying to analyze your best advertising ROI.

Target Your Ads
Does the advertising you are considering deliver a very high

amount of your target market? Most advertising is priced based on
readership, viewers, subscribers, or market share. If your ideal target
market only makes up 5 percent of the base readership of a magazine
you are considering, you still pay for the other 95 percent.

Test Your Ads
You can and should test your ads on a small scale whenever pos-

sible to help determine the effectiveness of the ad itself as well as the
chosen advertising medium, such as a magazine or newspaper. Once
you find ads and advertising vehicles that produce results, you can
begin to explore ways to expand your advertising message into other
vehicles.

The idea is to find something that works and then test ways to
beat the ad that works. Your best-performing ad is known as your
control ad. Stick with this control ad as long as it is working.

Advertising is a repetition game. One-shot ads in publications or
on air are not going to bring you the ultimate response that repeated
exposure to your market brings. For this reason it is essential that you
test and find a message or offer that generates a predictable response.

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