Seeds of Growth

Your customers are seeing 1200 ads per day. What are you doing to cut through the clutter?

There is a ton of advertising in the world today, in fact studies show that consumers are typically exposed to 1200 ads per day, yet most only notice 76 of them. Of course some audiences are exposed to many more so it’s definitely a harsh market out there. Today, it seems that it’s just not enough to toot your horn, advertising “BUY NOW!” at your prospects. Now you need to deliver your message in a way which captures and subtly directs their attention to your message. Thankfully though, by avoiding some common pitfalls and implementing just a couple of simple techniques, you can increase your advertising effectiveness exponentially! So, over my next few articles I’ll be revealing some fundamentals which will help you to better your branding and advertising. Off we go…

Target your prospects with sniping accuracy.

Aim and FIRE your message at the right spot for the greatest impact. Without a doubt the greatest thing you could possibly use to develop your advertising is to aim it at the right audience. Now you’re probably thinking, “Well durr… of course you don’t sell sewing machines in a gun magazine!” Although what I’m trying to show you is that even the most minute facet of your advertising can have a dramatic impact on the way people perceive your product, service and brand. Furthermore by having a distinctive and clear identity in the minds of consumers, your advertising will stick out so much more than you could possibly imagine. So, let me ask you this now - How targeted is your advertising really?

When people see an ad, they take in much more information than you would ever imagine. They establish the brand’s identity by associating it with all of the information inside the ad and its environment. That is, they take in:

Colours, Images, Symbols, Metaphors and Writing style
The surrounding environment
Value and pricing
And hopefully the product/service/brand being promoted

All of these factors contribute significantly to whether or not you get your message across. Ever heard of the saying, “A picture tells a thousand words,”? Yep, this especially rings true in good advertising.

Colours and Advertising

You might have heard before that different colours have different emotions. Well, it’s all true. Despite the contextual differences which change them, they ultimately have a profound impact on the delivery of your message. For your convenience I have taken some juicy information from this site here:

Red: danger, excitement, fire, passion, blood, fight or flight, some sexual connotation.
Purple: Wealth, royalty, sophistication, intelligence.
Blue: Quietness, serenity, truth, dignity, constancy, reliability, power.
Black: Sophistication, elegance, power, rebellion.
White: Purity, cleanness, luminosity, vacuum.
Yellow: Warmth, the sun for many cultures, brightness, joy if little saturated.
Green: Nature, fresh, vegetation, health, green/blues are the favourites of consumers

You might want to pick a colour and use it as a recurring theme throughout your advertising or you might want to target different audiences and use different colours to differentiate them. There is an important point to keep in mind though, colours draw their meaning from the context they’re in. So, if I could just get you to imagine for a moment… red mixed with a picture of people doing business may elicit a different emotion than what you might expect from using blue in the same picture.

Pictures

This also brings me to my next point. Pictures. Try and get a clear picture of what your product, service and brand means and use elements of that picture in your ads. For maximum impact, you could even use symbols and write with some metaphors to engage your audience. The Red Cross does this very well, mostly its due to them being first in best dressed. By getting them to decipher the message you are almost challenging their mind to receive your message and look deeper into your brand meaning. Just look at how popular the TV show Lost is. Another company which does a good job of this is Microsoft and their XBOX 360 Launch – Do you remember those strange websites where you had to decipher problems to get the hidden message?

Marketing with Appeal

From what I know, there are three different types of appeal your ‘voice’ can have: From the weakest to the strongest, they are similarity, familiarity and likeability appeals. By knowing about these types of appeal you can effectively leverage attributes about your product/service and brand. Similarity appeal is where your brand is the same as your target audience, such as in the case of Hard Yakka. Familiarity appeal occurs when people see you around so often that they begin to trust you - when was the last time you questioned the hygiene of food at MacDonald’s? Probably the best appeal you can instill is that of likeability which is where people like your brand out of it being cool. I can’t quite explain it, but have you ever wanted a Porsche? Anyway, if you can find out what draws your customers to your brand then you could make your ads stick out like a diamond in the rough.

Also, when designing ads, marketers have to determine whether they want to use fear, humour or information to catch their audience’s attention. Each type of ad has its benefits, but humor ads tend to be remembered better. If you look into using one of these, think about these points:

Fear: Don’t over do the fear, or otherwise people will disregard your message, thinking, ‘It’ll never happen to me.’
Humour: Don’t overuse the humour or people won’t get your real message.
Information: Make sure you capture people’s attention with relevant and motivating information.

Product Attributes

If you even want to take things a step further, then how about focusing on attributes of your product? If you are selling a book to grandmothers who want to learn how to use a computer, then you might want to use bright colours and large text so they can use it properly. You might even use language inside the product which appeals to this audience. The fact of the matter is your target audience won’t buy something which doesn’t help or appeal to them. So go and find out what they want and incorporate it into your product. If you’re lucky enough to be able to talk with your customers, find out what they like and don’t like about your product.

A Projective Technique

I’m going to go a little off topic here but a great way to ask customers how you could improve your product is to use what we call a projective technique. Approach them saying, “Hey [customer], [blah, blah]… I have had some [X] customers who have only been moderately satisfied with my product. What do you think these customers might enjoy in the product.” This will avoid putting them on the spot and will also tap into what they REALLY think, based on their core attitudes, values and beliefs.

‘Putting things right’

Finally, determine whether or not you are you distributing it to the right people in the right places. It’s probably not the best idea having a thrift shop in the trendy part of town. Likewise, it’s probably not a good idea selling burgers off your website and deliver them via snail mail. Keep in mind, that if you are to maintain your image, you must place everything you can about your brand in places you want to associate with your brand. So, if you have a purely online presence then why not try advertising offline a bit more, to get people thinking about it in other places? Also, if you sell cheap products in a store, you could try re-decorating your website or store to reflect the fact that it offers cheap prices and lots of value. Take for example Bunning’s Warehouse in Australia – They purposefully leave things in cardboard boxes to make them look cheaper. There is so much I could go on about but I’ll save it for next time.

Before I let you go though, you will want to take all these things into account when you’re developing strategies and tactics to propel your advertising and branding to success. I can’t stress enough how important it is for small businesses to create a solid and specific identity which helps to position them away from their competitors. It can be suiidal for a startup if you can’t get it right – I guarantee it. Put what you’ve learned here into practice and your advertising will certainly sing!

Best of luck branding,
Robert Kingston.

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