Advertising your business is a costly, but necessary investment whether your business is the size of the Donald Trump Corporation or run from a dark corner in your garden shed. How can you be sure to capitalise on your cash outlay? First you need to do research on what makes advertising work. If you’re reading this – then you’re already on the right track.

  1. Make it Relevant. People won’t pay attention to anything which does not apply to them. Learn to understand your customers wants, needs, hopes, desires and problems.
  2. Outsource it. Typing up a blurb yourself with clip art on some brightly coloured paper only looks unprofessional  If you don’t have graphic design skills or can’t string a sentence together; find a proper design artist and copywriting expert. 
  3. Be succinct. Long screeds of waffle won’t be read. If you must use blocks of copy, break it up with attention-grabbing headlines.
  4. Guarantees work. A 100% guarantee of your work or service is one of the best tools you can utilise in advertising. It’s an assurance of quality.
  5. Call to Action. (Advertising jargon for making your customers get off their behinds NOW to use your service or product). Make it crystal clear what they need to do to acquire your business and give it a sense of urgency. E.g.: this week only.
  6.  Fine Tune it. Double check everything from the grammar to the graphics. Make sure the language used is simplified and remove any excess words.
  7. Reach your target market. If you don’t know what magazines, website, radio stations, TV channels or papers your customer’s frequent, make it your business to find out
  8. Track responses.  The best way to do this is to key each ad with an exclusive code so every transaction or lead can be recognized and linked to the source it came from.