DIY advertising

Last updated: June 12, 2009.

Millions of companies spend billions of dollars on advertising each year. Why? Because it works! Customers don't know about you or your products unless you tell them—and advertising is still the most effective way to do that. Some of the people who work in advertising are brilliant and creative, but their services don't come cheap. You can pay a fortune to get them to do your advertising. But you might be just as successful doing the job yourself if you follow a few simple pointers and work the way they do. Here's how...

Photo: Will your advertising "take it to the world"? Billboards really grab our attention. You can make your own advertising just as effective without necessarily being quite so ambitious!

1. Understand what your product or service actually provides

No-one knows your product better than you, but one thing you might not understand is why people buy it. Are people buying because it's good quality, because the price is good, because they like you, because they're ethically motivated and you're not using a dodgy factory in a developing country, or some other reason entirely? If you're not sure why people are giving you money, do some market research and find out. Before you can advertise your product effectively, you need to understand what's making you successful and what's holding you back.

2. Understand the audience

Who's buying your product and why? More importantly, who's not buying and why not? Is the market you're chasing the best one? Or is there a bigger source of customers just waiting to be tapped? Again, market research can help you establish where to focus your efforts. You need to understand your target audience completely before you even begin to think about advertising to them. There's no point in writing sophisticated ads aimed at middle-aged men if most of your customers are 12-year-old girls. One easy mistake to make in business is to assume we are our own customers and direct our efforts at people like us. Ultimately, no-one cares what you think about your products unless you're a typical customer: it's what your customers think that counts.

Photo: A poster catches the attention of a passer-by in Malaysia. But will it persuade her to do something? Will it close the deal? Photo by Matthew Schwarz courtesy of US Navy.

3. Understand the competition

Hardly any products have a market to themselves. Those that are lucky enough to do so won't enjoy that advantage for long. Make sure you find out as much as you can about your customers and the relative advantages and disadvantages of their products. If their products are cheaper and better, why are you still in business at all? Maybe you have other advantages, such as superb customer service, or other kinds of appeal, like inherent coolness? If nothing marks you out from the competition, why should people buy from you? Think of ways to differentiate your product, service, or company even if none actually exist.

4. Find the right medium

You can advertise in all kinds of different ways, from taking out big expensive TV advertisements to running banners behind planes screaming through the sky. Biggest and most expensive isn't necessarily best. TV and national press ads cost most because they capture a vast cross-section of the population simultaneously. That's great if you want to sell a product that appeals to lots of different people (something like a cellphone or a savings account), but not so good if your market is more narrowly defined (how often do you see 60-second advertisements for laser interferometers on national TV?). The trick is to find the medium that's most likely to capture prospective buyers—and that's why understanding the audience is so important. If you're trying to sell products to parrot breeders, you could run advertisements in national newspapers or in magazines that pet lovers are likely to buy. Find out where your buyers are lurking and run your advertisements there. Don't waste time and money talking to people who will never buy from you.

Photo: Think like a customer. If your customers are motorists, put your advertisements where motorists will see them—like on the back of buses.

5. Write a brief

If you're doing your own advertising, the temptation is to start writing words straight away, because that's the fun part. But the first thing you need to write is the brief: a summary of what you've found out in steps 1-4. The brief should be a 1-2 page document setting out what you expect from your advertisements, who they're aimed at, where they will run, and so on. It's the document you'd give to an advertising agency if you wanted them to write ads for you. The brief is the bible: keep coming back to it to make sure your efforts stay on track.

6. Write a proposition

The proposition is a one-sentence summary of what you're offering and why customers will buy from you. Although not necessarily something the customers will see, or even understand, the proposition is the central thrust behind your advertisements. You may have heard of something called a unique selling proposition (USP), which is something that only your company or your product can promise to a customer. If you're the only company that makes bagless vacuum cleaners (as Dyson once was), that's a USP—and it's a strong proposition on which to base all your advertising. If you're in a market making things like laptop computers, which are now essentially commodities people buy mainly on price, there is no USP—so you have to create a proposition based on some other promise (your excellent customer service, unbeatable price guarantee, inherent coolness, or whatever it might be).

7. Turn your proposition into a creative idea

Everyday, we're bombarded with thousands of different advertising messages. If you want your message to stand out, it has to capture people's attention very quickly. More than that, it has to be persuasive too. Think of your advertisement as a little salesman who has to close a deal with someone he's never met in about 30 seconds. That's a pretty tall order! If you're writing your own ads, remember to come up with creative ideas that are based on your proposition and fully satisfy your brief. That means they have to properly exploit the medium and appeal to the target audience. The easiest thing in the world is to come up with random ideas that bear no relation to the work you've done so far, which is like throwing mud at a wall and hoping some of it sticks. Don't just run with the first idea that comes into your head. Force yourself to come up with 10 or 20 different creative ideas and then pick the best one.

Photo: Don't be creative just for the sake of it: sometimes a strong product advertised simply, in the right place and at the right price, will sell itself very easily.

8. Compare your ideas with the proposition and brief

This point is so important it's worth saying again: make sure the creative idea you've chosen fully satisfies the proposition and the brief. You may find advertisements entertaining, but that's not their primary function: they're designed to communicate and sell. So ask yourself honestly, yet again: do your advertisements satisfy the proposition and the brief? If not, try again.

9. Test your advertising on real people

Only a fool would spend a fortune running untested advertisements on real prospects. Test your ads on a few people to start with and carefully assess the response. If the message people take from your ads bears no resemblance at all to your proposition, your advertisement is wrong and you need to try again.

10. Measure the effectiveness of your advertising

While big-budget advertising is often designed to build a brand over months, years, or even decades, all advertising is ultimately designed to sell products and make money. Try to find quantifiable ways of measuring the effectiveness of your ads if you can. For example, measure your product sales in a certain territory, run your ads only in that place for a time, and then measure sales there again afterwards. Use another territory, where you're not running ads, as a control experiment or baseline for comparison purposes. Try different kinds of advertising in different media and compare the effects. Read up on statistics so you know how to distinguish a real boost in sales from chance fluctuations. Advertising can be very expensive. Remind yourself, yet again, that the point is to sell products and make money, not to boost your ego by getting your company name in the papers or on TV. Think of advertising as an investment. If you're not getting the right return, move your money elsewhere.

Photo: How do you know if a sign outside your premises is advertising effectively? You could experiment with different colors and designs. Don't forget to ask your customers where they heard about you. But if you're going to measure advertising effectivness, do it carefully and systematically. Remember that there could be other reasons for an increase (or decrease) in trade!