Types Of Advertising – How to use your sales advantage

 

 

There are many different types of advertising in the world today. Some, such as flyers and direct mailers are familiar to anyone with a mailbox. The lesser-known mediums, such as surrogate advertising, can be a little more difficult to identify, particularly in everyday applications.

In this article, the main types of advertising will be named and explained! 

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are incredibly cheap when compared to other advertising platforms. They also do most of the microtargeting for you. Get in! However, there is a dwindling organic audience on Facebook, and most of the younger adults no longer use it as their main social media platform. It can still be a great way to grow your audience,  but you need the right type of ad. 

To get attention, firstly you need to know your target audience – drill down into the detail here.  Facebook is great at finding your customers as there are millions of data points as they seem to know so much about us!

 

 

Secondly, you have to have an eye-catching advert otherwise people will scroll right past.  It’s called disruptive marketing.  We all scan our devices and have got used to seeing a lot of information on our screen.  What makes you stop at a post? Facebook does have strict rules for their advertising.  They check every ad before it will be displayed.

Facebook will only charge you per click on the ad.  This is brilliant as your ad can be displayed to millions of people, but only charged a small amount.  Set your daily budget and cost per those clicks and you are all set!

 

Influencer Advertising

 

 

In today’s social media powered world, influencers are those who are either celebrities or have a “celebrity” online presence in terms of the number of followers that they have across their social media platforms. It can be an advertisers’ dream to have their product well received and reviewed by an influencer. It is also a highly-targeted type of advertising. 

However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, getting connected with the wrong influencer can do more harm than good to a brand image. Also, it can be difficult to measure the results of advertising with an influencer versus more traditional approaches to advertising. 

 

 

I regard anyone with 5K followers, or more, to be an influencer.  In their bio, they usually state whether they will consider collaborations, or collabs, and how to contact them.  Just ensure they are in your niche as that’s an indication their audience will also be interested in. Some will work with you for free, they just want the product or service you are offering as their fee.  Others, usually with a larger audience, will charge a fee and the post will remain on for a short period.  This usually costs around $150-$250 per post.

If you are starting I suggest working with the smaller, and free,  influencers first. By working with multiple influencers your ad can be seen by 1000’s of people! A good influencer will tag you into future posts they make and so your reach just keeps getting bigger!

 

YouTube Advertising

YouTube is the second-largest searched site, right beneath Google, who happens to own it! They provide a micro-targeted and huge audience for advertisers. 

 

 

It’s a fantastic way to get more traffic to your website and helps you rank faster on Google. However, beware of the fact that when you advertise with YouTube, you have no control over the content that your ads are appearing on. Also, the amount of consumers that simply wait the 3 seconds that are mandatory to skip, and then do so, is astronomical. 

I wrote an article all about YouTube ads.  Check it out!

 

Print Advertising

 

The most well known in the advertising industry is print advertising. Print media consists of magazines, flyers, brochures, and newspapers, just to name the most frequently seen.  This is the most popular form of advertising in the market because of its cost. It is incredibly cheap to purchase ad space in print, and fliers and mailers cost next to nothing to create and send. 

However, there are a few negative points to mention in print advertising, as well. Because the actual printing of newspapers and magazines is declining because of online readership, there is a declining readership that will view the print ads. 

 

Besides, there is a strong possibility that your mailer or flyer is just going to end up in someone’s recycle bin, and chalked up to junk mail. The strongest argument for advertising in print remains the ability to reach your target audience. 

If you are selling cookie molds, you can advertise in Martha Stewart Living and reach essentially every holiday baker out there. That is why print advertising is still a contender in the marketing and advertising world, and we list it here for our article on types of advertising.

 

Outdoor Advertising

We’ve all seen them on sidewalks, off the side of the highway, and at stadiums. Kiosks, billboards, signage at events all equal outdoor advertising. Outdoor advertising is created to be eye-grabbing and catchy in terms of slogans. 

That is because outdoor advertising is aimed at impulse buyers. After all, it’s the impulse buyer that is stopping at the burger joint for the 30-foot tall hamburger they saw on a billboard two exits back. One of the biggest pros of using outdoor advertising is cost. It is without a doubt the most cost-effective way to reach a target audience. However, there are some cons also. 

The first is vandalism. It is always a treat when the general public can reach your signage because kids with spray paint aren’t particular about the advertising that they are ruining.  Those pesky kids! The second con to outdoor advertising is that it can sometimes be hard to catch the information or relevant details, such as phone numbers or dates when driving by outdoor signage.

 

Sales Funnels

Sales funnels, or also known as ad funnels, are pages linked to your website, but can be expensive. However, they are great for gathering email addresses of potential clients. A highly optimized sales funnel will automate your advertising.  You can instantly offer up-sells, down-sells, and alternative products. Done right, a sales funnel will be the best salesperson you could ever employ.  Fact.

 

For a newbie though, they are complicated to code and set up.  There are over 800 data points to monitor and it can be overwhelming.  Do not worry!  This $7 training package from ClickBank is one of the best out there and is all you need to become an expert at building funnels.

 

 

Broadcast Advertising

Broadcast advertising includes television, radio, podcast, and internet advertising. One of the huge drawbacks to broadcast advertising used to be the expense of production coupled with the expense of air time. However, with the birth of the internet, that’s no longer a real issue, because you can create your ads and place them for very little to no cost on the internet. 

 

 

TV and radio space is still pretty expensive as an advertising medium. Podcasts can be a great way to reach a specific audience, because of the demographics of the podcast being recorded as part of the analytics. One of the biggest pros of broadcast advertising is the potential to reach a huge audience. However, in the days where television is on-demand, and people don’t necessarily watch the evening news as they once did, there is a definite lack of targetability with television broadcasting. 

 

Covert Advertising Or Sponsored Product Placement

Covert advertising involves the use of brand placement in media. This could be a television character drinking a can of Coca Cola, or a movie star driving a Cadillac in the newest blockbuster. It can be difficult to ascertain the costs of covert advertising, because sometimes a show will be sponsored by a particular product or brand throughout a season. However, it has been proven time after time that the act of covert advertising does work. 

Covert advertising is expensive!   Imagine being Cadillac, and providing the 15 new cars for the stunt driver to roll over in the new blockbuster that Cadillac is placing covert advertising inside of. The expense is more than likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Also, there has been a great deal of scrutiny about covert advertising. Studies have been performed about subliminal advertising and its effects on people. It has been shown to work without the person being aware of the product on screen!  Well, that’s no good for us advertisers!

 

Surrogate Advertising

Surrogate advertising, which is also known as a brand extension, is advertising that is for brands banned from advertising under the law. This is most frequently seen in tobacco and alcohol advertising. Manufacturers will stimulate a person’s memory of an old product that they have been prohibited from advertising by naming a new secondary product the same name, and then running an advertisement for the new, unbanned product. 

This form of advertising, especially when dealing with alcohol and tobacco, has been under attack for several years by groups that want to see it permanently banned. 

 

SMS Marketing

 

Since the birth of the text message, product advertisers saw a niche and ran with it. By opting in when visiting some of your favorite retailers online, you agree to receive text messages from them regarding sales and promotions. This has proven to be a good source of website traffic, and is still the main source of mobile advertising via phone. 

However, there are some cons to the SMS marketing strategy. First, if a do not call registry is aware of the SMS source, it may block the messaging as spam or nuisance messages if the intended receiver has signed up for that service with the registry. Also, because some of the subscribers’ phone plans charge per text message received, some subscribers will opt-out to avoid the charges, especially if the amount of messages received is excessive. 

Pay Per Click Ads

Pay per click ads are a complex digital marketing channel. They’re a quick, highly targeted way to get those interested in your product over to your site and into your checkout process. However, bear in mind that pay per click ads are not cheap to place, and that they can be a waste if you place ads on the wrong search terms. 

Google, Amazon, and Facebook use this strategy and for it to work you have to fully research what keywords your customers are searching for.  Google Keyword Planner is a great research tool and you should find a long list of phrases you can bid on to show your ad.

 

 

Essentially, you bid on each keyword and your ad will be displayed when someone searches using it.  You get charged if they click the ad.  Be careful using this strategy.  Without doing your full research first, your daily budget will be blown on useless, irrelevant, keywords! Running sponsored ads on Amazon is an absolute must and is a key driver in higher organic ranking.  

 

Direct Email Lists or Email Campaigns

Email lists have gained a separate category owing to the fact of personalization. The emails sent from companies have a personalized message and greeting, which makes E-mailers more effective than most of the types of advertising. Emails are most effective when a person signs up to receive them from your lead-magnet, sales funnel, or at the register when making a purchase. 

 

 

Building your email list is the most valuable asset in your business.  You can sign up for an autoresponder which automatically sends regular emails to keep them engaged.  Imagine being able to launch new products to an audience that already knows, likes and trusts you.  How can you value that? It’s priceless.

Yet, there are some cons to the direct email list marketing attempts. First, a lot of emails are flagged as spam and, therefore, never seen by your customer.  Secondly, your customer is likely to get a lot of emails each day.  Standing out from the crowd is an art in itself!  Testing different titles is a must.  For example, “Different types of advertising methods” against “CRAZY ad tips – Secret formula inside!”.  Which one grabs your attention?

Also, if the emails become excessive they could be reported as spam and blocked by the intended recipient.  If you are emailing once or twice a week you will be totally fine, but some companies email EVERY day and that’s annoying. CAN-SPAM act is the law to protect us all from email spammers.

Always ensure they double subscribe.  This means they have to confirm their email account first BEFORE you start sending emails.  Choose the right autoresponder and you should be good as they won’t allow you to fall foul of the rules.

 

Types of advertising conclusion

With so many different types of advertising to choose from, we’re confident you can implement some of these strategies immediately. As with anything new you’ll need some patience and luck, but also some mechanism to test what works, or doesn’t, and optimize your ads over time.

 

 

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