Radio, Television, Internet, Magazines, Local Newspapers, National Newspapers, Mobile Advertising, Billboards, Movie Theater Ads, Classified Ads, Craigslist, Yellow Pages, and many more are places a business can advertise their products and/or services.  In each genre of advertising there are many different ways to advertise.  For instance news papers have classified ads and ad space within the content of the newspaper for you to choose from.  When looking at the myriad of choices in advertising no wonder many people are confused about what direction to take or how to use their selected means of advertising effectively.  Before purchasing any adverting you must get a plan together.  You must see the big picture.  The shot gun approach to advertising is not going to work.  Without a plan people often switch from one advertisement to another which is all wrong.

I was talking with a client today who was considering taking down an ad on a very popular website just because of the cost.  I don’t think the decision to remove an ad should be made based on cost alone.  Of course you have to factor in how much you can afford, but at the same time you need to factor in if you can afford not to run the advertisement.  A fundamental mistake often made by business owners is not allowing the ad a decent amount of time to be effective.  I see people all the time who pay for advertising and after only 30 days they want to change because it is not giving the results they hoped for.

Let me explain an example to you.  A company runs an ad in the back of a magazine offering a specialized product.  The product is not offered by many other vendors so the company does not have a lot of competition selling similar items.  Lets just say the ad cost the vendor 1000 dollars per month.  After one month the ad yielded sales of 700 dollars.  Given the cost to produce and ship the item plus the marketing cost with the magazine ad there is a loss for the month with the ad.  So the vendor wants to remove the ad.  On the surface this may appear to be a cut and dry decision, but there are somethings you have to understand about advertising.

Advertising in some cases creates a sale the very first time, but more often the potential customer has to see the add many times before getting interested to consider making a purchase.  I am not going to get into the mechanics of how people decide to purchase as items.  If you all would like to engage this discussion please comment below.  I will be more than happy to write another post on the topic.

Back to the point, It normally takes a minimum of 3 months running a magazine ad to yield positive results.  When people see the ad the first time they may over look the ad all together.  The second time they see the ad they may acknowledge the ad.  The third time they may read the advertisement.  OK, fast forward to the customer thinking they need the item and wondering where they saw the advertisement.  Here comes the problem of not letting an ad run and do its job.  it is now a couple months later and this potential customer picks up a new edition of the magazine and flips straight to the back looking for the ad.  Since the ad was removed the sale is lost because the customer can not find where to purchase the item.

The above is a really simple to the point example.  The point here is you have to give your advertisement time to work.  You have to give people time to first notice the ad and then to read the ad.  You have to be consistent with your advertising and give it time to develop results.  This does not mean put ads up everywhere and leave them.  You educate yourself about who will see the ad, and determine if this demographic is your target market.  I would not place parts for a sport bike in a home and garden magazine.  You need to determine how many people will see the ad.  This is also known as impressions.  Based on the cost for the advertisement you can then determine cost per impression.  This will give you a base point to compare one advertising mean to another.