A Professionally made Advertising Strategy
If you are on pursue of specific goals for your brand such as launching a new product, publicizing a sales opportunity, enhance an important feature or get relevance in a specific niche of market, you should already be thinking about developing an advertising strategy (or many). It is clear that this few examples do not embrace the whole that can be achieved by a communication campaign involving design and advertising in an effective way.
To start, let´s see how the decision of launching a professionally designed advertising campaign can help you, and what steps are needed to begin.
An advertising campaign from scratch
It is very important to keep in mind that facing an advertising work like this is very much about connecting several aspects related with your brand, and defining the best ways to communicate them to the targeted audiences or potential clients. No, it isn´t about picking some ads and paying to reach the largest amount of people.
Starting from this idea, we´re allowed to affirm that the key to success in an advertising strategy is the creativity used in putting together it´s elements. Let´s talk about them.
Advertising strategy elements
Concept and goal
There is something you´re trying to communicate about your project. The concept in an advertising strategy can be understood as the message transmitted through the different resources and processes used to achieve a determined goal.
Once into this seek, the content hold by the message must be aligned with what we´re trying to generate to the audience: emotionality, access to certain information about a product, sense of need, conviction about an action or habit, etc. To choose the right mood of the message, it´s format and the argumentation structure are very important tasks regarding this aim.
Design and image
Our reality is surrounded by visual stimulation. The biggest part of the information we absorb comes to us in the shape of image and video, either by a conscious or unconscious way. Marketing and advertising ground are not the exception to this rule, in fact, quite the opposite; this is the reason why design is an essential pillar on a brand´s assessment and it´s communicational power.
Through several components like color, typography and photography, among many others, design will fulfill functions such as enhancing the message (from time to time, it also happens that design makes the message), adapting the concept to different formats and retaining or hoarding the audience attention.
Segmentation
To whom am I talking? Who am I trying to talk to? Which kind of people is that I want to attract? Do they know about my brand or should I present it to them? If you have already asked yourself this questions, then you have started to think about your advertising campaign segmentation. Social media, online search services and lots of other virtual platforms allow to segment, that is to say, selecting specifically to what profiles of people the message (ads, related content, etc.) will be delivered.
To put it easier, we´re going to locate and try to comprehend our target audience.
Geographic location, age, gender, working environment, education level, socioeconomic position, passions and habits of people become hints we have at our disposal as tools to build the segmentation of our advertising campaign.
Media planning
So we´ve defined a message, and we know towards whom we are going to lead it. Now it is time to establish how.
We the people inhabit and interact with content through several channels: social media, websites, television, radio, internet videos, streamed content, online search services, even with billboards and brochures across the street or common spaces.
An efficient advertising strategy is one that counts on an accurate selection of arrival means to it´s target audience.
Results measurement and optimization
Once our advertising campaign is already out at the streets (and, of course, into screens), it would be useless to assume the work is done and pray for good results. Tracing and real time evaluation of the strategy are as important as it´s design and building, since the task of studying it´s development will provide key information and data to constantly re-think and optimize it to aim the expected results.
After all ¿what is the most important in an advertising campaign?
For now, we´ve seen which elements need to be considered and put together in order to shape an advertising campaign or strategy, but that´s not the end of the deal. If we want our campaign to start running in a complete and organized way, then we need to take care of some issues that are as relevant as the message making and it´s road to reach the right people.
Advertising campaign budget
The economic source in which we rely to put the advertising strategy forward will provide a guide for us to be realistic about it´s reach, and to optimize the efforts in the investment needed to achieve the intended goals. Generally, the budget of an advertising campaign is made up of:
- Campaign objective: the amount can variate depending on the intentions pursued by the strategy and the expected results. To put it in simple words, investing in a branding strategy wont be the same as investing in one of sales campaign from which you can expect a more direct return than invested.
- Advertising schedule and sum: the average of investment dedicated to ads in the media planning (social media, billboarding, television, radio, etc.)
- Professional services: if you hire professionals to create and activate your advertising campaign, like a creative studio or agency, a fee for their work will be included in the final amount. Design, strategy planning, tracing and optimization make a part of this point.
Briefing
The ideas and proper resources minded to reach them are already shaped; now comes the moment to set agreements and define methods. A briefing is the document that will put the strategy elements together as tasks, goals and steps to follow.
I want to start my advertising campaign
If you´re in need of professional work on design and advertising for your brand or project, we have some proposals to make you. As a specialized creative studio, we dedicate to marketing in a full-scale way, with focus on brand strategy, advertising campaigns, art direction and customized packaging.
We invite you to browse our website and get to know more about us and our work.