If you’ve never created an advertising plan before, you might feel intimidated by the whole process. The truth is that if you follow this simple step-by-step guide on how to prepare an advertising plan, you’ll have everything you need to make your marketing budget work for you and drive results! And if it’s your first time doing it, all the better – don’t be afraid to ask questions along the way! By following these easy steps, you can guarantee that your advertising campaign will reach your customers with minimal investment and maximum impact! Sometimes coming up with an advertising plan can be difficult, but it’s one of the most important steps in creating your business’s marketing strategy. After all, you can have the most creative and innovative advertising idea in the world, but if you don’t have an effective plan to put it into action and drive results, your idea will be useless. This step-by-step guide on how to prepare an advertising plan will help you create an actionable blueprint that you can use to effectively and efficiently advertise your business and achieve your goals.
Decide which channel will work best
You must take the time to determine which channel will work best for your business. Knowing the answers to these questions will help in deciding this.
- What are your goals?
- What is your target audience?
- What is your budget?
- What message do you want to convey?
- How often do you need or want to communicate with your target audience?
- Is a one-time campaign or continuous communication needed?
- Do you have the resources to maintain a continual campaign over time, and if not, how much resource can be devoted at any given moment to be still successful?
- What does success look like for your campaign?
- How do you define it, and what metrics will show when it’s reached? For example, some people might measure their success when they get 20 likes on Facebook posts, while others might measure their goal as 10 purchases from a direct marketing email blast.
- Your definition of success should align with your business objectives. What channels should we use? Take into consideration that some media outlets may provide more cost-effective means than others. For example, online banner ads are generally cheaper than newspaper ads due to the lower production costs involved.
Decide what medium will be used
Your advertising plan should be tailored to the medium that you choose. For example, if you decide on TV advertising, then you would want a different strategy than if your target market is on Facebook or Instagram. This will help you get the most out of your budget and keep your message consistent no matter where it appears to maximize its effectiveness. To learn more about how to tailor your plan for each type of media, read the blog posts on Comprehensive Guide to Creating an Effective Marketing Strategy. It discusses the differences between print ads, television ads, radio ads, billboards, and so on. Each type has strengths and weaknesses. The goal of any marketing campaign is to communicate a clear message with maximum impact, which can sometimes be easier said than done when there are so many options available!
One thing to consider is your desired outcome – Do you want people to visit your website? Do you want them to make an appointment? Do you want them to buy something from the store? Or maybe all three of those things. Once you’ve identified what kind of outcome you’re looking for, create a list of words that best describe that outcome and use these as keywords throughout your entire campaign (ads, social media posts, etc.). For example, if your desired outcome is selling merchandise, then phrases like buy now or shop now might be appropriate. If you want someone to come into the store, try words like shop hours, get directions, and so on. Make sure you have at least 3-5 keywords for each of your goals to ensure the widest possible reach.
Identify your target customer
The best way to find your target customer is by figuring out who has the most potential for your product or service. You want to figure out what type of person would be your perfect client and then identify how they’re likely to search for a company like yours. Once you’ve found that type of person, you want to think about where they might go online to find a company like yours, and then create content that will appear when they search those places.
For example, if I’m advertising for a digital marketing agency, my target customers are entrepreneurs who have grown their companies and are looking to take their business to the next level. These customers might Google social media marketing or digital marketing, so I’ll produce blog posts on these topics which will rank highly on Google’s search engine results page (SERP). By doing this consistently over time, I’m building credibility with them which can lead me towards sales success!
When writing blog posts, you should keep the following in mind: write engaging content using keywords and phrases that relate to your company, link back to relevant pages on your site throughout the post, and share it across all of your social channels including LinkedIn and Facebook Business Pages, add images to increase visual interest; make sure not to just publish links but offer valuable information instead.
Set the goals
To have a good advertising plan, you need to know your goals. What are you trying to do with your ads? This will help determine how much you should spend and how often you need to advertise. Consider the cost of your product or service: When setting up a budget for advertising, consider the cost of the product or service that you’re selling. It might not be worth it to promote something inexpensive when there are so many other ways to sell products like TV commercials or billboards. There are cheaper options such as online ads on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter; this is a great way to keep your costs low but still gain exposure in front of millions of people. However, if you’re looking to start a new business and don’t have money to invest in advertising, these platforms may not be available.
Check competitors:
How successful is your competition? You want to make sure that what they’re doing isn’t better than what you’re doing before spending money on advertising. If they are more successful than you, then it’s time to rethink your strategy before sinking all of your savings into the advertisement.
Determine which platform is best suited for your business:
We’ve covered some basic ideas about preparing an advertising plan, but now it’s time to find out which platform would work best for you and how much you can afford. Online advertisements are popular because they can reach thousands of people without costing very much at all. They also allow companies to get real-time feedback by seeing which posts get the most engagement and talking back through comments or direct messages.
Brainstorm potential ideas
There are many advertising strategies and approaches. The first step is figuring out what your goals are. Do you want to increase sales, build awareness, or do something else? Once you have a goal in mind, then it’s time to brainstorm some ideas. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, think about what marketing channels will work best for you and how much of your budget can be spent there. Channels might include TV commercials, billboards, social media campaigns, Google Ads, etc.
Let’s say that your idea is to create a Facebook campaign with links to buy products through your website. You could use photos or videos that show the product being used by consumers and testimonials from other customers who bought the product and liked it. If possible, try to target specific geographical areas like college campuses where there may be more potential buyers of your product.
Finally, figure out how often you plan on updating this campaign (weekly, monthly) and when each update should happen (Friday afternoons?). Update your calendar so you don’t forget!
If this all seems overwhelming, that’s okay! Remember, planning for success doesn’t happen overnight. Don’t expect to get it perfect the first time around – it takes practice and experimentation to find what works best for you.
Build a Budget
First, it’s important to build a budget. The most expensive part of any advertising plan will be the media buy (the cost for the ad space), so you’ll want to make sure you have enough funds for that. If you’re shooting for a big brand name company like Nike or McDonald’s, your media buy could cost around $1 million. For smaller local companies, you can expect this number to be much less. For example, if you are running a TV commercial in Los Angeles County, you might spend about $2,000 per day on airtime. A full-page color newspaper advertisement costs about $5,500 per issue and an outdoor billboard would range from about $750 to more than $100,000 depending on size and location.
Create your first PPC campaign
PPC advertising is a great way to get your products or services in front of potential customers and build brand recognition, but it can also be expensive. Creating a PPC campaign that drives results is all about finding the right balance between what you’re willing to spend and what you’ll make back. Make sure you know how much you’re willing to spend per click by doing some research on the average cost per click for different types of ads.
For example, on Facebook’s ad platform, one study found that a targeted text ad for $1 per click generated 30% more leads than an untargeted text ad for $0.50 per click. So while many factors go into determining how successful your campaign will be, it’s important to think strategically about both the number of impressions you want (the total number of times people see your ad) and the value of those impressions (how much each person will likely buy from you).
The type of targeting strategy you choose will have a big impact on your budget as well. Knowing which demographics are most likely to purchase from you will help determine where and when to focus your advertising dollars. Location-based targeting will tell Google Ads not only what cities or zip codes you want to advertise in, but also which devices, such as tablets or smartphones. Placing bids at different periods throughout the day helps tailor your campaigns so they reach certain groups during specific hours.
A good way to start is by running a test with small budgets across multiple time slots and platforms until you figure out what works best for your business.
Evaluate results
Getting the most out of your advertising dollars requires a well-thought-out plan. A good advertising plan will include what you want to accomplish, how you will measure it, and what resources (e.g., time and money) are needed. The first step is determining your goal. What do you want your advertising campaign to achieve? For example, if you wanted to increase awareness of your product or service, then your goal would be increasing awareness. If you wanted to generate leads, your goal would be generating leads. It may sound simplistic, but understanding what you want from your advertising efforts can go a long way in achieving success with them.
Once you’ve determined your goals, then you can move on to developing strategies for reaching those goals. One strategy might be paid search ads that drive traffic to your website where prospects are greeted with a landing page designed specifically for the campaign. Another strategy might be social media posts aimed at attracting more likes and followers that eventually lead people back to your site. There are many ways advertisers can reach their goals; this is just one possible strategy!
Rinse, lather, repeat!
In this day and age, advertising is everywhere. It’s on TV, it’s on the street, it’s in email inboxes. You can’t escape it. And if you’re trying to build a business or grow your business, you need to have a plan for how you’re going to advertise.
There are many options available for advertising: TV commercials, social media ads, print ads, banner ads, and more. Deciding which type of ad will work best for your business might seem overwhelming at first. The good news is that with a little research, you’ll be able to find the right way to market your products or services.
To get started, take inventory of what resources you have available: time, money, and expertise. These three factors will help guide your decision-making process as well as inform what types of ads make sense for where you’re starting from and where you want to go.
Conclusion:
The advertising plan is critical to the success of any business venture, but this doesn’t mean it should be treated as an afterthought. It should be one of the first things you create for your company as it lays out your advertising objectives and strategies, as well as provides valuable insight into your target audience and how you can make a profit from them.
Source : How to Prepare an Advertising Plan That Will Drive Results?
