Effective advertising is centered around the three “M’s”, Message, Market and Media. To maximize the return on your advertising investment, you should always be examining whether these three are working their hardest in your advertising:
Message: This is what you’re advertising is telling your customer about your products and how well it’s resonating with the customer. Your advertising should be bringing up the best selling points about your product in order to get the customer to the point where they want to find out more. Always remember your advertising is simply to get a customer interested enough to engage with your company, too many businesses try to sell their products through their ads and this tends to muddy the message.
Market: Who are your best customers? You can segment this a number of ways, it could be areas of town where your best customers live. You can also segment by types of customers and the products they need. Figuring out which segments provide the best return on your advertising dollar insures you send your message to people who can provide the business.
Media: How will you deliver your message to your market? One of the easiest ways to determine which media is working the hardest for you is to start every conversation with a new customer with the question, “where did you hear about us?” This allows your market to tell you which media is working the hardest for you. Obviously you have to track this information and determine which customers are buying and which ones provide the best return on your advertising investment.
