Advertising on a Budget -- Part 2: Thinking Small > NetSparsh

Home
>
Advertising
>
Advertising on a Budget -- Part 2: Thinking Small

Advertising on a Budget -- Part 2: Thinking Small

This is the second article of a three-part series. I'm illustrating the marketing challenges of a small business, PrescottWeddings.com.

Our goal was to both build the PWC brand and drive traffic to the Web site. Advertising regularly was essential. Yet it was also essential to keep our costs down. So we leveraged our monthly newspaper advertising to stretch our marketing dollar as far as we could.

How did we do that? We "thought small."

We bought one inch by two column inch ads (a column inch in this particular publication is approx. 1.88 inches). The ads were one inch high and almost 4 inches long.

To reflect the small ad, the copy also had to be short and sweet. Like so:

www.PrescottWeddings.com. Everything you need to say "I do."

Just the name of the business and the slogan.

We put the name in large type and made the tagline much smaller.

Did it work?

The first day this ad ran, we garnered 350 hits on the Web site and several phone calls from business owners who wanted more information.

And that was just the beginning. Hits steadily grew during the campaign, and every time it ran we always noticed a jump.

Not bad for a little ad.

Conventional wisdom says bigger is better. And while it is true that big ads stand out (after all, they do take a big chunk of real estate on the page) it doesn't mean big is the only way to go. Small ads can pack a punch too.

Why did the PWC ad work? First of all, it got noticed because it stuck out (yes, small ads can stick out). It had an odd shape -- long and thin, not a square like so many other ads. The name was big -- bigger than many other fonts surrounding it. (But not so big that the ad lacked sufficient white space.)

But probably the biggest reason it worked was because the message was simple. This is clearly a Web site about having a wedding in the Prescott area. Therefore if you're involved with weddings, whether as a business or on a more personal level, and you're also associated with Prescott, then this is a Web site clearly worth taking a peek at.

People instantly got the message. And they got it even if they only scanned the paper. It was quick and painless for them -- something all ads should strive to be.

What's also interesting is how this ad hit its target market. I've spoken to people (mostly men) who have no interest in getting married and have never seen the ad even though they read the paper. Conversely, businesses in the wedding industry and brides have said they see the ad all the time.

Now, you may have a business name that doesn't capture your business' products or services as well as PrescottWeddings.com (my business name for example). In this case, why not think of a catchy tag line you can use in those small ads to drive people to your Web site?

Web sites can be huge, wordy, information-stuffed selling tools. So use short, sweet one-message statement to get people to go look and learn more about your business rather than try to shove everything in an ad. Don't forget to include your business name and logo for branding purposes.

Okay, so small ads with one simple message work. For the final key in PWC's marketing program, check out Part 3: Frequency, frequency, frequency.

Michele Pariza Wacek owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting, a writing, marketing and creativity agency. She offers two free e-newsletters that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.writingusa.com

In The News:

San Francisco Chronicle
Open up the black box of political advertising
San Francisco Chronicle
Those who would challenge false, hateful or misleading advertisements are rendered mute. They don't know what's been said, or to whom, because micro-targeted advertising happens out of public view. It's only through the efforts of diligent reporters ...
Mark Zuckerberg backs stricter vetting on political advertising after Russian ad purchasesWashington Examiner
Democratic senators preparing bill to deal with online political advertisingCNNMoney
Facebook Wants to Self-Regulate Political Advertising, Provide Russian Ads to CongressVariety
The Hill -BBC News
all 755 news articles »

Best of the week: Safari update underscores Apple's ambivalence about advertising
Digiday
Six ad industry groups wrote in an open letter to Apple last week that the move will sabotage the internet's economy. But because Apple makes most of its money from selling devices, unlike Google and Amazon, which bring in revenue from advertising ...

Business Insider
Adobe has hired a media buying veteran to help ramp up its advertising bona fides
Business Insider
At Adobe, his task will be to explain to the ad world why Adobe's one-stop shopping approach to digital advertising — the company offers brands tools for ad buying, data management, making ads and connecting with existing customers — is better than ...

and more »

Financial Express
Apple has done a horrible job advertising the iPhone 8
BGR
Let's say you have an iPhone 7 or an iPhone 6s, what are the benefits of upgrading to the iPhone 8? It's an important question that Apple has curiously and clumsily failed to answer. Sure, tech heads who intently watched Apple's keynote last week can ...
iPhone 8 Durability Test - BEND TEST - Glass Scratch Video!YouTube
Apple admits to Apple Watch LTE problems just before it shipsThe Verge
Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE review: missed connectionsThe Verge
iFixit
all 522 news articles »

The Tech Takeover of Advertising in One Chart
Visual Capitalist (blog)
But, despite these other initiatives and some diligent messaging, make no mistake – both Alphabet and Facebook are media companies that get their money from one source. Advertising makes up the vast majority of their business, and they've both become ...

and more »

STLtoday.com
Twitter won't run an anti-abortion group's paid advertising unless it scrubs its website of 'sensitive content'
STLtoday.com
In a letter to Twitter, attorneys for Live Action, known for its undercover investigations of abortion clinics, allege the social media platform wrongly applied its policies to censor advertisements that contain ultrasound images of fetuses, promote or ...

and more »

Forbes
Debunking Myths: Don't Count Out Traditional Advertising Channels; Embrace Them
Forbes
The widespread belief that web and social media ads are giving a higher ROI than the "old-fashioned" TV, press, and radio advertising is a costly myth. The myth hinges on the belief that the more precise targeting achieved by digital advertising not ...

The Disappearance Of Advertising-Supported Media
MediaPost Communications
What you will not see if you follow this link is advertising or sponsorship. No ad interruptions, no “brought to you by,” not even a sponsored message from the four-wheel drive cars journalists drove through the rough terrain or the hotels where they ...

Supermarket News
Albertsons taps Burgstahler as advertising VP | Supermarket News
Supermarket News
Albertsons Cos. on Thursday said it has appointed Guy Burgstahler as the its new VP of advertising. Burgstahler previously served similar roles with retailers ...

and more »

Advertising Week 2017 to Ring The Nasdaq Stock Market Closing Bell
GlobeNewswire (press release)
Advertising Week – the world's largest gathering of industry leaders across advertising, technology, business, entertainment, marketing, media and social good – kicks off its 2017 conference in New York this week and will visit the Nasdaq MarketSite in ...

and more »

Google News

Advertising on a Budget -- Part 2: Thinking Small

Advertising Advertising