Benchmark Business Group

Effective Marketing Campaigns

September 14, 2021

What makes for a great ad campaign? It’s easy to get excited about a great campaign. After all, you probably feel proud of your business and the effort that went into creating the campaign. However, it’s also easy to get distracted by the look and feel of an ad campaign and not have a great way to evaluate a potential ad.

These are four simple but effective categories to use to evaluate all ad campaigns. If you take a step back from each ad and ask questions around these four categories, it will help ensure that your ads are headed in the right direction:

Who - What target market or markets is this ad targeted toward? If markets have similar desires/problems and ways of thinking about those you may sometimes combine them, but often markets will have separate campaigns. This will include demographics as well as psychographics.

Purchase Decision Chain - Where is your target market in their decision to make a purchase?

  • Do they already have the motivation to buy? Or do you need to stimulate that motivation?
  • If they have the motivation, have they decided that your product/service is what they need? Or do you have to sell them on the idea that your product/service is what they need to fulfill their motivation?
  • And if they have decided that your product/service will fulfill their desire/problem, then have they decided that your company is better than the competition?

Once you’ve identified where your target market is in their decision to make a purchase it’s easier to see if your ad campaign works for this market.

Problem/Desire - What’s the problem/desire that your product/service is going to fulfill? As you look for this in the campaign, make sure it is from the target market’s point of view. How would they describe it? This should include functional, but also emotional, needs and be applicable to where they are on the purchase decision chain.

Solution - How does your product/service fulfill their problem/desire? Again, this needs to be clear from the target market’s point of view and should include functional as well as emotional needs. This is also where you look at creating a true brand.

  • How is your company different from the competition?
  • Why should they buy from you?
  • A true brand is established by creating a difference between your business and the competition, but that difference must be established around something that matters to the target market.

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