Mad 4 Blog

Sure, it is important to have well-worded and visually appealing ads with strong brand messages. And yes, it is also imperative that these ads reach as much of your target audience as possible for maximum and repeat exposure. But you can put the most wonderful ad in front of throngs of potential buyers and still fail with poor ad placement.

Ad placement can mean a myriad of things depending upon the format of marketing being discussed. For example, website ads should be built into the main framework, such as within a sidebar, so that they show all the time on all pages of the site, regardless of new content. And you’ll want them placed ‘above the fold’—which means that viewers can see them without scrolling down. However, ad placement in a newspaper could mean placing a small ad for your gym next to an article about vitamins, rather than a page-spanning ad next to an article about things that can be done at home to save money.

Sprint recently posted an extremely concise and clever ad on CBS.com. Viewers watching the network’s television shows are exposed to two consecutive 30-second spots on every commercial break. Sprint bought an ad proclaiming they the network helps you get exactly what you want, when you want it—and to prove it, the screen simply shows a click-through button that lets the viewer skip the rest of the ad. This instant gratification associated with the brand name is extremely smart, doing more to make a good impression and convey a clear message in one or two seconds than a full-minute ad might. The problem occurs when this ad comes first in the series of two ad spots. Rather than send the viewer straight back to their program, by clicking (following the CTA) the viewer is merely rewarded with…another commercial. Simply by swapping the placement of the two ads, Sprint’s advertising endeavors could have twice the power.

Similarly, the Associated Content website raised the hackles of its loyal readers when ads were placed mid-article, interrupting their reading flow. In this case, the ads became associated with interruption and frustration—so a viewer’s first impression and relationship with that brand was negative. But while more discreet advertising has its merits, tricky ads (such as invisible links on websites) also never win consumer favor.

Marketing experts must do more than place expensive media buys for amazing creative. They must have a hand in the ad’s placement from unit purchasing to proofing the final result. And of course you’ll want your marketing team to come to your defense against the venue if an ad is inappropriately handled in any context—and prevent future mishaps.

To ensure that you’re getting the best ad placement possible, you should not only confirm that intelligent human eyes or ears land on and approve your company’s ad in every context, but also seek ways to measure the success of various ad placements. While this is easy to do online, you may have to be more clever with other marketing formats. For more on this subject, visit last week’s blog about Tracking and Coding.

For a laugh, you may want to browse this list of Top 10 Unfortunate Ad Placements.

It always makes sense to ask successfully acquired clients and customers how they came to hear about your business. By carefully comparing how well each of your advertising efforts performs, you can bulldoze past a lot of trial-and-error and simply direct your budget toward what works, both in quantitative and qualitative units. For example, if no one’s seen that ad in the newspaper but everyone heard about you from a friend or relative, you may wish to pull your print ads and focus on buzz-generating word-of-mouth campaigns–or even reward former patrons for referring a friend. And if you’re reaching a higher caliber of clientele via brochure than billboard, you’ll certainly want to bring your message down to the smaller scale, which can also cut back cost.

These days, tracking is everything when it comes to building successful campaigns. Online, it’s perfectly easy to determine how a person landed on your page; analytics mark each click-through by its referring links, search engine source, browser type and even the viewer’s physical location—it’s not only effortless, but also automatically built into most website content management systems. But even online there’s always more you can do; when it comes to e-commerce, many shopping outlets utilize codes. Asking buyers to enter a code before they take advantage of a sale helps marketers to track which sales and campaigns were more successful than others, and to help determine if shoppers heard about it from a newsletter, referral or ad. This is why you might see several usable codes available for the same sale, depending on where you hear about it.

In what other ways can coding and tracking be used in your business endeavors? Mad 4 Marketing recently posted job listings on several career search websites. But each posting required us to pay a fee, and since we weren’t sure which websites or which wording would be most successful for attracting the best new teammate, we decided to generate a few different ads. We asked job candidates on each board and posting to reply with a different subject line. This took a little more time and thought, but we were able to see from where we were getting hits, and what kind of prospective employees were nipping the bait. After the first week we cut our ad placement (and cost!) in half and only used phrasing that was clearly expressing our desires to the most qualified candidates.

Another example is Satori’s text message campaign. In 2008, we used a lot of on-the-scene guerrilla marketing to advertise for the newly opening apartment rental community in Fort Lauderdale. We wanted to reach out to those who already lived in and loved the surrounding area of South Florida. At each event (such as street fairs, art shows and the boat parade), we advertised the chance to win six months’ free rent by texting a code to a given phone number. At each event, the code differed. That way, we could see which community event had directed the most participants to our giveaway, as well as which regions or crowds were most interested in Satori. This information turned out to be extremely valuable in later marketing endeavors, such as choosing local ad placement.

The bottom line is that tracking efforts are a smart investment in the future. It means looking past today’s brochure or even tomorrow’s website, toward next year’s entire marketing strategy. Tracking provides you with the tools to always understand and surpass prior tactics–and no matter what, this means that you will ultimately succeed.

Last week, we introduced the premise of using blogs in marketing, and what to do once you have your own blog. In that same vein, this week we are following up with tips for keeping your readers once you have reached out and engaged them in the first place.

Getting Readers to Stay on Your Site

In a world where single impressions are used to measure website results, one might wonder why it’s important to care how long readers actually stay on your site. When it comes to marketing, keeping readers engaged means that you’re increasing their familiarity with your voice and information. By staying on your site, readers are able to connect to the content, which may make them think about your ideas later or want to return (more on this below). You’ll also want visitors to move around on your site, which is why you should always provide links to other areas that might be of interest. For example, if you published a complementary article last month or previously mentioned the topic at hand, you’ll want to refer back to that old post. When readers move through your site, it increases your impression rate click by click–getting you more bang for your buck per visit or guest.

Getting Readers to Revisit Your Site

Why allow readers to have one single good experience on your site when you can encourage them to create a pattern? Readers make pivotal decisions about whether they might want to return to your blog in the first few seconds of landing on it, so inviting them to come back again begins promptly at the start of their very first visit—even with your blog’s title. An easy-to-memorize name will make it easy for one-time visitors to find their way back to you. The look and layout of your blog are also invaluable tools that can influence how the general populace—or your targeted audience—perceives the value of returning to your blog, so don’t skimp on the creative. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression.

The next step is to make your content as subscribable as possible by providing easily identifiable links to RSS feed, your newsletter or other forms of content subscriptions; this includes ‘following’ ‘friending’ ‘liking’ ‘fanning’ or other ways to connect with the page. It also helps to flat-out prompt readers to bookmark your hyperlink. Anything that removes the middle step of making your reader remember that your blog exists will be useful, so be sure to try to lock them to a mailing list or feed as soon as possible.

You’ll also want to make your blog extremely user-friendly so that it’s a welcoming and easy-to-navigate space that readers will want to revisit. We’ve previously discussed the importance of user-friendliness on the Web, but there are a few differences when talking about a blog rather than a website or forum. For example, utilize your blog’s sidebar to chronicle past posts, organize content by key words or add a search feature. Don’t just load this valuable space with heavy text and ads; besides, a busy blog will generally overwhelm readers and dissuade them against ever coming back.

Of course, no effort goes so far as introducing frequent, fresh content and enforcing quality control. By providing plenty of new, engaging content (that must, must, must be typo-free), readers will come up with the bright idea to come back again all on their own.

These aren’t stand-alone suggestions; each relates to one another in order to create a plotted process by which readers are easily directed and re-directed to the blog. Much like with all advertising, it takes several interactions or impressions before marketing tactics can truly take hold; and it’s those who have been most often exposed to your messages who are likely to convert to customers–and spread the word.