One of the reasons advertising campaigns don’t work well is because there are more things that you should do in your marketing mix.

It goes beyond just writing a copy, designing it and placing an advert on media channels.

So, let’s look at some reasons why your advertising may not have worked to the degree it is supposed to.

It sounds like a given, but entrepreneurs make this mistake over and over again that it sometimes looks like there is something so complicated about it.

Your advertising will not work optimally without “sales” effort to back it up.

Read that again.

Let’s take a basic example. A bottled drink brand expends money on advertising by taking all the billboards in a city for a day, but when you decide to give the drink a try and walked into three convenience stores, you could not find the product! If it is Coke, for example, you will conveniently go for a competitive brand like Pepsi and forget about the ads you have been seeing all day long. It thus means, the advertising should have been backed with “sales” efforts in form of distribution, distributor engagement, channel planning etc.

Same applies to your start-up. Say you advertised your products/services through a website and you are wondering why it is not working.

You need to have a conversion plan as part of your marketing plan.

It’s that simple!

You advertised your hotel for people to book online but when they book, there is no customer care officer (or automated emails/phone calls) to follow up their booking dates. You will still get conversions, but not as much.

Having advertised your product on Instagram, your phone number should not be switched off or your phone unconnected to the internet or Whatsapp, knowing most prospects will want to exchange pictures before purchase. To maximize your advertising dollars, before you advertise, ensure you have set up the sales and internal systems to back your advertising up and convert to sales optimally.

Asides sales efforts to back your advertising up, another important thing for you to achieve maximum effectiveness for your advertising is to decide and plan who your primary target is.

You need to define your target market through their psychographics (the way they think, what they believe, what’s important to them) and demographics (age, location, income, sex etc.).

Those are technical jargons actually.

You can simply imagine two of your friends, family members or church members that fit the profile of the people you want to talk to. Then start planning your whole advertising strategy around them. This will begin to determine how you craft your advertising messages (copy) and where you place those messages, so it can reach people like them.

Don’t talk through your advertising like you like to talk. Talk the way your target audience will love to hear it. That way, your ads will achieve a better resonance than usual.

So, remember to set up adequate internal and sales processes to back up your advertising efforts. Define your target clearly, don’t let it be blurry or seem like you are targeting the whole world. Then speak to them in their language.

For online or offline advertising campaigns and strategy to bring the spotlight on your brand, visit www.phosterng.com now to drop a brief.