In today’s digital world there are more ways to advertise than ever before and while advertising is changing to accommodate all the new channels, the process of advert creation is still subject to some basic processes as outlined below.
• Choose a Target Audience
For an advert to be successful you’ll need to target the right audience for your product or service. Create a ‘buyer persona’ representing all the things you know about your ideal customer (by using market research and information about existing customers) and pitch your message directly to them.
• Conduct Market Research
Knowing the market is essential for any advertising campaign. Use it to answer key questions about your target market including their age, interests, social media platforms they use, income, where they live and so on.
• Choose Your Platform
Based on the market research you’ve conducted you should have a pretty good idea of how to reach your target audience based on their interests and so on. In many cases, you’ll want to use multiple platforms where this makes sense for a particular audience.
• Make a Budget
You need to spend money to make it, or so they say. In any case, the amount of money you have to spend is never unlimited so decide on the amount you need by breaking down the costs of creating your campaign and projecting the return on investment that you’re aiming to achieve (so that the whole process is worthwhile).
• Create a Message
You’ve got an audience and decided on the platform, now you need to decide what it is you want your customer to do: visit a website, buy a product, sign up for a trial subscription and so on. Your message needs to encapsulate your broad campaign purpose and encourage customers to respond.
• Develop Creative Assets
This is what most people think of when they think of an advert: a banner, video, article and so on. You’ll need to create copy for image and online ads, long-form content for articles and videos, photographs to support copy, custom-designed animations and so on: in effect, whatever your advert creation will use to get the message across.
• Determine Measurements of Success
Based on your budget and expected return on investment, you should be able to determine whether your advertising campaign was a success or not based on whether more money came in than it cost to run the campaign. Whatever your parameters for success are, you should set them in advance and then see whether the campaign met its goals.
• Analyze Performance
During the course of your campaign you should constantly assess whether the campaign has met its objectives and the areas in which it over- and under-performed. You can use this to tweak the current campaign or use it when crafting your next.
