7 Steps on How to Develop an Advertising Strategy

As we all know, advertisements are basically everywhere. When you watch TV, you’ll see commercials flaunting their products in between breaks. When you browse social media, you’ll come across ad posts from companies’ social media pages. When you go for a drive or walk downtown, you’ll notice gigantic commercial billboards that are impossible to miss. Simply put, there’s just so many advertisements out there. Because of that, advertising agencies are battling to make their ad campaigns stand out against countless competitors.

7 Steps on How to Develop an Advertising Strategy

Your ad agency can produce successful campaigns as well despite the competition. You can achieve that by following these seven basic steps in developing an advertising strategy.

Analyze Audience Behavioral Data

A report from SmallBizGenius says that 76% of marketers overlook using behavioral data in targeting online ads to their intended audience. If that’s the case, then it’s likely that the intended audience will not come across their ads. Thus, their ads fail. That’s why analyzing behavioral data is crucial.

Behavioral data refers to information about the audience’s viewing or browsing patterns online. It also includes info about what sort of technological devices they use, such as smartphones, tablets, PCs, radio, and television. If you can gather credible audience behavioral data, you’ll know when and where you must launch your ad campaigns. There are abundant references to analyze audience behavior. For one, you can simply observe the online community across multiple media platforms.

Analyzing behavioral data should always be the first step in developing ad strategies. The main purpose of creating ads is to promote a product to its consumers. If ads don’t reach the consumers, then creating them becomes a waste of time and resources.

Identify the Product’s Main Selling Points

What it’s in the product that consumers will find interesting? How is the product useful to consumers? Those are questions you must find the answer to in this step. If you’re going to advertise a product, of course, you need to study it. Particularly, you must identify its main selling points. For this matter, you have to communicate with your clients. They’re the ones who know best about their product. Hence, they can provide input on what product features to emphasize on the ad.

By putting more focus on a product’s checklist of selling points, ads will garner substantial attention in the market. That’s because they can efficiently catch the interest of the target consumers. That’s why we call them selling points. They’re components in a product that can attract consumers to buy it and generate sales.

Study the Competition’s Advertising Tactics

The advertising or marketing strategies of the competition are excellent references. Keep in mind that you share the same target consumers with them. So, if their promotional operations work, chances are their tactics will work for you too. For sure, you have noticed some brands mimicking the ads of their competitors in some ways. And it proved effective for them. They received a fair share of brand awareness in their market.

You can replicate some elements of the competition’s ads. But first, you have to study what makes them efficient to be sure. And also, try to go beyond what makes their strategies great. In that way, you’ll certainly gain a competitive edge against them. However, the line you shouldn’t cross is replicating their ads almost entirely. It becomes evident to the audience that you’re just copying the competition. That puts your client’s brand and your agency’s reputation in a bad light.

Your advertising agency is a creative agency. That said, you should produce ad campaigns that also have unique and distinctive qualities.

Structure a Cost-Effective Budget

Producing an ad campaign is never cheap. Plus, the more money you spend on it doesn’t mean it’ll be an instant hit. For those reasons, structuring a cost-effective budget proposal is very important. As much as possible, you need to minimize operating costs. You have to coordinate with your clients in budgeting for their ads. It’s their money that’ll mostly be on the line.

If possible, try to look for cheaper yet effective alternatives in producing an ad. Your clients will surely appreciate that. With a smaller budget that can get the work done, your clients will be paying a reasonable price quotation total. And that satisfies them. Remember that a grand budget isn’t always key to creating a successful ad campaign.

Choose the Best Advertising Channels

In the first step, we implied that behavioral data could give you ideas about where you should launch an ad campaign. In this step, you’ll be applying those ideas. The “where” that we’re referring to are the advertising channels where you can display your ad campaigns. Prominent examples of an advertising channel are social media and websites.

Based on your gathered behavioral data, choose the advertising channels with high target audience activity. For instance, if the target audience mostly browses YouTube videos, then YouTube would be the best channel. If they spend hours on Facebook and Twitter, then Facebook and Twitter it is.

Devise a Targeted Programming Schedule

In this step, you’ll be following the same rule as the previous step. But the matter at hand here is the “when.” In the first step, we also implied that behavioral data could give you reliable hints of when you must release an ad campaign. What we meant by “when” is the programming schedule of your ad campaigns.

By referring to the behavioral data, you’ll know which hours of the day the audience is most active on various advertising channels. For example, if the product you’re advertising is a toy, your audience is kids below 12 years old. During weekends and summers, these kids likely spend a lot of time watching cartoons on TV during the day. In that case, the best schedule for your ad to air on TV is during school breaks, around 8 AM to 5 PM approximately.

Release and Monitor the Ad

Once everything is in place, you can release the ad to its designated channels. But after that, the job’s not finished yet. As the ad is up and running, you need to monitor it. You have to make sure that it’s doing fine and gaining viewers or traffic. And most importantly, you should determine if the audience is receiving it well. If there are issues or unrealized expectations, you need to make adjustments with the ad. But issues rarely occur if you do things right during production. Monitoring is more of a quality assurance measure.

These seven steps are essential planning and management approaches you should practice. With their help, most of your ad campaigns will be at the top. And that puts your clients’ businesses on the map. Therefore, your ad agency fulfilled its role. So starting now, make these seven steps an element of your advertising agency business plan.

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