Why this is important

There are many benefits to your business from advertising. It helps you to make people aware of and interested in your products or services, increase your sales and/or launch new products or services. It can also be used to reassure existing customers that they are making the right choice in buying from you and therefore encouraging them to remain loyal.

Who might do this

You might do this if you are:

• setting up a business;
• extending or changing your products or services to attract more customers;
• attempting to increase the sales of your business; or
• trying to attract customers from overseas.

What it involves

Advertise your products or services involves:

• reviewing different forms of advertising and assessing their costs and benefits;
• planning and carrying out some advertising; and
• checking the success of your advertising and making changes where appropriate.

Other units that link closely with this

1. Identify the markets for the products or services provided by your business.
2. Decide whether your target audience is local or regional, national or international, or a mixture.
3. Decide whether or not it is worth investing in advertising.
4. Decide what the key messages are that will attract your customers and what you hope you achieve through advertising your products or services.
5. Assess the costs and benefits of different forms of advertising and negotiate the best deal for your advertising.
6. Decide what medium to use to advertise your products or services.
7. Design an advertisement that is attractive to customers, uses a catchy headline, has clear and concise text, pictures, colour and is well designed.
8. Ensure that your advertisement is placed to maximum advantage.
9. Provide all relevant information about your company in your advertising.
10. Decide what methods you will use to monitor the success of your advertisement and what you will use to judge its success.
11. Make sure that your business and staff are ready to deal with the results of your advertising, such as, availability of stock and resources to meet increase sales.
12. Plan to monitor the success of your advertising, allowing time to produce worthwhile results.
13. Assess the feedback from your monitoring and decide whether or not to continue the advertisement or use different methods of promoting your business in the future.

Ways of advertising

1. What and where the markets are for the products or services of your business.
2. What the key ingredients are for a successful advertisement (for example, customer incentive to buy your products or services, having a stylish and relevant design that gets the attention of potential customers).
3. What the cost benefits are of using different ways of advertising.
4. What the best medium is for your business (for example, newspapers, magazines, trade or professional magazines, merchandising, radio, television, posters, cinema and on the internet).
5. The benefits of setting up a website for your business and how to make it easy for people to find their way around it, and make contact with or order from you.
6. Where to place your advertisement (for example, in the press or a magazine choosing early pages, outside covers, special positions or the right hand side of a page; on the internet placing banner and pop-up advertising, and using search engines that directly link to your website).

Creative advertising

7. How to match the medium of your advertisement to your audience to make sure that people are interested in what you have to sell.
8. What motivates people to buy (for example, status, convenience, cost, novelty or curiosity).
9. How to stand out from the crowd by using text, colour and pictures to convey the unique selling point (USP) of your business that gives your audience reasons for trying your products or services.
10. What messages are conveyed about the image of your business through the words that you use (for example, if it offers value for money, high quality, is exclusive, friendly or cheap).
11. What information you need to include in an advertisement (for example, name, address, telephone number, email, website, map and business opening times, where it is relevant).

Monitoring the success of your advertising

12. How to evaluate the reactions of your audience (for example, by placing your advertisement in different places or mediums and checking this when customers buy your products or services and by asking them where they saw your advertisement).
13. How to monitor customer responses to different placements (for example, by using coupons, telephone hotlines, or code numbers relating to the date and place the advertisement appears).
14. What the elements are that are involved in the testing process (for example, allowing time to produce worthwhile results, schedules and methods for testing and sticking to them, and the need to find out more about your customers).

Laws and regulations

15. How to ensure that your advertisement is in line with the requirements of the Advertising Standards Authority (i.e. that it is legal, decent, honest and truthful).