5 Questions to Ask Before Spending Money on Advertising

Many small business owners remain dissatisfied with the return they are getting on their advertising spend. They continue to spend money on advertising month after month just because everyone else is doing it. When asked about what they are getting in return they remain as confused as everyone else.
We think the reasons small business owners are not happy with the return on their advertising spend is they don’t understand how to go about asking the right questions before putting their money down. They should pay attention to few fundamental principles of advertising before sending their next check to the advertising company.
Below we have distilled those principles in the form of questions that every small business owner must ask BEFORE placing an advertisement. By answering these questions and taking appropriate actions you can get the maximum return on your advertising spend.

1. Is this the right platform for advertising my business?
   The choices for advertising your business are numerous these days. They range from traditional platforms such as newspaper, television, etc. to newer platforms on the Internet. We have provided detailed overview of traditional advertising platforms in this post. We also showed why every small business must look into using Internet based advertising these days in this post. The key to successfully choosing the advertising platform is to know their pros and cons and understand what type of advertising campaign they are suitable for. You should select the platform based on your budget, capability, customer reach and advertising goals.
2. How will I track the success of advertising?
   The high level goal of any advertising campaign is simple – bring more customer s to your business and have them spend more money with you. Yet, it is amazing to see so many businesses not really tracking even this high level goal. Ideally, you should be able to know how many new customers came to your business BECAUSE OF the advertisement you placed in the newspaper or other platforms and how much more money they spent AS A RESULT OF IT. You should think about how you will track this before placing an order.
3. What will be the return on my advertising spend?
   This question is related to the previous one; but goes one step further. In addition to tracking the success of advertising, you should also look at additional sales and profit you generated as a result. This is not as easy to track as it sounds. In some cases you might see the result few days or weeks after you have the advertisement. At the very least, you should know the sales improvement in the immediate days after the advertisements. If you are bringing in less money than what you spend on advertisement it is not worth continuing to do so.
4. Will I be able to do this advertising consistently?
   Most of the advertising has to be done consistently over a long period (few weeks to few months) to get good benefit from it. Customers need to be reminded of your business several times before they take action. If you do not have the budget to do this for extended period you should think about non-traditional means of getting the sales increase as shown in our previous post.
5. How does this advertisement fit to overall marketing goals and brand?
   Every advertising campaign should fit your overall marketing plans as well as business brand. Sending inconsistent message to your customers will confuse them and hurt your business in the long run. If you have not read our post on 5 fundamental rules of marketing you should do so now. It may not be advisable to send out coupons every week if you are promoting your business to high end luxury customers; which is why you hardly see a sale on Apple products.

We hope these questions make you think about your advertising approach and help you get maximum return on your advertising spend. Do let us know if you have additional suggestions or comments.