There are two types of advertising design strategies, “image” advertising and “direct response” advertising. Image advertising is meant to remind consumers of your brand and the products and services you offer. If you’ve seen Nike or Pepsi commercials, you’ve seen image advertisements. Some 95% of all advertising you see on television and in print is image advertising.
Direct Response Advertising
Direct response advertising, on the other hand, is meant to evoke an immediate response and compel your prospects to take some specific action, such as picking up the phone and calling for more information, or to place an order. Most infomercials are good examples of direct response advertisements.
One of the biggest mistakes business owners, managers or salespeople make is running “image” ads on television, in print or in their email campaigns. There’s no question, image ads are effective at building brand awareness. The problem is, it takes time – time most small business owners or operators don’t have.
To effectively create any type of brand recognition, your target market must see your ad 12 to 15 times or more. And when you consider that everyone in your target market doesn’t see your ad every time it runs, in order to make those 12 to 15 impressions, you’ll have to run your ad a lot more times than that – perhaps as many as 100, 150, or even 300 times.
Most business owners and salespeople aren’t big enough to afford that kind of advertising budget. It’s just not feasible. Besides, as a small business person you need to have a quick response to your ads so that you can immediately see what’s working, as well as receive a speedy return on your investment.