How To Set Up A Small Business Advertising Campaign (Step-By-Step Guide)

However, while virtually every business’s advertisement campaign will be different in some way or another, there are some basic steps that you can follow to make the whole process as pain-free as possible.

And this guide will show you them, by taking you through the perfect process through which you can plan pretty much any advertising campaign for a small business!

What Is An Advertising Campaign?

Before we start diving into the topic wholeheartedly, we should probably first outline what exactly an advertising campaign is and should do, as well as compare it to something that it is often mistaken for.

To sum up a complicated subject, advertising as we know it is the practice of companies spending money to make people aware of their product, usually by placing adverts of whatever item, product, or service they are selling, in the hope that the people that see it will become customers, which will hopefully boost sales for that product.

How Is It Different From A Marketing Campaign?

When many people hear the term ‘advertising campaign’, there is often a lot of confusion between an advertising campaign and a marketing campaign.

However, it is important to note that these are two very different types of business practices. Marketing is effectively the process of a company trying to understand who or what its customer base is, and how to best meet their need.

By contrast, advertising is the process of promoting a company or said product through some sort of channel that can be seen by the public and is almost always paid for by the company.

This means that, while the two are linked, and there is certainly room for overlap, they are not the same thing.

Marketing may be done to better understand how advertising should be done, and advertising may be a branch of a marketing strategy, but they are separate skills that require a different process to be best utilized.

So, with that out of the way, we can discuss the step you need to take for your advertising campaign!

Step 1: Define What Your Goals Are

The first, and arguably most important, step is understanding what exactly your goals are for the advertising campaign.

Now, that sounds easy on paper, but once you stop and consider what exactly you hope to gain from an advertising campaign, outside of ‘more business’, having those exact goals in mind makes a lot more sense.

After all, while advertising is primarily for getting people to buy a product, there are several different ways that that goal can be achieved. Your goals could be:

• Getting new customers (keeping the goal achievable for the marketing capabilities of a small business).

• Reinforcing awareness of a product so that other brands do not start directly competing with you.

• Launching a new product that is part of an established brand.

• Raising awareness of some of the less well-known services or benefits that you offer as part of your service/product.

• Push products during a seasonal period (i.e. Black Friday/winter holidays)

Step 2: What Are You Promoting?

This step ties back directly into what exactly it is that needs to be advertised for.

Are you promoting a product or a family of products? Is it a single service or several services? What about a sales event? Or are you just looking to promote the business or brand as a whole?

Make sure that whatever you’re promoting ties back into what your goal is. You don’t want to be trying to promote a single product when your stated goal is making people aware of a service that you provide, do you?

Step 4: How Will You Find Your Audience?

With your audience found, you now need to start thinking of the best way you can get them to see your advertisement campaign.

With this step, you should be trying to understand how to have the highest chance of them seeing a product, How d they normally look for products that they need? Is there a medium that they are most likely to engage with? What are their preferences, exactly?

While everyone might see a billboard or TV/YouTube ad, if your target audience isn’t likely to see it, then that’s just more money that is effectively wasted.

Step 5: Make The Timing Of Your Campaign Count

This is a step that will vary for some companies more than others. While some companies may just want to advertise their product/service right out of the gate, some may be more effectively advertised at a certain time of year, and over a shorter or longer period.

Step 6: Set Your Advertising Budget

This is another important step that you need to establish early on. While it can be tempting to splurge on a big advertising campaign, you need to keep your expectation (and your budget) realistic, if you want to avoid a campaign being a massive drain on your small business.

If you have run an advertising campaign before in your business, use the amount spent in that campaign and its results as a baseline to work with for your current campaign.

You’ll also want to make sure that the return investment you are getting on your advertising campaign is not a long-term sink in your budget and resources.

Step 7: Where Will You Advertise?

So, at this point, you have your goals, your item of promotion, you have your target demographic and all their respective statistics, and a budget. Now, with all this information, you need to start to consider what outlets you will use to advertise, such as TV, billboard, or social media.

Step 8: Create Your Slogans And Designs

This is the step where you will need to have all your creative aspects decided for your campaign, such as the messaging you want to use, as well as any graphic designs that you have chosen to make for the campaign.

Step 9: Check The Results

Once the campaign is underway and/or finished, you will need to start analyzing the results that start to come in from your campaign, to gauge its overall effectiveness so that you can improve the next campaign.

Final Thoughts

So, would did you think of these steps? Were they helpful? Let us know!