What is a good ad?

[Quintessence Pty.Ltd.]

Many companies are prepared to pay thousands of dollars on advertising, but they aren't interested in having a good website.

I recently asked people who were in marketing the following question:
"What is a good ad?"

Here are some responses I got from people who know their business:
- one that catches the eye;
- one that stands out and that you will remember;
- a good ad must be funny;
- an ad gives brandname recognition;
- an ad that makes people talk about it.

But what about effectiveness? How good is an ad if it doesn't result in more sales, profits, etc?

Well, isn't that a interesting issue? In fact, an ad can be very good and effective, without resulting in higher sales. If the adds helps to make people trust and like a particular company or organization more, then its asset value will increase. Even just making people more aware of the company or organization will be positive, as long as people associate it with good things. If your logo is displayed at events that make people happy, then such exposure may be very valuable.

Goodwill, brandname recognition, reputation and public relations can benefit hugely from promotion, even if such promotion doesn't appear to directly result in more profits, like targeted advertisements do.

A good marketing strategy will consider a variety of promotional avenues and may well conclude to focus more on sponsorship. Consider having a small logo or icon in a publication with the words "sponsored by" added. This can be much more effective than taking up the full space of advertisements. Similarly, a link on a popular webpage can be more valuable than an expensive advertisement in a newspaper.

That doesn't mean that any publicity is good. If you set up an affiliate program that makes spammers push your ad down the throat of people who don't want it, you're paying the spammers to give yourself a bad name. Instead of using email as a marketing tool, it's better to focus on having a good website and display the information on the web to people who are looking for it, rather than to email the information to people who may not be interested.

A website is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. It allows you to make information available at different levels of detail, so that those who want more detail can click through to a page with more details on specific aspects they may be interested in. But how can people find your site in the first place? Search engines are vitally important, but what is often under-estimated is the importance of having other sites link to you. Once you get more sites to link to you, your own site's profile and ranking will increase in search engines as well.

To get people to link to you, the first priority is to make a good website yourself.
Moreover, you can achieve a good ranking in search engines and you can have many other sites link to you, but if your own site doesn't impress visitors, you will instantly lose the hard-earned credit. To keep your website up to date, it pays to keep an eye one what new developments there are on the Internet. To remain up to date with changes and to be informed of interesting new services, you can join a free mailing lists like:
http://topica.com/lists/new

Cheers!

Quintessence

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