Every business owner and marketing manager wishes that there was a miracle answer to the question of how to spend on advertising. Unfortunately, many ignore the question all together and hope it will go away.

New companies are in a difficult position of wanting to expand their clientele, but need to make sure that they retain the valuable customers which they already have. These small businesses should first focus their attention on meeting the needs of their current clients and taking care of them before embarking on costly, and potentially disastrous advertising campaigns.

For every business it is important to note that excellent products and services do not maintain your company. In this day and age, your potential clients are having products and services brought to their front door, so to speak. You cannot expect a client to come looking for your amazing product. Marketing and advertising is more important now than it has ever been before, but the problem is being noticed above your competitors.

As a starting point for your marketing budget, work on allocating a reasonable percentage of your revenue to advertising in a way which will encourage profitability. This percentage can be determined by doing some research on the advertising-to-sales ratio for other businesses in the same field (public companies often provide figures of their marketing spending in their financial statement). If you find it difficult to find a public company in your field, a rule of thumb would be to start at around 5% and adjust your marketing spending up or down from there as need be. If you offer a service, though, try aim for 8% or higher (up to 15%).

The next question you will need to ask yourself will be: “Is my business built to leverage volume or is it built to leverage margin?”

1. If your business is built to leverage volume, you will likely be spending a smaller percentage of your sales on marketing. Because of the type of business you own, large revenues enable those small amounts to add up very quickly and, in competing with other high volume companies, you will be facing margin pressures which will not allow for a greater percentage to be spent on advertising and marketing.

To be successful in the business world, you need a marketing strategy that works and should be continuously implemented. You do not need to spend a lot of money developing a strategy, just follow a few simple steps in order to build a solid foundation. You should define the product or service you will be offering, including the packaging and the specifications, so that the customer knows exactly what they are getting. If you have several products, observe the market trends to know which ones customers are buying and which ones you will need to promote.

Afterwards, you will need to identify the target market. This is the tricky part as everyone is a potential customer and the area covered could be worldwide. What you do not have is time and money to market to the masses, therefore, settle for your ideal customer. This can be defined by several factors such as age, income, industry and geographic location. Then you need to seek out your competition. In addition to this, your product or service may be new to the market and you need to know who will be competing for your customers.

You then need to show the potential customer why your product is different or unique and what benefits it could bring to them. Finding a niche in the market also allows you to dominate it, however small your business. For this to occur, you will need to develop awareness of your product by exposing it constantly to potential customers – they need to see your product advertised a number of times so to remember it. Exposure is not all that is required though, a positive reaction to the product must also be there. How do you do this? By building the product credibility. Let the customer have a sample of the product for free or, in cases of risky purchases, let them feel and touch the product.

Businesses have now realised that in this day and age, children have their own purchasing power and are able to influence their parents and guide them to the items which they want. Another important factor which has been recognised is that today’s kids are the adult consumers of the future and marketing targeted at children aims to retain their faithful spending for years to come.

Due to smaller families, dual incomes and couples putting off having kids until later in life, parents have more disposable income and are willing to spend more on their children. Today’s parents, and their spending habits, are also driven by their feelings of guilt. Some parents spend a large amount of their time away from their kids and hope to compensate with material gifts and presents.

Children have now got more decision-making power in the home and are generally quite vocal about what they want. Kids have the amazing ability to pester their parents and nag them to buy things which might not have otherwise been on their shopping list. Sometimes parents give in to nagging just to keep the kid happy, but there are more cases of parents wanting to know if this is something important to their child or just a passing whim. If a child is persistent enough, it shows that this is something they need or will use more than once and then get bored.

Marketing has now become ‘all-ages’ focused and those in charge of marketing to children have found themselves trying to understand the children they hope to entice to their product. This has been accomplished by hiring psychologists and researchers to provide valuable insight into the mind and inner workings of children.

Marketing targeted at children is now in the business of planting seeds of brand recognition. Children are in an important stage of their lives and manage to retain vast amounts of information; recognising brands is an easy task for them. Through this, brand loyalty is established. Children as young as two years old have shown signs of brand loyalty: preferring one brand over another.

Children have also become quite savvy at using computers and are often allowed unmonitored access to the internet. Marketers have found easy ways of gaining personal information from children and marketing directly to a specific child using their information.

During your marketing or adverting campaign, you will come to the point where you ask yourself or your team: “Which font should we use?” Some new business owners – and some business owners who have run companies for years – may not know the importance of the font. Your advertising font and style are absolutely essential for a great representation of your business as it will represent your company in all of its marketing material and advertisements.

The type of font which you choose must match the type of service you will be providing or the product you are selling. Rounded and shaped edged fonts encourage a feeling of relaxation and calmness in the reader, while sharp edged fonts reflect seriousness, reliability, professionalism and truth. If, for instance, you want to find a font to represent your law firm, a fun and exciting font would not convey the correct message and your advertisement would not be taken seriously. The rounded and shaped fonts are best used by companies offering pleasure items and services, these include restaurants, food, spas, weddings and children's nurseries.

The font which you choose needs to be readable. Readability is usually the concern of the information designer or typographer. In the case of presentation of text for information purposes, it is important to avoid ambiguity and to make sure that your meaning is conveyed accurately. Once the font has been decided on, you need to look at style. The reader needs to be able to navigate around the information with ease and spaces between letters, words and lines, need to make reading the information easy on the eyes. The length and positioning of the information on the page also make a big difference to readability.

When typography is meant to form an element of the design, readability plays less of a role, and type can be used in an artistic manner. But, it is important that the meaning of the advertisement is not lost in the intricacies of the design. If you are the designer in a company, it is a great idea to use type as part of your design. There are many ways in which to do this, including different font sizes, bold text, colour, shapes and images with the text.

Sometimes colours speak louder than words; they can stimulate emotions and generate a positive or negative reaction in the person admiring them or just quickly glancing past.

It is always important to analyse your company before you choose a colour to represent you. Every colour creates a different feeling in the viewer and has a definite effect on their opinion of your business, advertisement and website.

Take some time to research colour psychology to find to most effective colour for your business. Hear is just a small amount of information on some of the colours and what they say about you and your business.

This colour is distinguished and classic. It displays authority, power, boldness and seriousness. In business, black is a great background colour, but not for websites. It is better to use black for text when using this colour for your website. Black has also been known to imply submission and is sometimes associated with evil.

This colour gives a feeling of security, authority, faithfulness and dignity. In business it is used to portray sanctuary and also responsibility. It is the most popular colour in use and is the second most powerful colour, after black. Blue can be cold and depressing, but studies show that people are more productive when they work in blue rooms.

This colour portrays richness, politeness, helpfulness, and effectiveness, it is solid and reliable. In the business world, however, it is used to convey that items are less important. Light brown expresses genuineness, while dark brown resembles wood or leather.

This colour shows authority, practicality, earnestness and creativity. In the business world, it is a traditional and conservative colour.

This colour represents health, fertility, freedom, freshness, healing, tranquillity and also jealousy. In the business world, it is a sign of status and wealth. Green is the colour which is easiest on eye, it is said to improve vision and has a calming and refreshing effect on the onlooker.

This colour is cool and gives one a sense of pleasure, excitement, cheer, endurance, strength and ambition. In the business world, it is good for highlighting information on charts and graphs.

In Colours in Advertising Pt1 we discussed some of the important colours and colour psychology. Now we will be discussing a few more colours and their effect on the onlooker, as well as the mood you will be creating with colour in advertising.

This colour displays femininity, gentleness, wellbeing and innocence. In business it is important to note that it has feminine links and implications, use this colour wisely.

This colour is known to represent spirituality, royalty, luxury, wealth, sophistication, authority and mournfulness. In business it is used to represent an upscale product and is best for artistic types. It is also feminine and romantic, but can sometimes appear artificial.

This colour expresses excitement, strength, passion, vitality and aggressiveness. It commands attention and is also associated with sex. In the business world it is associated with debt, but it is good for use in boldness and accents. Red is an emotionally intense colour which can stimulate the heart.

This colour is refined and contemporary; it resembles purity, devotion and truthfulness. In the business world it is refreshing and reminds one of sterility. White is the best background colour for websites.

This colour gives off a feeling of warmth, sunshine, cheer and happiness. It is also associated with jealousy, deceit and cowardice. In the business world, it has an intellectual appeal and is great for accents. Yellow enhances concentration and speeds the metabolism. An important note: yellow is the most difficult colour to take in and can be overpowering when an intense hue is used.

When dealing with food, the most common colours to be used are green, brown and red.

Most often it is the non-verbal cue which speaks louder than the verbal one; the colour which portrays your business could be sending a completely inaccurate message. Make sure that you choose wisely and in conjunction with your message.

- Blue = Honest and trustworthy, conservative, caring, serious, peaceful, calm and relaxed.

- Red = Passionate and exciting.

- Orange = A risk-taker, affordable, happy and sociable.

- Yellow = Playful, light-hearted, happy, creative and imaginative.

- Green = Eco-friendly, caring, compassionate, peaceful, calm and relaxed.

- Pink = Caring, compassionate, creative and imaginative.

- Turquoise = Caring, compassionate, peaceful, calm and relaxed.

- Black = Elegant, high quality, luxurious, sophisticated, powerful and corporate.

- Silver = Elegant, high quality, luxurious and sophisticated.

- Pastels (blue or yellow) = Light hearted

- Purple = Serious, creative and imaginative.

In this article, we will be the voice of the public. Please, companies all over the world, make your ads ENTICING, NOT ANNOYING!

Do you want to attract the public to your product? Do you want them to look at your ad and say: “That looks amazing! I have to have it.”

Well...

Here’s how NOT to do it:

I know it sounds like a good idea, but there are so many banners shouting at every passerby that they’re the 1,000,000th visitor so they should click HERE or go THERE. There’s Zap this fly and get a free iPod and join our site to win a laptop. Even a first-time web surfer can figure out that many of these ads are either scams, or that there’s some kind of catch; there is no company on earth willing to provide free stuff to the entire planet.

With this said, there are hordes of potential customers who are so tired of seeing these annoying ads that when your legitimate deal pops up on their screen, they simply overlook it. Go for the high road. If you have a good product or service, sell it as such. Your ads are there to get people to go to your website. Tricking them into it is not in your best interest.

If you want to attract someone’s attention, you dress nicely and say intelligent and interesting things. You DO NOT stand in their peripheral vision and jump around while they’re talking to someone else! If you do that, you’re likely to get kicked in the shins.

The same applies to your ad: make it look nice, make it interesting and attractive. DO NOT make it so annoying that your audience becomes enraged at the sight of it. The point is to get their attention so that they want to go to your website!!!

Using racial or gender based slurs, are not in your company’s best interest. You might attract a certain type of audience by using this ploy, but you also alienate yourself, and your sales, from a large group of people whom you offended for a cheap laugh.

Furthermore, any money made during your ad campaign might have to go towards lawsuits and settlements if you get sued.

Stop trying to figure out where the line is and stay the heck away from it. It’ll save you a lot of time and money!

When people click on your ad, they are expecting something. Whatever you promise in your ad better be on your website. Make it easy to find and informative. Make sure that you website is up to date and that it looks professional. If you need to make some changes, do it as soon as possible. If you provide a quality product or service, make sure that you represent it well.

You have a product or a service to offer, but you have no idea how to get it out there. With the sheer amount of advertisement on television, billboards, flyers, and, of course, the internet, how do you go about making your product or service stand out?

You’ve likely come across the term, Search engine optimisation (SEO), whereby search engines choose websites, which fit certain criteria, to place in the top spots when a phrase or keyword is searched. While that is an integral part of being noticed on the internet, there are a few good, old-fashioned marketing matters to take care of.

It may be time-consuming, but it is extremely important to spend some time drawing up a marketing plan. This gives you an idea about what you want to achieve in the short term, medium term and long term. It also helps you to find the type of advertising which suits your product or service best.

This step forces you to analyse your ideas and helps you to prepare for the work ahead. You will describe what it is you are marketing, how you intend to market it and how you will be able to finance your campaign.

When you know how much you can spend on you campaign, plan every move. Be wise in the way you spend your budget; don’t substitute quality for quantity.

Spend time browsing the internet and getting ideas. Look for affordable opportunities; they won’t just fall into your lap. There are also many free ways to advertise your product or service on the internet.

Don’t waste valuable time and money on advertising if you’re going to be aiming it at the wrong group of people. If you’re selling pork sandwiches, we wouldn’t recommend advertising on a website exclusively visited by Jewish people – you could end offending a couple of people. The same applies to advertising kitchenware on a website about power tools – it’s not going to generate much traffic to your site.

Now we will focus on an equally important set of tips which will guide you on your way to advertising success:

As mentioned in part 1, there are many ways to advertise your product or service. But, which ones are right for you and your product? Whichever mediums you choose to run with need to be able to benefit you and your product or service; if it’s not right for your campaign, leave it out; don’t waste precious time and money on a pointless task.

If you get to the point where you think that the amount of work is too much or that you’re not suited to the type of work and you can’t afford the services of an agency; freelancers are always available at an affordable cost. Many freelancers, with years of experience, are out there. Hiring a freelancer gives you the peace of mind that you have support and an extra pair of hands to handle the overflow of work.

This applies to television ads and direct mail: don’t start a project and then decide that it needs to change. If you have gone through all the previous steps, it is unlikely that you would find yourself in this position. Keep things the same in all your mail-outs: font and colours, announcers and jingles, people need to be able to recognise your ad straight away.

Before you start your campaign, decide how often you ad will go on air, when your mail-outs will be sent as well as the follow-up mail, how often you can post on craigslist or any of the other advertising sites; the more effort you put in, the bigger the reward.

There have been thousands of entrepreneurs, who have gone before you, learn from them. Read books, ask for help and take advice.

Whether you’re the owner of a small business wanting to grow, the CEO of a multimillion pound organisation with some difficult decisions to make or just a young entrepreneur with an idea and no capital, it helps to know that someone has been in your position before and made it through those hard times, and they’ve made it all the way to the top!

These are the 10 highest rated brands in the world and some inspiration for those that follow in their footsteps:

# 10: Hewlett Packard

Current brand value: $26,867 million.

Hewlett Packard originated in a garage near Palo Alto. In 1939, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their business with a capital investment of US$538.

# 9: Disney

Current brand value: $28,731 million.

Walt Disney got to live his life drawing, making funny voices and playing in theme parks.

Current brand value: $29,495 million.

With all those other cellular phone brands jostling for position, it still works hard enough to make it to the top 10 (none of the other’s did).

Current brand value: $32,015 million.

Started with two men and an idea (and a wad of cash), in just 2 years they raised $6.8 million.

Current brand value: $33,578 million.

One restaurant started by two brothers in 1940 now has more than 31,000 branches worldwide.

Current brand value: $42,808 million.

Standing the test of time, this brand was started by Thomas Edison and Charles Coffin and it’s still up there with the big boys!

Current brand value: $43,557 million.

Google was started as a research project by Larry Page and Sergry Brin – the original SEO specialists.

Current brand value: $60,895 million.

Bill Gates and High School friend, Paul Allen had a dream of putting a computer in every home. And, they started in a garage!

Current brand value: $64,727 million.

From their website: “Legendary dedication to client success.” (Enough said)

Current brand value: $70,452 million.