Remember the days when television advertising was booming?
All the big brands would buy minutes and minutes of advertising, every single day, because that was where the audience’s attention was.
And by and large, those television ads weren’t particularly ‘direct response’.
In fact, the majority of them were what you’d call ‘brand awareness’ ads – they were designed to get into the consciousness of the prospect, and bring them closer to the brand.
It worked well – some of the biggest brands in the world today became big because of the amount of advertising they did on TV.
It was a different story for small businesses though.
Your average high street shop, or service provider simply didn’t have the cash to be able to advertise on TV – without the deep pockets of the likes of Coca Cola or McDonalds they needed a pretty instant return on every investment they made.
If you were a small business, investing in brand awareness campaigns was pretty much the best way to go broke.
Times have changed.
Now – if you know what you’re doing – brand awareness campaigns are easy, affordable and effective for pretty much all small businesses.
Google Adwords allows you the highly cost-effective opportunity to get in front of your prospect, not necessarily to drive a direct, instant response, but to familiarise your prospects with your brand name, your services and the benefits of buying from you.
And – as studies have shown – a familiarity with a brand plays a pivotal role in a prospect’s purchasing decisions, particularly if it’s the first time they’ve ever bought anything in that product/service category.
When people think of Adwords, they generally think back to more of a typical direct response way of doing things, but what a lot of people don’t consider is how to complement the more direct sales stuff with campaigns designed to raise awareness and build trust in brand.
Maybe they don’t consider it because it never used to be an option – brand advertising was just too expensive.
But now it is an option, and if you’re serious about building a long-term, sustainable brand that people know, trust and love, then I really would recommend considering how you can add brand awareness campaigns to your marketing arsenal.
If you want to chat about how to make it happen, just let me know.
Tash
