How to choose the right advertising platform

Having to choose the right advertising platform for your company can be a heady task, but one which shouldn’t be hasty. You may find yourself spending a lot of money and effort trying to get your customer’s attention, but it’s not yielding any efforts. Very logically speaking, you want attention, without which you cannot create an impact.

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Selecting the perfect platform for advertisement requires a lot of prior research and efforts. Some of the main areas of focus will depend on the answers to the following questions-

1. What do you offer?
2. What will be the most effective form of contact?
3. How are you pursuing your next marketing moves?
4. Do your customers really accept new trends?
5. How do you take advantage of the abundance of channels?

Your customer’s attention is constantly changing from one platform to another. From the digital advertising of the ‘90s to mobile advertising and finally to potential of virtual reality of the present day, it’s important for any company to decide where their customers pay attention and get back to basics. Here’s a list of some of the conventional advertising platform and how they can be of benefit to your business.

Email

Email is probably the most common form of marketing yet, up until the advent of social media because it is inexpensive and has the potential to reach an unlimited number of people at once. The most alluring thing about email marketing is that you can target your desired audience very easily and send them personalised messages to appeal to potential customers.

Social media

If you are a business that is just starting out, social media is probably the way to go about it. According to a recent study, there were about 1.59 billion active Facebook users worldwide. So, if you can tap into this holy grail of advertising, it’s safe to say, gathering attention becomes very easy. Social media includes platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Google Plus, etc. However, it is very important for you to determine what works for you the best.

Outdoor advertising

This form of advertising has the capability to reach hundreds of people each day. Even though its expensive, it does its job pretty effectively. However, outdoor advertising like billboards or posters are limited in its capacity, which means that messages once written cannot be changed, and even if you are able to do so, it costs heavy on the pocket.

Radio

Much like outdoor advertising, radio broadcasts are also capable of reaching a large number of people at the same time. It is a clever investment since it performs similar functions like outdoor advertising but at a lower price. Unfortunately, radio can’t be targeted to one specific geographical area, so small and local businesses usually do not benefit, but large ones can.

Print

With the whole world beginning to become more technology centric, print advertisements have lost its charm. For this form of advertisement to be effective, especially for small businesses, it’s important to determine whether your desired customer is in the market to make a purchase of your products.

Although the possibilities and platforms are vast, a business should be cautious of its limitations, especially the monetary constraints before and answer the above mentioned questions before it can actually determine its course of action.