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5 Advertising Mistakes To Avoid

Charen Smith

June 02, 2008

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1. Thinking that everyone is your customer base.

No matter what your product is and no matter what kind of store you run your target audience is still never going to be everyone. Even a giant like Wal-Mart is not actually going after everyone there is in the marketplace.

When you start your advertising you need to think first about who it is you’re really going to get business from. What demographic or customer base is going to give you the most support. Only after you have this answered will you be able to properly design your advertising.

2. Trying to do everything yourself.

All of us have our skill sets. There are certain jobs I excel at and others I just can’t get my mind around. When it comes to designing your advertisements, why is it that a lot of people try to take control of every aspect of it?

Hire out people skilled in areas you're otherwise weak at. They managed to get where they are for a reason. Take advantage of their expertise in the area of marketing. There’s nothing wrong with hiring an outside agency to help you with your ad design.

3. Not knowing what kinds of advertisements works best with each demographic.

Certain types of ads are always going to work best with one group or another, and what you need to do is know how best to approach your audience. The difference between brochures, posters, newsletters, and catalogs can be very huge, especially when it comes to how they each draw people in.

Obviously if you want to focus more on people who shop online a lot a catalog is going to work a lot better than just sending them a postcard. But then, if you’re trying to advertise for an upcoming sale, a postcard is going to get to the point and grab someone’s attention better than a catalog ever could.

4. Not paying careful attention to your budget.

You don’t want to be in the position of realizing you don’t have enough money for all the color printing you plan to do after you’ve already started printing. Sometimes companies get ahead of themselves when it comes to all the things they intend to accomplish. If your budget doesn’t match up with your plans you’ll be in for trouble later.

Make sure before starting any kind of marketing that you’re aware of just how much it’s going to cost.

5. Not knowing how often you plan on running your ads.

You’ve just taken all the time to plan it out, and yet a lot of companies don’t really consider how long they’re going to keep running or sending out an ad. You need to have a plan from the very beginning on where you plan on sending your ads and how long you’re going to keep them around.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have any flexibility with it. Certain ads are more popular than others, and if you have an ad that has a surge of popularity that you had only planned to run for a few weeks, take the time to put in another color printing order to get more of them out there for longer.

In the end, no matter what kind of advertising you plan on doing, always make sure you have everything planned out, and you know exactly what your focus is going to be.

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