What works in marketing 

Many of our clients ask us what the ideal marketing strategy looks like? What works in marketing? How should I write a copy? What are the best colors to utilize? Should we use email blasts or Facebook ads? Which is the best? They all want this one answer to creating the perfect advertisement. 

The truth is, if we had the perfect answer we would be billionaires. There is no one ad fits all solution to marketing. There is no secret formula to perfectly capture the attention of millions and draw them to your business, but there are pretty good guidelines to follow for creating an effective marketing solution. Our years of expertise have allowed us to uncover what seems to work best in marketing. 

Looks Do Matter

What kind of things can we do to grab someone’s attention? How can an ad transition a person from a passerby to a paying customer? These are the kinds of questions we get all the time from our clients when we begin discussing advertisements. The topics that most people seem to jump to are colors, fonts, words, images, and style. 

They seem to believe that some combination of these will result in the best conversion rate and honestly they might not be wrong. Perhaps there is some magic combination that will grab the attention of the most people possible and result in higher sales. 

Of course, it is always good to make an advertisement look good no matter what format it is in but to try and obtain the “best” combination of colors and text? Even if you manage to determine the optimal combination of red with bold commanding text, it might not fit your brand and end up driving customers away. 

Let’s Talk Branding

When it comes to how an ad looks, what we should be focused on is your branding. Think of the lifestyle you are trying to sell. No matter what you are selling whether it be a product or a service, there is always some kind of lifestyle you want to be associated with your brand. 

You can start big before narrowing down more specific things you can use in your ad. Take a sports store, for example, you might want to utilize more red, yellow, or orange and use words like “outdoors, fun, and exercise” to capture that feeling of the lifestyle associated with your brand. Even better if you can utilize the colors in your logo to further connect that lifestyle with your specific product or service. That lifestyle you want to capture is a fantastic way to brand your marketing efforts but it can also serve another, arguably more important, function.

I Know my Audience

That lifestyle you are trying to sell can help you get a better understanding of exactly what demographic you are trying to reach. Once you narrow down the lifestyle you can start to look into what age, gender Much more important than what your ad looks like is who your ad is going to be reaching. 

Using tools like Facebook’s Custom Audiences you can specify exactly who you want to see your ads. Marketing efforts can be expensive and tools like this help you direct those dollars to the people most likely to show interest in your brand. You can narrow down your marketing efforts to show only a specific age, gender, or location. This has been a blessing to many of our clients in the past but we always warn that over tuning these options can drastically backfire in certain circumstances. 

Done with Style - On to Substance

You have the look, you have the audience, and you have done your best to represent your brand but what about content? What does your advertisement even contain? Where do you push these ads to and how often? This is where expertise comes into play. 

The best marketing agencies will tell you that this is no one size fits all solution and there are not many guidelines to follow here. Each business is different, has different products, services, customers, and specialties and so each business will require a different approach to these substantial aspects of a marketing plan. Rigorous A/B testing can help us collect fantastic data on how to push ads in the most effective way with the most impactful content.

What Doesn’t Work in Marketing

While reaching specific groups who you believe will be most likely interested in your business can be great in many ways, sometimes it might not be the best answer. You might be unintentionally isolating yourself from potential customers without even realizing it. This can be especially true in Finland. This kind of hyper-specific targeting may work very well in dense cities in America but in Finland, the population is much lower. In this case, brand exposure might be more important than specifically targeting just one group. Getting people familiar with your brand in areas with lower populations can be extremely beneficial and encourage more word-of-mouth marketing. 

Whatever your product or service is, feel free to contact Kubla’s team. We have experience with countless different industries, products and services, so we can definitely help you or point you in the right direction. Free initial consultations are available. Let’s find out what works in marketing - for your business!

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