Effective advertising, part 1: Call to action advertising

Golden rule: the job of advertising is to significantly increase your footfall!

If you sell to 50% of the customers who come into your store and that number is 200 per day, how do you get 400 customers a day into your store?

Here are a few things to consider about advertising:

Establish “Why do I need to advertise?”

Usually, it’s one of the following:

a) You are a new business and you want to tell the customers you are open for business

b) You are advertising a new range, product or service

c) You want to move stock to make way for new stock

Statistically, less than 3% of traditional advertising is effective. It can be a bit like firing a shotgun at 100 metres, whereas firing a sniper rifle will produce much better results.

Call to action advertising (as opposed to the likes of brand advertising) is aimed at an immediate response.

You need to create the desire for customers to drop everything and come to your store. A good way is to consider your own situation: what offer would get you desperate to head off to a store without delay?

Never use blanket discounts – seldom is all of your stock not selling – and you could easily end up selling all your good stock and be left with the old merchandise you wanted to clear.

Advertise a “wow” offer to headline your advertising. Have at least a few items at 80% or more off price as teasers to gain the customer’s attention.