5 Most Common Advertising Techniques
The goal of an effective marketing campaign is to encourage consumers to purchase a product or service. Most advertising campaigns follow one of several techniques, based on typical human psychology, that have been proven over many years to be successful. When you are creating a marketing campaign for your business or product, consider these techniques that you can adapt and use to your advantage.
Endorsement ads and testimonials are common in today's marketing industry. Although people may think of celebrities when considering endorsement ads, you can create an ad campaign using friends, family members, or a prominent figure in the community. For example, the manager of a popular restaurant endorsing your product, even if it is just with a printed quote in a newspaper ad or a flyer, may be enough to convince some of the restaurant's loyal customers to try your business.
A marketing technique that targets the worries and insecurities of consumers, hidden fear marketing promotes products that are used to solve common social and personal problems. Often used for personal care products, this method highlights the embarrassments and social acceptance issues that can come with things such as bad breath or a deodorant that is ineffective. After you present the embarrassing situation, offer the product as a solution.
An advertisement that encourages consumers to purchase a product because it will help them maintain or improve their social status is considered the social status, or snob-appeal approach. These ads are designed to appeal to our desire for social acceptance and status. For example, if you sell a pair of sunglasses that is similar in style to a pair worn by a celebrity or popular figure, market them accordingly. When your customers associate them with someone who is successful and well-known, they may be more likely to buy them.
Marketing a product or a service in a way that connects it to something that the viewer can connect to is part of the theory of association marketing. The intention of these ads is to associate the product or service with a positive image or value. Television advertisements such as those for children's juice, which show children happily laughing and playing outside, swinging and running, then drinking the brand of juice in question, are associating the children's juice product with happy, playful kids. Parents want to have happy children, and may be more likely to buy the juice after this type of advertisement.
The bandwagon advertising approach focuses on convincing consumers that each of them is the only person who has not used the item or purchased the product. These advertisements imply that consumers are missing out on something that the rest of the population is enjoying by not buying this product. For example, enter contests in the area with your best products, or encourage your customers to vote in community feedback surveys. If you win an award or get good reviews in either situation, use that in your advertising.