Agency Or Not?
The decision about whether to use an agency or not really depends on how much you spend each year and whether or not you use an agency for your brochures and direct mail. If you follow all the points set out here you can make an effective advertisement yourself and have it produced by the publication. However, I don’t feel that you always get the best production job from a publication, and do you really have the time to do everything yourself? Think about the most cost-effective use of your time.
It is probably best to find a good, small agency and use all the information in this chapter to monitor their effectiveness. Be
aware of the commission angle. Many small or local publications will negotiate on price direct with you but will not do the same with your agency.
Your Target Market
Most important is to be clear about your target market. Find out what your target market reads or listens to, when and how they make decisions and how much they are prepared to pay. Consider corporate bookers, weekend guests, conference decision makers, restaurant users, wedding planners and the various ways to reach them. Is there a good publication that could generate some response?
Local papers will often publish in advance a list of the supplements that they have planned. These are great advertising opportunities, but in addition try contacting the editor with any interesting and appropriate stories or offers.
What Is Your Objective?
Be very clear about your objective whenever you sit down to plan an advertisement. Don’t confuse your reader: be very specific. Only promote one product and only expect one result. It is often tempting to say to yourself that if you are spending money on an advertisement for your Sunday lunch then you might as well mention your conference facilities and your spa. Don’t. You will confuse your reader.
What are you trying to get people to do? Call the hotel, visit personally or visit your website? Make your mind up about the outcome you want and write the whole advertisement with that objective in mind.
Classic Rules (Aida)
The same classic rules apply to advertising as they do to direct mail: AIDA.
- Attention – through the headline.
- Interest – by laying out the benefits.
- Desire – by overcoming the reader’s natural scepticism.
- Action – what do you want the reader to do next?
Attention
The first thing you need to do is get people’s attention. You do this with a compelling headline. This is the most important part of your ad. If your headline doesn’t grab attention the rest of the advertisement will never be read at all.
Spend most of your time on the headline and make it one of the following:
- Benefit-driven: ‘You can …’
- News-orientated: ‘Great new …’
- Curiosity-driven: ‘Are you …?’
- How-to orientated: ‘How to …’
Don’t make them too long (about ten short words work best). Think of at least 20 options and test them on your staff and maybe some customers.
Once you have your heading, think of a sub-heading to reinforce the message.
Interest
After you have the reader’s attention you need to stimulate their interest in your service by explaining the benefits. Address yourself to an individual and their wants and don’t talk about your hotel and how good you think you are. Prospects only want to know how your offer can benefit them (see features and benefits in
Chapter 2). Generally people only want one of two things – either to gain pleasure or avoid pain.
Desire
This is where you need to convert the prospect’s interest into a specific desire for your offer. The best way to do this is to overcome the consumer’s natural scepticism about claims or offers from advertisers.
Use a selection of these tactics and you will reduce the risk to the consumer:
Testimonials: Consumers like to know that other people have been there before and were happy. For a local market it can be really effective to include a testimonial from someone well known, particularly if you can use their picture.
Guarantee: If your prospect likes your offer and there is no risk because you are guaranteeing satisfaction, what has he got to lose? Why would you not be prepared to stand behind your service? If you aren’t prepared to, then maybe you should think about improving the offer.
Guarantees work really well when you are trying to get corporate or conference buyers to use you for the first time.
Time guarantees for lunch are also popular and can help to keep your chefs on their toes.
Awards: Although this is very much talking about yourself, it can give consumers confidence if they know that you have an award or have been inspected by a well-known organisation and achieved a high quality score. This is why Michelin Stars are so coveted.