It’s hard to get the balance right when you’re working out how to advertise your business; you want to be noticed and to showcase what you can do or what you sell, but you don’t want to be too intrusive that you irritate people and they decide they don’t want to buy whatever it is you’re selling on principle (or they just stop listening to your advertising, so they don’t realize why they should buy from you). However, striking the right balance between visibility and giving your customers the right amount of space is crucial, and it’s something you’ll need to work hard to get right. With that in mind, here are some ways you can make sure your advertising isn’t too intrusive.
Use What You Already Have
If you can use things you already have in place to help boost your advertising and reach, you won’t be adding any more advertising to the mix, and you won’t be bombarding your customers with more and more information. Vehicle wraps for fleets are an excellent example of this because you’re effectively turning your vehicles, which you would be driving about anyway, into moving billboards that just happen to advertise your business as you go about your usual routes or make deliveries and so on. By using your existing fleet of vehicles, or perhaps even partnering with people who would advertise on their own vehicles for a fee, you can ensure that not only is your advertising not intrusive, but with the right design, it’s eye-catching enough to make a difference.
Packaging is another good way to use what you already have and turn it into good advertising that isn’t too intrusive. Sometimes packaging is the first thing a customer will get to know about you, particularly if you’re an eCommerce store, and since you’ll need to wrap items anyway, it makes sense to turn your packaging into a promotion of some kind.
Use Native Advertising
Sometimes there’s no other option but to add extra advertising to your surroundings; you need to boost your business, after all. However, there are ways to do this that will help to ensure it’s as seamless and subtle as possible while still making its point clear. This is known as native advertising , and it’s essentially when you create an advert that matches – as closely as possible, at least – wherever it’s being placed.
When you do this, you won’t jolt anyone out of whatever it is they’re doing, but with the right design, you can still make sure they notice what you have to say. One way to make this happen is through social media. If you can make your advert look like part of someone’s feed so they take it in as they scroll by rather than automatically ignoring it because they know it’s an ad, you’ll stand a better chance of them paying attention and perhaps even clicking through to your site.
Interactive And Opt-In Advertising
Interactive advertising is a great blend of interesting marketing combined with data collection, and what’s useful about it (apart from this) from a business owner’s perspective is that it doesn’t have to be as subtle or non-intrusive as some of the other ideas on this list because it’s all about audience participation. If you can have polls, quizzes, interactive videos, augmented reality, etc., on your site or social media platforms, you can get your potential customers involved in your business and advertise, too, without them really knowing it’s happening.
This means that although the message itself doesn’t have to be subtle, the way that your company’s name and what you sell is introduced to the customer can be. Plus, it’s their choice to be involved in the interactive element of your ad, so it’s not intrusive because it’s down to them. On top of this, you can give your audience power by allowing them to opt in or out of your advertising and even choose how much advertising they see from you. When you do this, whatever advertising you do send out will be expected and perhaps even welcomed (especially if it comes with a special offer, for example), and anyone who receives it won’t feel bombarded by your business and will see it in a more positive light.
Target The Right People
This idea is linked to the one above about opting in, and the two can be used in conjunction to really ensure that everyone you’re advertising to is happy to hear from you; it’s about targeting the right people. Today it’s crucial for businesses to carry out plenty of thorough market research to determine just who their target market is and then work out how to advertise to that target market in the right way. Teenagers will need a different kind of advert than those in their retirement years, for example, and knowing who is most likely to buy your product or services means you can get the tone and message of your advertising right.
The more you think about this and work hard at ensuring you’re advertising to the right people, the less intrusive your adverts will seem. That’s because those who see them and understand them will be interested in what you have to say and will hopefully be persuaded to buy from you, thanks to the target way you’re marketing to them.