Advertising can too often feel like a complex, brain-squishing maze to navigate.
But not today. Today, we’ll keep it simple.
We came across a useful theory of advertising by Alex Greifled, and she brings up an interesting point.
Alex says there are only three use cases in advertising:
#1 – Demand generation – when you want to create demand for a new product. You’re talking to people who probably aren’t interested in buying what you’re selling until you convince them.
(This is also known as the awareness stage or “top of the funnel” advertising.)
#2 – Demand capture. Once you’ve increased brand awareness, you can start capturing the high purchase intent audience segment that has taken interest in your product.
These campaigns are intended for conversions, as you’re often using CTA (Call To Action) ads to help close a sale.
#3 – In-market demand capture, when an audience knows that they want to buy a specific product or service and they’re “brand agnostic” – not showing a preference for any particular brand. (i.e. I need a new spring outfit, but I’m not – yet set – on a particular style or designer label…)
You should intercept these people to alert them that you’re offering what they want. Of course, you need to convince them that yours is the best (i.e. sell the full sizzle of your Value Proposition).
Okay, simple enough. So what’s the issue? Alex says the main problem is that everyone wants to do all three at the same time and – of course – attempt to pull it off effectively and under budget!
And that’s difficult and often wasteful.
So instead of putting your scarce marketing resources under the unrealistic pressure of doing everything all at once, pick just one of the three and go all in to see results. And repeat.
Sound good? Or are you more of a jack-of-all-ads person? In any case, let us know what you think of the framework above. We’d love to hear!