Since its conception centuries ago, advertising has been a crucial marketing tool for businesses, especially for growth. Let’s look at the ways how you can use advertising to grow your business and brand:
1. Brand awareness
Advertising helps generate awareness for your brand. It improves recognition, creates trust, and differentiates you from your competitors. Most importantly, it helps build brand equity, which is the commercial value of a brand in the market that derives from consumer perception of, and experiences with a brand, rather than from the product or service itself.
2. New customer leads and sales
With the right advertising strategy, you’d be able to generate leads, which will convert into sales for your business. All it takes is knowing where to place your ads, and what message to put in them.
We speak to AdEasy about how they are bringing offline advertising back to the fore
3. Brand loyalty
Using the right ad messaging—crafted by knowing your customers, and taking into consideration current trends—will enable your customers to connect emotionally with your brand. This enhances your brand’s engagement and relevance with them, which will foster brand loyalty. Studies have shown that it’s more profitable to retain loyal customers than to acquire new ones. So, this will be great for your business’ bottom line.
4. Stimulate demand
Be it to introduce a new product, to generate awareness about an event or promotion, or simply to act as a reminder for your brand, having a constant presence through your ads will help with brand recall among your customers. You’ll be the first in their minds when they are looking to purchase a product. Your ads can even be a trigger to get them to take action. This McDonald’s commercial for example definitely contributed to sudden cravings (and orders) for fried chicken.
Online versus offline advertising: Is one better than the other?
It’s important to first understand the differences between online and offline advertising, and what each medium is best used for. I’ve put together a simple table below that highlights the main differences between the two:
| Online Advertising | Offline Advertising | |
| What is | Online advertising is any advertising space that uses the Internet | Offline advertising is any advertising space that aren’t connected to the Internet |
| Best used for | Creating awarenessDriving traffic/ conversionGenerating leads Enhancing engagementProviding information | Building brand credibility/ equityGenerating interest, awareness and excitement for:New products/ servicesNew product line/ product relaunchEvents and promotionsAiding brand recallCreating brand loyaltyStimulating demand |
| Strategy | Short term (tactical) | Long term |
| Cost | > RM50 | > RM500 |
| Reach | Can be worldwide | Wide coverage within a specified geographic area |
| Targeting | More accurate targeting: Ads are shown to a specific audience | Mass coverage: Ads are shown to audiences within a defined proximity |
Now that you know the differences between online and offline advertising, you’d realise that one is not better than the other, as each comes with its own advantages. Instead, they complement each other. The key is not to have a “one or the other” mentality, rather, how you make strategic decisions by integrating both to your benefit.
Combining online and offline advertising to optimise results
The average person comes across up to 10,000 brand messages every single day. So, how do you stand out from a sea of ad clutter, and grab attention? By seamlessly integrating your online and offline advertising, and be in as many relevant touchpoints as possible.
Consider your target customers’ daily routine, and how you can reach them. For example, your target customers may take a specific route when driving to work. An outdoor ad may catch their eye. During lunch break, they may go on social media. This is when your online ads play a role in engaging them. After work, they may watch some TV before calling it a day. So, a TV commercial would be a suitable medium to (again) get their attention. To obtain the best returns, your online and offline advertising should work hand-in-hand. It’s about understanding your target customers and knowing when and where to use online and offline advertising to best reach them.
Unsure which medium works best for your business? We at AdEasy take the guesswork out for you. Our advertising platform helps brands book the right advertisement spaces with ease. We do the advertising work for you, so you can free up your time and mind space to focus on other important aspects of your business.
Contributed by Therine Goh, COO and co-founder of AdEasy
About the author
With 12 years of experience in large corporations such as Resorts World Berhad and General Mills, Therine has led her brands to win a couple of industry awards and played a pivotal role in building the global brand guide for Häagen-Dazs shops. A brilliant marketing strategist who values efficiency and performance, Therine is on a mission to change the way businesses craft and execute their marketing strategies wit Ad Easy.
As the COO at AdEasy and co-founder of Bloc 48, a marketing communications agency, she actively advocates the efficacy of an integrated advertising campaign with online and offline media. Therine also shares her take on marketing for the AdEasy blog regularly. She graduated from IACT in 2001, where she was invited back as an alumni to speak to students about her industry experiences.
Thank you for the article. I am in the process of creating my new ecommerce website on react (react is a technology to build sites https://itmaster-soft.com/en/react–js-development-services ). So of course I want to promote it and use all possible ways of advertising. Your tips will definitely come in handy.