Before You Spend Another Euro on Advertising, Ask Yourself These 5 Questions

"We need more customers. Let's spend more on advertising."

I come across this way of thinking quite often when working with businesses.

But a bigger budget doesn't automatically mean more customers. And advertising alone won't solve a problem that actually originates somewhere else.

Advertising is an amplifier.

It can amplify what already works in your business. But it can just as quickly expose – and sometimes make more expensive – what doesn't.

So before you spend another dollar on advertising, ask yourself these five questions.

1. Do you really know who your customer is?

And I don't mean "women aged 25–55" or "small and medium-sized businesses."

Who is the actual person or company you are trying to reach? What are they dealing with right now? What do they need? What drives their decisions? And why should your offer matter to them?

The better you understand your customer, the more precisely you can shape not only your advertising, but also your offer and communication.

2. Is it clear within seconds why a customer should choose you?

Open your website and try to look at it through the eyes of someone who knows absolutely nothing about your company.

Within a few seconds, can they understand what you offer, who it is for and why they should keep exploring?

If not, you may not need more traffic.

You may need more clarity first.

3. Is your offer actually strong enough?

You can have brilliant creative, perfectly set up campaigns and precise targeting.

But advertising cannot sustainably rescue an offer that customers simply don't want.

Sometimes, instead of asking, "How are we going to promote this?", there is a much more important question to ask:

"Is what we offer compelling enough to the person we are offering it to?"

4. What happens after the customer clicks?

This is where marketing often ends.

But the customer journey is only beginning.

Where does the ad take them? Is your website easy to understand? Is the next step obvious? Does the ordering process work smoothly? How quickly does your company respond to an enquiry? And does the customer experience live up to what your advertising promised?

You can spend thousands getting someone's attention – and lose them within the next few seconds.

5. Do you know what you actually want your advertising to achieve?

"We want to sell more" isn't enough.

Do you want to build brand awareness? Drive relevant traffic? Generate leads? Get bookings? Increase orders? Encourage repeat purchases?

Each of these objectives requires a different approach.

And most importantly, your marketing objective should always be connected to your business objective.

Marketing, for me, never starts with the question:

"How much are we going to spend on advertising?"

It starts with different questions:

Where does the business want to go? What is holding it back from growing today? And how can marketing help it get there?

Because marketing and business are not two separate worlds.

They are part of the same equation.

Good marketing needs to understand the product, the customer, sales and how the business actually makes money.

Sometimes, the best marketing decision is to invest more in advertising.

And sometimes, the best decision is not to advertise yet – but to first fix what your advertising would only amplify.

Have a wonderful day, an inspiring rest of the week, and I look forward to seeing you soon in the next edition of Life of Brands!

Jana