As a business owner, I know firsthand how difficult and frustrating it can be to run an effective advertising campaign. I have felt the effects even more strongly because, like many other new entrepreneurs, I handle virtually all of the marketing duties myself.

I have designed and printed what I thought were brilliant ads, only to see them fall flat, with little or no increase in sales from them. One time, I printed out a thousand promotional flyers that I thought were very attractive. However, the feedback that I received over the first week after posting them was so overwhelmingly negative that I discontinued them immediately.

I am not here to give you the "secret" to conducting a great ad campaign. The fact is, many factors go into (or should go into) your marketing strategy. You must first identify your target demographic; who it is you are trying to reach with your ads. Then you have to find out how to reach those customers. Finally, you design an ad campaign based on your research, and test the campaign before running it at full tilt (which is something I should have done before printing a thousand failed flyers.)

Let me repeat those simple steps again for you, to make sure they hit home:

1. Identify who you want to connect with through your ads.
2. Decide how to connect with those customers through your ad.
3. Design an ad campaign based on your findings from the first two
steps.
4. Test your initial ad campaign.
5. Adjust your campaign according to the results of your test.
6. Run your ad campaign at full speed.

Now, I am going to assume that you have already done the first two steps; you already know who you are targeting and how you are targeting them. In fact, I only want to give you one tidbit of information that will help you as you proceed into step 3 and beyond.

One thing that I have learned through experience is that color pays off. Yes, it costs more to print advertising flyers in color than it does to print them in black and white. Believe me, though, it is well worth the cost. Using color, in full color brochures, for instance, is so effective that it should be an automatic decision in any marketing department. Sadly, far too many new business owners try to cut costs by cutting out color.

Remember those flyers that I mentioned earlier? The reason they failed so miserably, in my opinion, is because they were not colorful enough. No, they weren't black and white, but I had them printed with just one color (blue, with a white offset). If I had gone with full color flyers they probably would have succeeded, and I wouldn't still have about 800 flyers sitting in my garage.

Once you decide how to target your intended customers, design the resulting ad campaign with color on the brain. I can't stress enough how much color can do for your business.

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