Types of Advertising Appeals 1
Types of Advertising Appeals 2

People don’t buy based on rational thought. They buy for emotional reasons. Then they justify their purchasing decision with rational thought. However, both are important types of advertising appeals.

Types of Advertising Appeals 5: Rational

Rationality is an important advertising appeal because advertisements should provide enough information for people to justify what they want emotionally.

But with the Internet, many advertisements only hint at rational reasons for buying. Then they send perspective customers to a Web site to get more information. People who need more rational justification will go to the site and get it.

When people decide to buy a product because they want it, they will often then seek information to decide which brand to buy. Many will also check reviews of products online.

For example, I have several analog cameras so I put off buying a digital one for some time. I finally decided to buy one because I wanted one. But I justified it by telling myself it would be easier to use in my online business.

Once I decided to buy a digital camera, I went online to check reviews and read many. Then I found a site that convinced me to buy a Canon. It showed multiple photos of the same image taken by different cameras. So I was able to actually see the differences in camera quality.

I made the decision based on emotion, justified it with logic, and then sought information to determine the best camera to buy. What you can learn from my experience is that rational thought is a type of advertising appeal. But it’s most effectively used to justify an emotional desire for the product and to provide information that positions your brand.

Types of Advertising Appeals 6: Emotional

Most types of advertising appeals are based on emotions. For example, of the appeals covered in my first and second posts on “types of advertising appeals”, all four are emotional:

Fear is an emotion. We all fear something and spend time and money to lesson our fears.

Humor relates to the emotional need to have fun and to enjoy life. Laughing is more than physiological. It’s an emotional release that we all need in order to stay healthy.

Sex is a basic physiological and emotional need. Itinvolves many emotions from the need for love and intimacy to self-esteem.

Music fills an aesthetic and emotional need for beauty and pleasure. The type of music that we prefer relates to the emotion of belonging.

Scarcity, which I’ll cover in tomorrow’s post, appeals to our emotional need to be included and not to miss out on something good.

Outside of the rational appeal, most types of advertising appeals are emotional.

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Posted 8-28-08: Types of Advertising Appeals 3

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Types of Advertising Appeals 1

Today I’m covering two other types of advertising appeals – sex and music.

Types of Advertising Appeals 3: Sex

Sex sells, but it can also offend. So whether sex is effective in an advertising campaign depends much upon whether it is blatant, suggestive, or symbolic.

Here’s a good example of blatant sex in advertising: a scantily clad model stroking an automobile. Such an advertisement is designed to appeal to men.

But women buy as many automobiles as men. And many women consider such commercials offensive. “Feminist women consider any advertisement demeaning if it portrays women as sex objects . Women and men, with strong religious ties, consider such advertising sinful.

So blatant sexual advertising may appeal to a target market while turning off others, who are not in the target market. This works if the message is delivered through a medium that reaches the target market, but not so well when it’s distributed through mass media.

Suggestive advertising doesn’t actually show scantily clad men or women, but leaves a sexual feeling that many people recognize. For instance, shots of a woman gently touching or stroking a man’s hand, or vice versa, is suggestive. A margarine company used this very effectively a few years ago.

Symbolic advertising uses symbols to suggest sex. Phallic symbols are the most popular. Have you seen the liquor commercial where everyone is dancing as the bartender grinds herbs in a glass. When he stops grinding, they stop dancing. When he starts again, they do too. This advertisement uses symbolic advertising effectively.

Types of Advertising Appeals 4: Music

Different types of people prefer different types of music. So if you choose to use music as a type of advertising appeal, you need to know the music preferred by your target market. Choose wrong, and you can destroy an advertising campaign.

You need to consider the generation, social class and lifestyle of your target market because each provides insights into your potential customers’ music preferences. You can get information on these demographics and many more in my e-book : Know ‘em Sell ‘em: How To Discover The Best Appeals For Your Target Market.

If you are creating a radio advertisement, most radio sales people can provide demographic characteristics of their listeners. Talk to one for each radio format and ask for this information. Select the format that best attracts your target market. Then use that kind of music in your advertisement and run your advertisement on stations with that music format.

Another choice is to use generic music or music that crosses radio formats. This can be a good choice for advertisements intended for mass audiences. But it’s not as effective as catering to your target market’s music preference.

Tomorrow’s post will cover two more types of advertising appeals – rational and emotional. So come back tomorrow to learn more about types of advertising appeals.

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Posted 8-27-08: Types of Advertising Appeals 2

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I’ve read pages listed through the search results covering cultural differences in advertising appeals to a site promoting different types of signs as types of advertising appeals. Of course, it’s a sign company.

I found only one search result that was anywhere close to what I know about different types of advertising appeals. It was a PowerPoint presentation, apparently for an advertising course lecture. It provided no details, but merely listed the types of advertising appeals.

Furthermore, an LSI search provided none of the words generally considered types of advertising appeals by scholars and educators. So I decided to write this post to add to the online body of knowledge on “types of advertising appeals.”

Advertising appeals are based on human needs and persuasion theories and research. There are as many types of advertising appeals as there are human needs, but advertisers primarily organize these appeals into seven categories:

Fear

Humor

Sex

Music

Rational

Emotional

Scarcity

I’ll cover each with a brief definition of that type of advertising appeal. Then I’ll provide my thoughts or experiences regarding each type. But in order not to overload you with information, I’ll cover this information over several consecutive posts. Today’s post covers fear and humor.

Types of Advertising Appeals 1: Fear

Fear is generally not considered a good type of advertising appeal. However, it is frequently promoted as a good one among Internet marketing gurus.

If you agree with the gurus, choose your fear appeals carefully. It appears to me that this appeal works best when it’s related to lesser fears like having bad breath or losing out on a money-making opportunity.

When it relates to the big fears like dying or loosing a loved one, people are more inclined to block the message. They move into denial mode and ignore the rest of the advertising message.

Types of Advertising Appeals 2: Humor

Humor is an effective type of advertising appeal, but it must be used carefully. What one person finds funny, another considers appalling.

For example, the people who create most advertising campaigns for television are creatives at large marketing agencies. The burn-out in those positions is great. So advertising employees in these positions tend to be young – Generation Yers and Xers.

As a Boomer, most of their humor totally leaves me cold. Of course, I’m frequently not in the target market for the advertisement, but sometimes I am. I’ve discussed the problems of trying to market across generations before in this blog. Those problems increase when using humor.

Come back tomorrow for my posts on sex and music as types of advertising appeals. Or if it’s already posted, you can link to it below:

Types of Advertising Appeals 2

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Posted 8-26-08: Types of Advertising Appeals 1

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I just learned about Google Ad Planner and conducted some online research. I believe it to be a great asset to small business owners like you because it eliminates the need for a marketing or advertising agency. So Google Ad Planner can make running your own target marketing campaign easy, and save you money because you don’t have to pay a marketing or advertising agency.

Now in Beta, Google Ad Planner is “an audience definition tool, where you define your audience by language, age, and other criteria.” In other words, it will enable you to buy on-line and off-line ads by your target market characteristics.

Google Ad Planner Enables Target Marketing Rather Than Key Word Marketing

I’ve discussed before my concerns about Internet marketers targeting by keywords rather than by demographic, psychographic and buying behavior characteristics. You can link to that post below:

Marketing Research: How Do Internet Marketers Do It?

With Google Ad Planner, now you’ll be able to target a market and then advertise on sites that members of your target market visit.

Instead of developing ad word campaigns around keywords to appear on Google search results, you develop them around your target market and advertise across sites in the Google content network.

Google Ad Planner Enhances Marketing Research

You can visit the sites and eliminate those that you don’t like. But don’t eliminate them just because they’re not in your niche. Your target market has multiple interests. For example, your niche may be rose gardening, but your target market may also frequent a craft site.

You can learn something about your target market member’s interest by looking at the topics of sites. You can also research the design style, structure and content of sites that appeal to your target market.

Google Ad Planner Will Enhance Target Marketing

Then you can use my simple market segmentation process manually or automatically. You can get the ebook Know ‘em Sell ‘em: How To Discover The Best Appeals For Your Target Market. Or you can get a one-time free trial of the automatic program at AutoMarketAnalysis.com.

The combination of my research and Google Ad Planner makes it a breeze to do your own advertising.

Google Ad Planner May Make Ad Sense Profitable Again

Google Ad Planner will spread more of the growing Internet advertising income across more Web sites.

However, to earn your share, your Web site has to get 3000 visitors per month, and you have to be an Ad Sense site. If your site qualifies, you may start earning more Ad Sense revenue. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google Ad Planner revolutionize Ad Sense.

You can read what other bloggers are saying about Google Ad Planner through the links below:

http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=1195
http://searchengineland.com/080624-104519.php
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/google-to-unveil-new-ad-planning-tool/
http://blog.domaintools.com/2008/07/google-ad-planner/
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/08/competitive-intelligence-analysis-google-ad-planner.html

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Posted 8-25-08: Google Ad Planner Free Tool Boosts Small Business Advertising

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You may feel that you’re out of control of your business’ economic future. But you can make changes now that will help you to better weather the bad economy while preparing your business for economic growth as the economy improves.

Benefits Of Economic Recession: 1. Scrutinize Your Expenses

You can use the current recession as motivation to analyze your cost benefits ratio. If you can cut your costs without diminishing your benefits now, your business will be leaner and healthier when the economic recession ends.

Benefits Of Economic Recession: 2. Develop A Return On Investment Mentality

So consider the recession as an opportunity to reevaluate what you are spending, and to cut expenses that provide fewer benefits and are not tied to your bottom line.

As you determine what to cut, your should keep what will make you money now and in the future, and cut back on overhead and maintenance.

Benefits Of Economic Recession: 3. Reevaluate and Restructure Your Marketing

You should not completely cut out marketing during this economic recession. That’s a mistake that can save you money now, but will leave your business ill prepared for economic growth when the economy improves.

Rather than cutting out your marketing, think of the recession as an opportunity to reevaluate and restructure your marketing. For instance, using less paid advertising and more social networking will save you money now while building relationships that will continue to grow your business into a new growth economy.

Use networking as a marketing tactic. Whether it’s online social networking sites or personal networking, it relies on the same kind of relationship marketing that you use with your customers. Just extend your contacts and you’ll bring new customers into your business.

Benefits Of Economic Recession: 4. Prioritize Your Marketing Efforts

Concentrate your marketing on keeping present customers engaged and buying from you again. Rather than on marketing for new customers. If your present customers like you, they’ll tell others and you’ll still get new customers while developing a loyal clientele, who are more likely to continue buying from you.

One way that many business owners save marketing money is by using email for direct marketing. If you haven’t started collecting e-mail addresses from your customers, you need to start now.

Then communicate regularly with your customers by email. Don’t always try to sell them something. Instead communicate to build relationships.

If you build good customer relationships during this business recession, you will be a step ahead of your competitors, who cut costs by forsaking marketing.

Benefits Of Economic Recession: 5. Understand Your Target Market

In these bad times, more people are buying locally and over the Internet, especially if they get free shipping. They are buying more practical items, illuminating the luxury and unnecessary.

Understanding your target market, their present concerns about the economic recession, and their normal buying behaviors will help you to meet their needs now and in the future.

You can learn more about your target market with Know ‘em Sell ‘em: How To Discover The Best Appeals For Your Target Market. Just click the link in the upper right sidebar to get more information.

As you get to know your target market and customers better, you’ll improve your marketing in ways that will outlast the present economic recession.

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Posted 8-22-08: Five Benefits Of Economic Recession

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A key message is the primary thought that you want to leave with your target market members with every marketing message and activity throughout a marketing campaign.

What is a key message? It Conveys Your Marketing Campaign’s Purpose

Every marketing campaign should have a purpose, and your key message should convey that purpose concisely in one sentence. A reference to the target market and the action you want market members to take should also be in your key message.

What is a key message? It’s Limited To A Sentence or a Phrase

If you can’t express your key message in one sentence, you don’t have it clear enough in your mind to start your marketing campaign.

See if you can shorten your message to a phrase that becomes a slogan for your marketing campaign and is expressed exactly the same throughout all your marketing messages.

What is a key message? It Guides All Your Marketing Messages and Activities

Of course, you vary the rest of your messages, but content should still support your key message.

Individual messages can and should be more tailored to your target market, and each should help to meet an objective for your campaign.

But the key message is tied directly to the goal of your campaign. So all messages geared to reach specific campaign objectives should still relate well to your key message.

What is a key message? It’ Reinforces Your Brand

Your key message should also reinforce your business brand.

Your brand is your businesses face for the world. Not only does it have to be relevant to your target market, but it has to concisely portray your business and its distinguishing characteristic consistently across all your marketing messages.

Before you start any marketing campaign, you need to know the answer to “What is a key message?” And determine yours during the planning stages of your campaign

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Posted 8-21-08: What Is A Key Message

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If you want your Christmas shopping this year to exceed those for last year, you need to:

• Do more online promotions and advertising to boost Christmas shopping,
• Target your market narrowly and develop customized marketing for Christmas shopping,
• Promote more local Christmas shopping,
• Consider how the economy is influencing consumers’ buying behavior.

Do More Online Promotions and Advertising To Boost Christmas Shopping

Last year, almost a quarter of online shoppers reported shopping online to save gas. With gas prices higher this year, more people are expected to do their Christmas shopping online, reports Forrester Research.

Online business owners who provide value and good prices will get most of this Christmas shopping business. Those offering free shipping are also expected to benefit. Some businesses are cutting advertising and site changes to provide free shipping.

Still others are increasing their online advertising, especially for the fourth quarter. Some are finding that online advertising increases their brick-and-mortar sales with more than twice the return on investment than traditional advertising.

Other business owners are developing social networking campaigns and will purchase ads in MySpace, Facebook and other social networks to advertise their products for Christmas shopping.

Target Your Market Narrowly And Develop Customized Marketing for Christmas Shopping

The tight economy is also spurring more off-line direct marketing. Last fall direct marketing captured half of total advertising revenue. This fall it’s predicted to grow around six percent to more than $183 billion.

The move from traditional advertising to direct marketing is a part of a larger move from mass marketing to target marketing. It continues to get more important to cater marketing messages and activities to a narrow target market with shared characteristics.

This enables customized marketing geared to the needs and buying behavior of the target market. The more you know about your target market the more effectively you can design offers that will motivate consumers to buy your products while Christmas shopping.

Promote More Local Christmas Shopping

Consumers will also be spend more local for Christmas shopping this year. The need to save gas and a grassroots move to support local businesses will keep Christmas shoppers closer to home this year.

But just being local won’t insure that your business will get its share of Christmas shopping. With the tight economy, consumers are now shopping more based on needs than their wants. They’re looking for value.

Consider How The Economy Is Influencing Consumers’ Buying Behavior.

With the tough economy and high gas prices, more people will be doing their Christmas shopping online and in local stores this Christmas. And they’ll be looking for more value and more basic and practical gifts.

Do get your share of Christmas shopping, start now to plan your Christmas campaign with this information in mind.

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Posted 8-20-08: Have You Started Planning Your Christmas Shopping

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I found a linkback project that makes it easier. It works with 100 sites at a time. And it’s now accepting sites for the next list of 100 sites. Every participant posts the entire lists of links and then adds a site. That way every site on the list gets 99 linkbacks.

I had decided to participate this time to see how it works. I posted the list on this post. Then one of my subscribers mentioned that Google could consider my blog a link farm because of it. I went to the linkback project site at http://www.linkbackproject.com/ and read the comments on this possibility.

I admire the leader’s and other participants’ courage. Many know that the project will likely get punished by Google, but they have decided to do it anyway. That is presently a risk that I just can’t afford to take. So I deleted the links and asked that my site be taken off the list.

You may think I’m a coward, or you may think that I’m a responsible business person, or anything in between. But I’ve learned through a long career, that it doesn’t pay to challenge the powerful. And face it, Google is the power on the Internet. If you don’t get Google search traffic, you chances of success are greatly reduced.

Still some of you in Internet marketing may think that link building is important enough to take the risk. Then I encourage you to participate in the link building project.

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Posted 8-19-08: Link Building For Internet Marketing

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It’s much easier to get a present customer to buy again than it is to get a new customer. So it pays to keep your customers happy. With that in mind, I’m listing seven tips to ensure your success with customer relationship management.

Success With Customer Relationship Management – Tip 1: Keep A Customer Database

You need to keep records of all your customers, what they buy, when they buy, their demographics, and all contacts with your customer service department.

Building this database isn’t that complicated with computerization and customer tracking software. If you haven’t started keeping records on your customers, you need to start now.

Success With Customer Relationship Management – Tip 2: Track Customer Interactions

You also need to keep track of all your customers’ interactions with all parts of your business, from complaints to sales.

This will help you to relate to your customers better by knowing customer expectations.

Success With Customer Relationship Management – Tip 3: Conduct Customer Research

You can acquire a wealth of customer insights by conducting a customer satisfaction survey. You can give your customers a survey when they purchase or send it to them when they have had time to use your product of service.

Many people will complete a survey when they would not otherwise give you customer feedback.

Success With Customer Relationship Management – Tip 4: Use Customer Segmentation

There are many ways that you can segment your customers. Segmenting improves your customer relationship management and your customer relationship marketing.

Just a few of the ways to segment your customers is by buying behavior, frequency of purchases, and demographics. You can read my posts on each of these through the following links:

Success With Customer Relationship Management: Segmenting By Buying Behavior

Success With Customer Relationship Management By Frequency of Purchases

Success With Customer Relationship Management Using Demographics

Success With Customer Relationship Management – Tip 5: Improve Your Customer Communications

Keeping a segmented customer database enables you to communicate relevant messages and offers to your customers. But don’t always be selling something with your customer communications. You want your customers to feel like you care about them, not just about their money.

Success With Customer Relationship Management – Tip 6: Develop A Customer Loyalty Program

One way to show your best customers that you care about them is through a customer loyalty program. Your program should reward your good customers with more than announcements of sales.

Do special activities for them. For example, you could open late one evening just for them.

Success With Customer Relationship Management – Tip 7: Know The Objective Of Customer Relationship Management Program

No matter what activities you undertake for your business, you should clearly understand you purpose in taking action. Customer relationship management is no exception. Of course you want to provide good customer care and quality customer service.

But beyond that, what do you really hope to accomplish with your customer relationship management program? Once you know the answer to this question, you’ll make better decisions for your business as well as increase customer satisfaction.

Success With Customer Relationship Management –Conclusion

These tips tell you how to improve relations with your customers. If you implement them, you’ll have greater success with customer relationship management.

You can also improve your marketing by maintaining a good customer management program. The three links under tip 4, will take you to three posts that specifically deal with improving your marketing through success with customer relationship management.

You may also want to check out these articles on customer relationship management:

Wikipedia on Customer Relationship Management

CRM Customer Relationship Management

If you like this post, subscribe to my RSS feed so you’ll never miss one. Or you can get weekly emails announcing my posts for that week by completing the form below:

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Posted 8-18-08: Seven Tips For Success With Customer Relationship Management

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The first post dealt with segmenting by buying behavior and was published Wednesday. You can access it below:

Success With Customer Relationship Management By Buying Behavior

The second post dealt with segmenting by purchasing frequency and was published Thursday. You can link to it below:

Success With Customer Relationship Management By Frequency Of Purchases

Today’s post deals with improving your success with customer relationship management by segmenting with the demographics of customers.

Success With Customer Relationship Management Using Demographics

The more you know about your customers, the better your customer relationships will be.

That’s why I believe it’s important to collect demographic information about your customers and use it in your customer relationship marketing.

Demographics reveal a wealth of information about people. For example, just knowing their age range reveals their generation and life stage. Both of these in return tell you loads about your customers’ attitudes, opinions, values, and concerns.

Once you know this type of information about your customers, you can improve your customer service experience and increase your number of loyal customers, who buy from you again and again.

You can collect demographic information with customer surveys or contests. Then you can segment your customers by their demographics.

This provides the same advantages for marketing to customers as it does for marketing to target markets. By better understanding them, you can create messages and offers that they find relevant and reach them through media that they pay attention to.

Success With Customer Relationship Management: A Free Report On Segmenting By Demographics

If you want to learn more about how to segment your customers using demographics, you can get my free report by completing the form below:

By using the three types of customer segmentation covered in this series of posts, you can achieve more success with customer relationship management.

If you like this post, subscribe to my RSS feed so you’ll never miss one. Or you can get weekly emails announcing my posts for that week by completing the form below:

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Posted 8-15-08: Success With Customer Relationship Management Using Demographics

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