Limited Nuggets

I have actually had a very limited experience with ads, and I am sure there are people here that can add way more insight into that arena than I can. But there are a few things I have learned. In creating an ad, I found that making sure you have a specific target audience in mind and that the means by which you plan on distributing your ad is targeted towards that audience. I ran into an issue with this when we created an good ad, but failed to recognize that it was so specific to a target audience and the distribution was a broad audience. Therefore we ended up paying good money for an quality advertising spot, but since the periodical was distributed to too broad a group, the targeted nature of our article didn’t really provide us a good ROI. Next time I would either pick a more targeted distribution group, or make the ad a bit broader.
The other thing I found important is finding ways to track ROI on advertising. Not that I have found a great way to do it, but working at a smaller company, and advertising space being very expensive, the ability to measure our return becomes increasingly more important, especially when trying to get approval from management. For management who already think that marketing can be a waste of money, the ability to show them measurable gain from advertising would be invaluable.