Advertising is becoming an even more important facet of marketing campaigns. In fact, the United States spent $225.8 billion on advertising efforts in 2020.
With so much on the line, you need to decide how you will bring your advertising to the next level. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of tried and true advertising ideas you can use in your own campaigns.
Physical Advertising Ideas
Display Creative Billboards
Billboard advertisements effectively and memorably promote your brand.
Recommended: Ad Generator
Billboards:
- Are eye-catching
- Target a large market
- Build product image
- Build brand awareness
- Have flexible costs
Try including the surrounding environment to really attract your audience.
Distribute Print Ads
Show off your design skills and create flyers, posters, brochures, or newspaper ads that catch the eyes of your audience.
Print ads:
- Help build relationships
- Are cost-effective
- Have high engagement rates
- Have flexibility in placement
Localize your efforts to ensure that the people who are most likely to become customers see your content.
Send Mail
Sending mail directly to your target audience helps drive new and returning business.
- It’s simple
- It’s personal
- There’s less competition
- Builds brand awareness
- It leads to a more emotional response
Politicians use the postal service to advertise their campaigns all the time. You can find templates online to make it easy to create effective advertisements.
Traditional Advertising Ideas
Reap The Benefits Of An Email Advertisement
Email advertising allows you to send your ads directly to your audience whenever you want to. You can personalize the emails sent and make connections while increasing leads.
Sending ads within emails is also budget-friendly, and you can get creative with how you reach your readers.
Ads placed within email newsletters allow you to get your word out about your products and in front of a large audience. Alternatively, if you have a newsletter with many readers, you can rent out space and make some money out of others’ ads.
The VegNews newsletter has an ad for vegan jerky at the top. This choice was an intelligent way for Unisoy to reach an audience that would want to interact with their ad.
Establish A Slogan
Slogans are essential to creating a solid brand. A slogan should let your customers know why they should choose your product and what benefits it brings.
The challenge advertising professionals face is making sure the slogan matches a business’s purpose. An advertising slogan communicates how your product or service helps your customers.
Take a look at the common slogans listed below. You might be able to tell which brand is being referenced just by the slogan alone.
Promote On The Radio
Similar to promoting your business or products on a podcast, you can do the same with the radio.
Promoting your business on the radio allows you to
- Reach a large audience
- Select which station hears your ad
- Select when your ad airs
- Improve brand awareness
Work with radio stations to determine the best times so your ideal audience hears your message.
Promote On Television
Television advertisements allow your message to permeate into your customers’ homes. You can choose which channel your ads get shown on to target specific demographics.
For example, 53% of people older than 55 get their news from local T.V. stations. So, if that’s your target audience, you might air your advertisement on the nightly news.
You should look for televised events that attract many customers to a certain channel. Always aired this ad during the Super Bowl, a popular time for businesses to invest in television advertising.
Create A Jingle
Creating a jingle allows you to tell your audience what sets your product apart in a catchy and entertaining way.
Jingles:
- Are memorable
- Build brand awareness
- Are cost-effective
- Stand the test of time
For example, Kit Kat’s jingle first aired in 1986, and people have been singing it ever since.
Collaborate With Other Businesses
Collaborative advertisements allow both businesses involved to access a larger market cost-effectively.
Collaborative advertisements:
- Expand brand awareness
- Attract new customers
- Reach a larger audience
- Allow for more cooperative ideas
- Can lead to spikes in sales
One of Taco Bell’s biggest campaigns included a collaboration with Frito-Lay. These advertisements created a lot of hype and resulted in over 500 million tacos sold.
Include Celebrities
Another advertising idea is using celebrities to endorse your products quickly pushes your ads to the public’s view. It also helps you set your product on a higher tier than your competitors’ products.
Make sure you select a celebrity that aligns with your brand values. You also want to make sure they are well-liked by the general public.
Reference Pop Culture
Referencing pop culture makes your brand seem more relatable to the general public. It makes your company seem more relevant and produces eye-catching visuals.
Don’t underestimate the power of nostalgia, either. The advertisement below uses the beloved Scooby-Doo character, Velma, to showcase their new product.
Promote Company News
Promote company news to build brand awareness and trust.
Starbucks, for example, uses Starbucks Stories & News to share company and employee accomplishments, generating a positive consumer perception.
Use Industry News
Reference industry news to drive new business and help your company be perceived as relevant.
In light of FIFA World Cup 2022, athletic brand Nike created “Footballverse,” an imaginary universe where past and present football players compete together.
Take Advantage Of Holidays & Observances
Holidays and observances are an opportunity to create a meaningful campaign that evokes emotion and connects individuals to their loved ones.
Woodie’s, for example, an Irish home improvement store, used a heartfelt advertisement to communicate the wonderfulness of the holiday season.
Publish An Employee Spotlight
Use employee spotlights to highlight the success of a valued employee and advertise how great your company is. Tell the story of your company through the eyes of an employee. This marketing idea allows people to engage more with your brand and can even lead to more sales.
Cloud communications platform MessageBird uses an Employee Spotlight Series to share their employees’ career successes and life at the company.
Create A Customer Spotlight
Create a customer spotlight to reveal how your product brings value to customers’ lives.
Bizzabo – a professional event planning and execution software company – uses customer testimonials to showcase its business success.
Promote Open Positions
Use open positions as an opportunity to advertise your company and why it’s an excellent place to work. Promote open positions on:
- Job listing sites like Indeed, Monster, or ZipRecruiter
- Social media
- Job boards
- Local universities
- Industry conferences
- Your website
On its Instagram account, Life at Delta, Delta Airlines advertises open positions by using stories of current employees. Each post establishes Delta as the place to be, whether building a career in aviation or searching for a job after retirement. This demonstrates innovative advertising ideas through leveraging the experiences of employees to showcase the company’s workplace culture and career opportunities.
Digital Advertising Ideas
Allocate Part Of Your Budget For Paid Search
If you want to rank higher on search engine result pages and drive traffic to your site, consider investing in paid search advertising.
You have a great sense of flexibility when investing in paid search advertising. You can:
- Optimize keywords
- Adjust ad copy
- Generate more leads
- Track analytics
- Attract consistent traffic
Having paid search ads ensures that users search for information relevant to your business. This specificity means you know you’re getting your money’s worth.
Enable QR Codes
QR codes have become increasingly more popular lately. 11 Million households were estimated to have scanned a QR code in 2020.
QR codes:
- Are measurable
- Work quickly
- Act as a call to action
- Connect your offline to your online audience
- Are engaging
- Are shareable
Incorporating a QR code into your ads allows your customers to scan and explore your product quickly. Even better is that you can track how effective these QR codes have been.
Invest In-Display Ads
Display Ads are a type of native advertising that doesn’t disrupt a user’s experience. These advertisements:
- Build brand awareness
- Increase visibility
- Target consumers
- Are visually appealing
- Support retargeting
For example, Stitch Fix placed a display ad before The New York Times article below. If someone wanted to read the article, they would have to scroll past the advertisement.
Purchase Product Placement
Product placement is a great way to get your product in the hands of a celebrity during a feature film. By doing this, they can capture an audience’s attention without taking away from the plot of the film.
Take a look at how Apple took advantage of product placement in the classic movie, Legally Blonde. As you can see, Elle Wood’s Mac stands out among the simple, black laptops surrounding her.
Take Advantage Of Social Media
It’s no secret that social media usage has increased dramatically over the past few years. Up to 72% of Americans say they use some form of social media.
Why not tap into that follower base and promote your business where your customers are?
Platforms like Instagram have a set of guidelines you can follow to set up ads that are within your budget. They even let you track your performance to be sure you’re reaching your ideal audience.
Unique Advertising Ideas
Design Vehicle Wraps
Putting a vehicle wrap on a car or truck allows you to advertise your product to other drivers on the road.
Vehicle wraps are:
- Attention-grabbing
- Cost-effective
- Non-disruptive
- Targeted to your local community
- Great exposure
Design Street Art
Street art allows your brand to express itself to the public uniquely and powerfully. It attracts local community members, but it can also attract tourists to your business.
Your audience might even take pictures of the artwork and share it on social media, which will give you more exposure.
Develop An Immersive Experience
Immersive advertisements submerge the audience in a completely different experience that they’ll remember for a long time. This experience gives them a new point of view of your brand and products, showcasing innovative advertising ideas.
For example, Caribou set up a heated bus stop to advertise their new hot breakfast sandwiches to the public. Not only did this help keep commuters warm, but it was very effective as an advertisement.
Experiment With 3D Designs
This advertising idea allows you to catch users’ attention who, otherwise, might not have noticed. 3D designs can either be sculptures, billboard extensions, or even digital.
Advertising professionals have used new digital technologies that make an image look 3D without using glasses. These ads have more gripping visual effects and produce a more realistic feel that draws customers in.
Incorporate The Environment
Using your environment can allow local audiences to appreciate your product better when advertising.
Take a look at Apotek’s Subway Ad they launched to promote their new “hair raising” products. When the subway drove past the screen, the woman’s hair moved with the wind.
This interactive experience caught the attention of morning commuters as this effect made the ad come to life.
Make The Most Out Of Podcast Advertisements
Podcast advertising is relatively new, but these ads have already proven effective. 61% of podcast listeners said they bought something after hearing about it from a podcast ad.
Brands, authors, bloggers, and startups can use podcast ads to promote their products or services. Spotify even provides step-by-step instructions on how to get started.
Put An Emphasis On Social Issues
This strategy can be polarizing, but your audience will notice your message. You can create powerful visuals to make a more significant impact, making this more likely to influence your audience.
For example, the advertisement below is from the Moms Demand Action organization. Their goal was to shed light on gun violence in schools and demand change to protect children.
Try AR
Augmented reality is a relatively new but highly effective way to ramp up your advertising efforts. It works by immersing your target audience in a whole new environment and letting them interact with your products digitally.
Ikea used this strategy to let customers see what their furniture would look like in their homes. This way, consumers can experiment with the different options and choose the ones they like best.
Take Advantage Of Cute Animals
Finding a common denominator between your audience can be tricky, but a few brands have discovered how to do it. Using an image that many people enjoy can help your target audience find value in your ad.
For example, Target uses a bull terrier named Spot to star in their commercials and aid their advertising efforts. Since most people like dogs, they increase the chances of people associating that feeling with their brand.
Utilize Guerrilla Tactics
Guerrilla Advertising focuses on low-cost marketing efforts that drive maximum results. The campaigns revolve around the element of surprise to draw in customers.
These ads can be indoor, outdoor, experiential, or even involve an event ambush.
Below, Yellow Pages used a sculpture to show pedestrians how they can help you find anything.
As a huge component of any marketing strategy, advertising can help you reach your ideal audience with specific, targeted messages. Evaluate the goals of your campaign to decide which advertising tactics are best for you.
Product Advertising Ideas
Create a Brand Ambassador Program
Brand ambassadors are people chosen by your company to promote your product and get perks from you. People are chosen because the lifestyle they live aligns with your target market. For example, an athlete would be a brand ambassador for Celsius.
Celsius uses an ambassador program to reward loyal customers and offer them perks for advertising for them at a low cost. This is similar to sponsorships but varies in what the company is trying to accomplish.
Publish An Advertorial
Publish an advertorial to promote your products sneakily. An advertorial is an advertisement that is created to look like editorial content. This type of advertising offers more value to the customer by putting the product in use or using customer testimonials to build a narrative.
L’Oreal Paris published an advertorial to their target audience in Seventeen magazine to highlight all of the ways to create a look with their new studio line products.
Target Your Customers With Facebook Ads
Reach your target market with Facebook ads included directly in their feed to ensure your product is reaching the right audience.
LMNT targets runners and health-focused individuals because they created a performance product that seems healthier than sports drink alternatives.
Create A Contest
Create a contest to promote your product in a new way that offers value to your customer, incorporating innovative advertising ideas. Make your contest product specific to make it a product advertising strategy.
Bubblr created the boost your future contest, where you submit a video about how you would use the prize money to “boost your future.” This contest plays off of their theme that their product “boosts’ ‘ with natural caffeine.
Use Your Logo In Creative Ways
Switch up your logo or use it in a new way to bring a fresh concept into your brand and promote your product.
The dating app Hinge operates with the notion they want people to delete the app because they found happy relationships there. This ad shows a dismantled Hinge logo with a happy couple to represent this idea.
Host An Interactive Webinar
Hosting a webinar with live Q&A sessions, offering exclusive insights into marketing trends, and featuring guest speakers from industry leaders gives your viewers the opportunity to learn from the best and take away huge insights from your platform.
Adobe launched their “Create and Collaborate” webinar series for their followers and it made waves for all creators of all skill levels. Industry leaders and Adobe veterans took to these webinars to share insightful platform tips, best practices, and led viewers through their process within the platform.
The best piece about webinars is that viewers can hold onto past recordings and watch them at their own convenience as well as, look forward and pin future webinars they can’t wait to interact with.
Create Interactive E-Books
E-books can do much more than simply teach readers a thing or two. Offer interactive ebooks with embedded videos, quizzes, and assessments to educate your audience while capturing leads.
Once you’ve loaded your ebooks with impactful content and ways for them to interact, you’ve got yourself a well-rounded approach to advertising your brand.
Take it from the Digital Marketing Institute to provide a wide variety of e-books for marketers. Touching base on all sorts of topics to answer any burning questions and must-know insights. Readers can easily scan which ebook they would like to tune into, and from there, they gain access to everything they need and more.
Develop Mobile App Gamification
One killer way to advertise your brand and products is to dive into the mobile app gamification core. Develop a branded game or challenge within your mobile app to increase user engagement and time spent with your brand. Users will be encouraged to check back into your app, whether it’s to check leaderboards for competitions, see their progress, or simply see what’s new within the app.
If you’re familiar with the app Duolingo, you know how much their users cherish their Duolingo streak. Users will do whatever it takes to keep their streak going day in and day out. Here’s why:
- Design features make it so users feel accomplished and completed when they finish their daily lessons.
- A numbered streak keeps users motivated to return and check in each day.
- Users get a sense of “winning” as their streak builds.
