Questions to Answer Before Your Business Hires An Advertising Agency

Many businesses jump into hiring advertising agencies without fully considering their promotions requirements or assessing the advertising needs of their business. Before hiring a major advertising agency and parting with big bucks for advertising your products or services, you need to answer a few important questions.

Before committing your business to spending ad dollars promoting your business think about your advertising priorities and the benefits you would gain from hiring an ad agency. Six questions you can answer before hiring your ad agency include:

• one vital factor you need to identify is why your product(s) or services are important and why people should buy them. This is your unique selling preposition and something your advertising agency needs to know
• research all available information on your competitors. You need to check out their prices, discounts, offers and read their brochures and trade information, that way you'll be able to identify patterns in your market
• decide who you are targeting with your advertising and the exact message you wish to convey. You need to know who is buying your products or services and why they do so, once you have this information you are in a position to target your adverts wisely at your consumer market
• prepare detailed reports for your ad agency, giving them background, history, market data and sales figures for your product(s). If you don't do this the ad agency will need to conduct the research on your behalf and it will cost extremely dear
• when all the above details are identified you'll be in a position to appoint an advertising agency to handle your advertising. You'll need to research the agencies available to suit your budget and also identify exactly what you can expect them to do for you. Recognize that if you decide to work with larger ad agencies you can expect to pay larger sums and that lots of industry awards won't necessarily equal lots of added customers for your product(s)
• once you've appointed an advertising agency, the real work begins. You will work with your advertising agency to write and design your finished product adverts. Accept the agency are professionals in this field and take on board all input they give.

When working with your advertising agency you should be aware that if you change your mind on designs midway through the process your advertising agency fees will skyrocket and also that if you keep requesting color layouts of draft adverts the final costs will be much higher. Learn to visualize your advertising from rough drafts and to accept advice from the agency. You may be very critical of the designs put forward but will your customers put as much thought in? Customers will scan the finished advert and make a decision on whether or not they wish to purchase your product. Once your agency is working on your account, it's likely they will try to sell more services to you. Don't fall for their persuasive sales talk when they attempt to urge you to allow them to produce all your sales literature. They may know your advertising pitch and concept but you're fully able to contract direct for any collateral materials and they aren't necessary to augment your advertising campaign.

When you've answered all the six questions above satisfactorily you're in a far better position to handle the demands of appointing your advertising agency and working with them in the best possible manner.