Speak with to almost any advertising agency or Fortune 500 company exec about advertising and promotion and you will almost certainly hear the buzz words "fragmented advertising" and "consumer-centric campaigns" and long conversations about the many perils and obstacles of creating persuasive advertising campaigns today.



Simply put, fragmentation is the increase in the totality of usable methods that you can get your point across to your market.

Have you ever used your TiVo remote to skip through commercials? This is the type of advertising difficulty being faced by entreprenuers everywhere... things have altered strikingly over the last few years.It now consists of visual, audio and electronic media.

Go to Google and do a search for "advertising" and you will get over 450,000,000 results (that's 1 1/2 times the amount of people in the US) and results like local advertising, prize giveaways and pay-per-click advertising. It's enough to make a person feel afraid.

So, are billboards, television, radio and magazine -- traditional advertising -- dead?

No way! No how! According to one top advertising mogul, traditional advertising methods are still around because they still work.

Figuring out who your target market is, what they want and how they search for that info is the trick.

"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising," Mark Twain once said.

If you know your customers, you can spend your advertising dollars on the mediums they use to look for answers.

If your customers are people that are much less likely online, like senior citizens or the poor, then you should focus your money on the newspapers and magazines that they are reading, the television shows that they are watching and the radio programs that they are listening to.

If your typical customer is a working parent, then you need to ask how they get their information, where they get their information and when they get it. Is it on the Internet? What radio stations do they listen to? What magazines are they reading? Do they watch television? When? How? Why?

So what are your best possibilities for creating an persuasive advertising campaign?

Here are a few powerful ways:

1. Know your customer. What do they want? Where do they shop? What do they read? What is their culture? Where do they like to go for fun? Do they want your service or product? Can they afford your product or service?

2. Know the competition. Be primed to perform a bit of research. What are your three top competitors doing to advertise? Where are they advertising? How often? What types of advertising methods are they using? How long have they been running? Are you reaching the same market? Is your point different?

Look at what they're doing right, and figure out creative ways that you can make your advertising just just a tad better, or differentiate yourself from the crowd.

3. What are the "top dogs" in your industry doing? See if you can borrow some of their methods and adapt them to your budget and target market.

4. Know your message. What exactly are you trying to say? What do your customers want to hear? Why should people buy from you rather than another company? You need to make every single word pay off.

It is highly likely that your customers are more tech-savy than they were just even one year ago. While the Internet has made it possible for your customers to uncover just about any piece of information that they need, the Internet has also created another massive problem... information overload.

Another side effect of the Internet is that your customers have probably become used to getting "instant gratification" when they are looking for information, products or services. They want it, and they want it now. Giving your customer what he wants, when he wants it is one of the top challenges that businesses face today. Can you meet that demand?

If you want to have an persuasive advertising campaign, don't try to be everything to everyone. Think of your advertising as a conversation between you and your one "ideal" customer. If you want your customers to see your advertising as a wonderful service instead of a nuisance, simply give them what they want.

Traditional advertising is far from dead! It's alive and well. Just remember that it still adheres to the #1 rule of business: know your customer and give them what they want!