It’s been said that local advertisement is “sold not bought.” And more often than not, when this happens, the point of purchasing marketing/advertising is defeated. Having seen this first hand, I could never put a word on it until recently. Part of this goes back to the local business not believing that marketing/advertising holds any value to its success. Some don’t even have a budget for such a thing, compared to a national brand that spends the majority of its budget on marketing/advertising and sees it as key to its success.

The one key difference between these two mentalities is the idea of voice and how marketing/advertising are the voice.

Local business is then “sold” this idea that it needs to purchase advertising, which sacrifices quality and in the long run defeats the purpose of getting a businesses voice heard in the first place. Which was to create a strong presence, image and voice. It’s defeated because the branding, image and design process are rushed for advertising sake, resulting in poor results and reiterating to the local businesses that advertising holds no value to them.

The other part is the platform. Advertising that is sold, is based on numbers, not what it takes to make a name for yourself. Again defeating the purpose of creating a voice in the first place. It becomes quality vs. quantity for the platform. Which in advertising, quantity always wins.

A strong business has a strong voice. Whether the budget is $5 or $5,000, the idea is to use the best avenues possible for the message. Social network niching and guerilla sticker campaigns, a small budget can suffice. P.R event and environmental graphics, a bit larger budget would definitely need to come into play. Though both hold core commonalities such as finding the creative solution resulting in strong voice through design, packaging, branding, P.R effort and hard work.

Advertising/marketing gives a product/service a sort of tangible.ness that otherwise is not there. For instance, a website that is strictly web based, has to have some sort of tangible aspect for the audience to believe it’s a viable option for them, P.R events, mailers, environmental graphic etc. You could spend much of your effort on web.optimizing, SEO and have one of the freshest ideas, but not giving tangibility to the idea is death by design. There must be a real world aspect for the idea to be successful. Something a lot of online platforms tend to not do.

Whatever the mode, finding a creative solution for your voice is essential. Marketing/advertising are the driving force of any business.