Advertising strategies should be tailored to the type of business it needs to attract—and to the business doing the advertising. The size of your business matters, and it should impact how you choose to advertise your brand.
What is an Enterprise?
Enterprise-level businesses are those that have been wildly successful. An enterprise can be in any industry, and it does not matter if it is a public or private entity. Enterprise brands are often national brands (or global) that have a defined structure, significant revenue and profitability, and are large in scale. Enterprise brands think about the future, engage in long-term planning, and have advertising strategies that significantly differ from those of smaller companies.
How Enterprise Advertising Strategies Differ
Because enterprises are on such a different scale, their advertising strategy is unique to their business and their brand. Often, their advertising strategy isn’t about closing a sale; instead, sales are made through relationships with other businesses, and deals are not made overnight. Enterprise advertising strategies are typically more about raising brand awareness than anything else and have a much higher ad spend than smaller businesses have available.
Target Audience
For enterprises, the target audience for advertisements may be important stakeholders, but as previously mentioned, it’s not about closing a sale. It’s about creating a reputation, building notoriety and brand recognition, and demonstrating influence. Enterprise-level advertising is about the brand, not the products or services they sell. Ultimately, they have a different target audience than smaller businesses and even mid-size corporations.
Different Goals
The goal of enterprise advertising is often multifaceted and, again, not aimed at closing a singular sale. Instead, the goals of enterprise advertising relate more specifically to building market share, name recognition, and brand trust, retaining existing customers, and establishing the enterprise’s position as an industry leader. If there is a new product launch, the brand will advertise this to the market, but advertising a new launch differs significantly from its overall enterprise advertising strategy.
Establishes Brand & Reputation
One of the major tenets of enterprise advertising is establishing a brand and a positive reputation. By highlighting the competitive advantage or creating the perception that your enterprise is the number one in the industry, a thought leader, or a revolutionary business, enterprises can establish brand awareness and solidify their reputation as a leader or the best. Smaller businesses are not typically vying for these spots and focus their advertising strategies on a more streamlined strategy of simply making sales or generating leads.
How To Build Your Enterprise Advertising Plan
Executives in enterprise-level businesses will want to build an enterprise advertising plan that considers their target audience, their competitors, and their plans for the future.
Conduct Target Market Research With Customer Personas
Customer data is an incredibly useful tool, and this can be developed by conducting focus groups, both internally and externally, as well as by creating fictional archetypes of prospective customers. This data can help marketers better understand who their target audience is, how they will frame their advertising to best appeal to their target audience, and avoid pitfalls. Customer or buyer personas can unlock new ideas for your marketing team.
Get Competitor Data & Conduct Market Trend Research
You can’t know what roads you want to take (or not take) unless you find out what your competitors are up to. Learning about your competitors, the market as a whole, and where your business falls in line with them will help you better create an enterprise advertising plan. It can help you find weaknesses in your competitors that your enterprise can exploit (in advertising of course), find opportunities for leveraging the market to your enterprise’s advantage, and avoid making mistakes that your competitors are paying for.
Review Current Marketing Initiatives For Long-Term Feasibility & Success
When planning for the future, you want to set clear goals and objectives for the present, but you must remember to make long-term plans. Base your long-term plans on feasibility studies to create an initiative that increases profitability and furthers the success of your enterprise. Your enterprise advertising strategy needs to be thorough, take into account real data, and be continuously tested to ensure its success.
Enterprise Advertising Strategies You Can Use
Although the goals, implementation, and target audience of enterprise advertising differ from those of smaller companies, the advertising methods are all the same. It’s more about how those strategies are implemented that makes the difference.
Establish a Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing is no longer an option that major corporations and enterprise-level businesses could bypass or phone in. Digital advertising, including social media, is imperative in not only establishing a reputation but also keeping the brand in front of the target audience.
Digital advertising doesn’t have to merely mean PPC ads; it can also mean making meaningful posts on LinkedIn or advertising on Meta or TikTok platforms to engage a younger audience. Keeping the brand alive in all of the advertising channels that exist is important in creating an enterprise advertising strategy.
Additionally, content marketing can go a long way in terms of solidifying your enterprise’s presence as an industry leader. This can be through newsletters (attention, thought leaders! This is your time to shine!) or other content marketing strategies, including SEO, which are important in keeping your brand at the top of the food chain.
Measure For Success
One thing that differentiates brands that succeed from those that don’t is whether they examine their performance and pivot when they get data that shows the current path isn’t working.
Examine Performance
Examining performance doesn’t mean sitting in a boardroom and getting opinions. Instead, use technology to measure the success of your campaigns, compare that data with what you anticipated from your goals and objectives, and constantly reevaluate your advertising plan. Reviewing performance regularly is critical for success in determining ROI and future ad spending.
Use Analytics
Data matters, especially when it comes to advertising. Unfortunately, it is a numbers game, so stay on top of reporting and key performance metrics, stats from Google Analytics, and things like conversion rates to determine the success of your enterprise advertising.
Consult With Experts in Enterprise Advertising
If you’re interested in learning how you can improve your enterprise advertising strategy and get results, contact The Creative Momentum for a quote.