How to Advertise and Promote Your Business?

Navigating through advertising in Hong Kong can feel like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands—slippery, tricky, but SO rewarding when you get it right. Whether you're running a nimble startup or at the helm of a growing SME, this streamlined guide is your blueprint for swimming through the advertising waters of Hong Kong, so to speak. By borrowing tactics from giants like Lululemon, Nike, and Mercedes Benz, we'll explore how to advertise with finesse, make a splash with creative advertising strategies, and promote your business in ways that resonate.

How to Advertise with Your Business?

Source: Airam Dato-on via Unsplash

The first step in advertising in Hong Kong is knowing your playing field. Picture Hong Kong as a dynamic marketplace where every billboard, social media feed, and digital screen is a stage for your brand. But how to capture that spotlight? 

Start by pinpointing who you're talking to. When we talk about demographics, it means understanding the pulse of your audience. Who they are, how old they are, what socio-economic statuses, what is their environment on a day-to-day basis, their habits, their media usage, what they value, and many more. Are they digital natives scrolling through feeds at the speed of light, or are they more traditional, appreciating the tactile feel of a newspaper? This insight will direct your advertising strategies and techniques, making your message hit home.

Choosing Your Battlefield

Source: Lululemon Instagram Page

Deciding where to launch your advertising campaign is like picking the right tea for a traditional tea ceremony—there's one for every taste, but the choice makes all the difference. For visual brands like Lululemon, Instagram's a catwalk of opportunity, while LinkedIn offers a more formal stage for B2B conversations. Select platforms that align with your audience's lifestyle to ensure your advertising and promotion strategy doesn't just whisper but resonates.

Creative Advertising Strategy: Stand Out!

In a sea of ads, what makes yours special? A creative strategy in advertising is the answer. It's the secret sauce that transforms your advertising campaign from wallpaper into a window—a view into what makes your brand compelling and unique. For example, Nike is a sneaker company that sells...well, sneakers. But more than that, in their advertising messages and brand identity, they sell dreams, determination, and the promise of victory with their "Just Do It" mantra. That's persuasive strategies in advertising at its finest—connecting on an emotional level that goes beyond the product itself.

Source: Nike

Let's look at another example where creative advertising strategy is at play. Mercedes Benz recently released a new feature in their vehicle software - "Bark Assist", which uses cutting-edge technologies to detect and interpret dog barks. This allows them to control certain functions of the software like changing music and activating..."beauty mode"... Sounds impossible, right? It's because it is! For April Fool's, the German luxury car brand launched a cheeky advertising campaign for the "Bark Assist" with a short professionally produced "feature" video. The video was quickly shared on social media and was circulating in online magazines like Hypebeast. Although this isn't an actual feature, they used a creative lens to showcase their brand and personality. By making a quirky and "outside-the-box" video, they successfully garnered the attention of their potential consumers and made it stick.

Implementing Your Creative Advertising Strategy

• Craft Your Narrative: Every brand has a story. What's yours? It can't be just product oriented! Craft a narrative that embodies your values, your mission, and the essence of what you're offering. This is the core of your creative strategy in advertising.
  
  
• Innovate with Media: Whether it's a breathtaking video, an interactive billboard, a giant moving billboard, or a meme that goes viral, choose mediums that will carry your story far and wide.