Even if you have never had any advertising classes in your life, you would have to be pretty aloof not to see that advertising has drastically changed in the last few years.

Individual artists and entrepreneurs, colleges and universities, nonprofits, churches and big business all have recognized the need to be both technology and strategy-savvy. Not knowing the ins and outs of contemporary marketing in the age of electronic communication and information overflow can make you lose dollars, attention or an entire constituent base.

Advertising class can be a formal pursuit that you chase through traditional means at a local college or university or it can be an informal course.

Formal advertising design classes generally focus on traditional marketing concepts that teach you about public relations, branding, market share, and target marketing and consumer behaviors. Some of the traditional routes for learning advertising tactics have integrated internet strategies, but the heavier content is on the highly developed rules of engagement that will always apply to promotion and buying.

Many informal courses are online advertising classes. These classes teach the person or agency seeking to expand its reach the basics of setting up marketing strategies on the internet. Participants who attend an online advertising class learn about search engine optimization, the importance of blogs, newsgroups and forums, article directories, e-campaigns conducted through contact marketing, podcasts, social networking, how-to hubs, e-commerce and how to establish yourself as a subject matter expert online.

The need for educating everyone about online advertising has increased exponentially as we have moved from being a letter-writing, phone talking society to become an electronic culture whose human communication transactions are brief, abbreviated and less personal.

In a climate where personalization is a foreign concept, advertising, by necessity, becomes a matter of making a huge information or product impact in the smallest amount of time imaginable. Most surfers or email recipients may only give you 10 seconds, at most, to enter their worlds an wield influence. Advertising classes teach you how best to use such a brief encounter and to find ways that are not intrusive, rude or spam-like to introduce yourself and your product or service to an email recipient or Internet surfer.

Advertising classes are not limited to the marketing aspects of advertising only. Accredited programs offer courses in copywriting, market research, marketing metrics, portfolio development and art direction, among other courses. You are usually guided through the steps to create an entire advertising campaign from start to finish and asked to adapt it for print media, television and radio, new media, and the web.

In most cases, students are paired with an established mentor who has earned credibility in the field. The mentorship aims not only to give students hands-on access to the actual work they will be performing, but it also gives them a more realistic, but relaxed environment to ask the tough questions they have about maintaining a career. Successful mentoring partnerships foster learning by both the mentor and the mentee.

There has been a common misconception about the need for owners and workers in small businesses to enroll in advertising classes: many believe they simple do not need it. Word-of-mouth, many believe will carry the weight of their businesses. This is a brush-off that could ultimately be costly.

Even if only one person in a company attends advertising classes, the eventual return on investment is significant. Knowing how to compete with big business through newer advertising models – especially those online – keeps you a step ahead of the game. Choosing not to employ all of the principles does not ever excuse the ignorance of not knowing them. It is always best to know the rules, and then, armed with your knowledge, break them.