In my mind a lot of advertising you see is money down the drain, because their owners, designers or writers don’t understand the psychology of how to compose a successful ad (read more in my post 5 things to consider when writing adverts). Although I have given you five reasons there, here I will, in this next series of posts, show you some unsuccessful ads and explain why they are so.
Advertising space is expensive. But have you thought about beating down the price by haggling, especially if the publication deadline is looming? There is really no need to pay full price at all, and if you hold out long enough with lots of ‘ums’ and ‘ahhs’ you’ll soon find the price has dropped.
OK, so you can only afford, say, a quarter page (don’t worry, I’ve also been there). It isn’t very big to accommodate everything you need to say, but for goodness sake don’t stuff everything you can into the space provided. Here are two examples:
It’s good that this Ups-A-Daisy ad has a white background, otherwise it wouldn’t be very clear to read, and there is also too much text here. It gives the impression she’s trying to tell her whole story in one go!
It’s not necessary to explain everything about reflexology here, she only needs to highlight the benefits customers will receive to have far more impact, particularly if she is in tune with her customers’ problems, and what reflexology can do to solve them. These much more interesting facts should be placed at the top of her ad, where they will more likely catch her customers’ eye.
Also the most important and attractive elements should be bigger to draw more attention to them, without the need to use capital letters (more illegible and can be mistaken as shouting). This is especially apt for the contact details at the bottom, along with her logo and business name.
Well! – where do I start with the Max Carpets & Upholstery Care advert (I had to hunt for that information). What a nightmare of pink, yellow and red, and there is certainly a favouritism for flashes!
They were so keen to get everything in, and to have all their headlines and captions in capitals. The good points are that they have included their features/benefits in bullet points, and their telephone number is large and obvious (yet their website’s URL looks like it’s an afterthought), even if there is no call to action.
But why do they need to include all their prices? This is a mistake most service providers make, they think it’s imperative to show how competitive they are, when they should be advertising how good they are through testimonials from happy customers, case studies of excellent results, shouting about all the benefits they can offer to make their customers’ lives better – all these are much more important than how cheap you are (and cheap doesn’t necessarily mean a good service!), and advertising ‘massive savings’ shows you don’t really value your original prices anyway.
So what else can you do to get your potential customer see everything you have to offer? Well, there is your website, of course, but I do not mean directing them to your homepage. Oh no, that would be a big mistake. The answer is to create a special ‘landing’ or ‘squeeze’ webpage on your website (with its own special URL), specifically designed for your advert alone. The subject of that page would totally match your advert (same colours, pictures, headline, subject matter, special offers, call to action, contact details, etc) for immediate recognition from the visitor. It would also contain all that extra information you wanted to put into your advert but didn’t have the room, such as a full list of benefits, testimonials, price lists, location maps, special offer codes, your email address, telephone numbers to make an appointment, links to online catalogues or any other relevant pages on your website – but the main focus should be to get that customer to contact you to find out more!
So how do they get there? Your advert should be totally focused on getting your customer to type in that URL into their browsers. The headline should be empathising with their problem, followed up by the solution which your company can provide, accompanied with a compelling call to action to drive them to your special advert webpage. Excite their curiosity, play with their greed, cajole them with special offers – all this can easily be fitted into an advert space without being over cluttered. And at least it would make your ad stand out from all the other bog-standard versions around you!
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Thank you for a very clear and helpful post. I am definitely a violator of many of these rules. I often find myself conflicted when writing a blog post because I see myself writing more than people want to read, but I feel that I have to do the subject matter justice by thoroughly covering it. I feel that by following some of these rules I end up cutting out important aspects to the discussion. I guess you have to find a balance.
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