Create Ads That Sell

If you want to attract potential customers to visit your business and buy your products or services, effective ads are your most important selling tool and direct reflection on your business image and integrity. Never underestimate the importance of your ad's appearance, because it shapes customer opinion about you and your business.

Hire and advertising agency or professionals and involve them in your entire advertising and marketing program, if you have a large advertising budget. For smaller budgets, it is good idea to hire graphic designer and freelance writer to do the ads that will most affect your public image like your logo, slogan, or some other identifying symbols and illustrations.

Your business logo and graphic appears in all advertising as your identifying symbol and should be created professionally and reproduce clearly.

For businesses without advertising budget, the most desirable option is to buy affordable software and create their own ads. Creative people, who have time and artistic ability can also produce their own ads. Keep in mind that every ad you produce should follow the basic marketing rule and include: who, what, where, when, how and why.

For classic display ads, the basic things you cannot leave out are: your business name, address, phone number, web site, hours of operation and the products or service you are selling. If you are doing digital media ads you can omit some parts of the basic things and link your ad to the landing page with more information related to your ad.

Here are some basic steps:

1. Define your audience, and know their common characteristics (like age, income, gender, behaviors etc.) if you want to reach them with your marketing campaign.

2. Start writing your ad copy with list of items that must appear in your ad.

3. In this step you will have to decide what is going to be your attention grabber that will attract readers and lead them to your business. Your ad also must answer the reader's main question: "What's in it for me?"

4. Add other important ingredients to your ad. Think about answers on basic questions like:

What are your special offerings?

What sets your apart form the others?

What will give your ad appeal and sparkle?

Can you include some special price or other benefit?

NOTE: Your answers to basic questions will help you create better ads.

5. Finally, you have to decide about graphic, color and typeface you are going to use in your ads. Carefully plan every graphic and word you plan to place in your ads and try to create the best possible layout.

Push the Positive Advertising

Negative phrasing can be damaging in your marketing campaign and advertising project, silently destroying it from the inside. When you are designing marketing campaign and advertising for your business, stress the positive, not the negative. You'll gain far more customers and new business that way. Although this has been proven time and again, many businesses keep right on sending negative ads to their customers and prospects, and most do it without even realizing it.

Negative phrasing is a big turnoff to your prospects or customers. If they want bad news and negativity, they could read newspapers or watch TV where bad news tends to dominate the headlines about 90% more than good news. They don't want bad news when they are buying products or services and negativity bias doesn't work for shopping.

Negative phrasing tells the recipient what cannot be done and usually includes words like can't, won't, unable to, have to wait, that tell customers and prospects what you cannot do. Positive phrasing tells the recipient what can be done and suggests alternatives and choices available to them. Cheerful prospects and customers are the kinds that buy.

To illustrate the difference between positive-sounding and negative-sounding statements, here are some interesting examples:

Negative: "You will have to wait 2 days for delivery"
Positive: "Count on prompt, 48-hour delivery of every order."

Negative: "The damage on your car won't be fixed for a week."
Positive: "You can pick up your car next week."

Negative: "If you pay with a personal check, there will be a delay in filling your order."
Positive: "Send either a money order or charge to your credit card and expect prompt delivery."

Negative: "I think that's a bad idea."
Positive: "I don't think that's such a good idea."

Advertising Tips:

Keep in mind that your advertising is meant to sell, so be specific. Customers want facts before they buy your products or decide to use your services.

Use short words, sentences and paragraphs, but try to create ad with an instant allure to increase readership and suggest an irresistible offer.

Your ad should have a single message, create it around only one idea with a phrase or word in huge type to grab attention.

Ad headline should contain your offer. It should demand attention, give command, highlight benefit, motivate or make a promise.

Always check your competitors' offers and their ads and try to create better or more impressive offers with better service, lower price or some other benefits to potential customers.

Try to be aware of the needs of your clients. If you know what consumers need, you can offer them what they need.

Avoid unusual or difficult words and use simple language that everyone understands.

Your font (typeface) should be selected for readability and clarity. The leading (the amount of space between each line of type) should have enough space to make your ad easy to read.

A good picture or video is worth a thousand responses and improve ad's appearance. They also build your business image and help you demonstrate or explain your product or service.

Don't forget to add color to your ads and keep layout simple.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maya Gavric, entrepreneur, consultant, former realtor, writer, web developer, artist and marketing coach has been working, researching and reporting on the Internet for years. Her numerous articles offer valuable insight and tips on wide variety of topics. In recent times she has paid particular attention to knowledge management on the Internet and environmental problems, exploring how our attention to hot issues might best transform current situation into better practice.

The article "Create Ads That Sell" reprinted with permission.