Alice

During a recession one of the main marketing activities to suffer is advertising. This is not surprising, as most adverts fail because the people that write and/or design them don’t understand the psychology of their customers and how they think or react. This statement may cause many tempers to rise or collars to become suddenly warm, but when I looked at a local magazine that regularly plops through my letterbox, stuffed to the gills with adverts from tradesmen and services all plying their wares in the vain hope that someone, somewhere, might bite, I sighed deeply, as only two adverts in the entire publication had any chance of success.

There are many factors that experts have up their sleeves that make advertising successful, and those that know these nuggets of information are certainly the more richer because of them. Adverts on the telly are far more sophisticated than printed versions, especially as they cost so much more, but there are certain elements that ring true in all adverts that ‘work’ that I can share with you.

1. How well known are you really? Only extremely well-known brands such as Coca Cola and Harrods can advertise with just their name or logo. One ad I saw, which I knew would fail, comprised of a beautiful woman wearing an alternative to bra-straps, accompanied with only the brand name and the URL. I knew this wasn’t well known enough for people to understand, recognise or even react to it, and the URL itself was almost obscure in its positioning and size. There was no description or even any factor that could make that ad succeed, yet the owner was especially proud of it.

2. Don’t put your logo at the top. Most of the ads in that magazine did this. And why not? ? I hear you say. This is a mind-set of businesses that needs to be reversed: the customer is much more important than your business, so you should be addressing them first and putting your business details, logo, business name and contact details, at the bottom of the ad.  You need to put the focus of your advert at the top, with carefully composed headlines to capture your customers’ attention, to make them think they are the most important and that you really care about them.

3. Work with your customers’ problems. Do marketing research to find out what your customers need or, ideally, want. Work on the pain your customers experience by acknowledging it, empathising with it, and providing the solution for it. Again this is working on the concept that the customer comes first, and having established the problem and then the solution, you need to work on the benefits your customers will gain by buying your product or taking up your service. Forget your business’s features: 25 years’ worth of experience may not cut the ice if that experience cannot be proven to be any good; why not turn that feature into a benefit, such as the fact that over 500 people have been helped to success within the firm’s 25 years of existence ? this has far more impact, especially if they say they can do the same for you!

4. Does your advert have a focus? Raising brand awareness is all very well, and so many of that doorstep magazine’s ads were doing just this, but a page of four adverts for plumbers all saying virtually the same thing will make it very hard for you to choose between them. But what if one of them focused on installing kitchens as a speciality? Having a niche in which you can perform to an exemplary standard is much better than doing everything just so-so. Grow a reputation as “the kitchen-plumber”, and you can mention later you also do bathrooms and central heating systems. And offering special deals, such as on call-out fees, could also be a draw as long as it’s cost effective, both to you and your customers.

5. Finally, say it loud and proud. Having banged on before about putting your business details at the bottom of the ad, don’t forget that you’ve got to make them clear. Provide a call to action to incite a response, such as a code to quote for a discount (measurable), an early bird offer before a certain date (timed incentive), or even a command that they call this number (‘please’ sounds desperate), made large and noticeable so the customer doesn’t waste time searching for it before they lose interest. This also goes for any other details, such as a URL for a special landing webpage specifically designed for that ad, so you can provide more information (such as testimonials) that cannot be fitted within your advertising space, and allows them to either pay online or email you to make an appointment.

There’s so much more than bunging up your logo, stating your profession, having a reasonably relevant picture and half-heartedly adding in your contact details somewhere as an afterthought when it comes to designing an advert. What does yours look like?