Here are a few words of wisdom from the world of advertising:
Awareness – creating awareness is an important reason to advertise, but that’s just the beginning of the process. You need to turn that awareness into sales.
Big idea – communicate one single idea to your audience that will make sense to them and drive them to buy.
Call to action – a strong call to action will drive sales.
Desire – your advert needs to create desire to purchase the product. Techniques include discounting, or in the case of a new product, creating the illusion of a “must have” item .
Effectiveness – measure the effectiveness of your campaign. For example, measure brand recognition pre and post campaign.
Free – a strong word in advertising. But customers are becoming more wary and wonder “what is the catch”.
Goals – Be clear on your goals and carefully plan your advertising spend.
Humour – Funny adverts can be very effective. Increasingly adverts are required to entertain in order to gain cut through.
Integrated campaigns – We all consume different media at different times of day, therefore integrated campaigns are important to ensure you connect with your audience.
Jingles – a fantastic way to get inside your consumer’s head and ensure they remember your product.
Know how – Engage the right advertising agency for you.
Leads – Record and process your sales leads quickly.
Memorable – Ensure your advert is memorable. But remember it’s the subject of the advert that needs to be memorable not the advert itself.
Naughty - Being a little bit risqué in your advertising can pay off. You might attract some complaints, but as long as the target audience are not offended it may be worth the risk.
Online – it’s hard to get cut through with online adverts, so you will need to be extra creative to attract attention.
Press – Printed newspapers and magazines are a gradually dying media as more and more of us source our news and entertainment online. However, for now, press shouldn’t be ignored as part of an integrated advertising campaign mix.
Quantity – get the quantity (frequency) of adverts right to create sufficient awareness. People often need to see an advert several times before taking in the message.
Response mechanism – people respond to adverts in different ways so provide as many different ways to respond as possible – phone, email, in person etc.
Simplicity – keep it simple. We are bombarded with advertising messages all day long and people will not take time to understand something complex.
Timing – get the timing of your adverts right. This could be time of year, time of day or at a trigger point in someone’s lifetime.
Understanding – your advert must be clear and the message understood in a second or two.
Value add – a useful way to drive responses. Eg: Buy now and get an additional XXX.
White space – a design technique to make an advert clean and uncluttered and therefore easy to digest.
X factor - Sometimes an advert just works, despite not testing well in research groups. Trust your gut instinct and go for it!
Yes – the technique of asking questions that you know the audience will say “yes” to. It’s an effective way of engaging the audience.
Zoo – the use of animals is an effective technique in advertising. Connect the animal traits to your brand or message and it will help to make it memorable.
Jill Bynon is an experienced copywriter who has written and edited many advertisements. Contact CraftWrite today for help in crafting your ads: jill@craftwrite.com.au
No comments:
Post a Comment