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Specialists in Stock Management and Inventory control.
Writing an Advertisement
The Basics
The Headline
Illustrations
The Body Copy
Getting a Response
Checking
The Format
Basics.
The first, and most important step is to remind yourself of what you are trying to achieve. What is the purpose of this advertisement and what are your objectives?
Who is the target audience and how do they find out about what you are offering?
What publications do they read, what programmes do they watch or listen to? Check if any of the publications are going to run an article in the near future that relates to your product or service. Better still if they are going to promote it on the front cover.
What style are the existing advertisements in those publications – its nice to be different but not to the point where it just looks wrong!
What are the main points that differentiate you from the competition – what are your USP's (Unique Selling Points)?
What would be the perfect outcome from this advertisement and is it constructed to achieve that outcome?
Headline.
The headline is the channel that brings the potential customer into the body of the advertisement.
It may make them curious, offer exactly what they think they want, be topical or purport to offer a new view on a problem they have experienced. Is the product used by professionals and experts? Then say so.
Why would this headline attract the type of person you believe is your potential customer?
Don't overcomplicate it – the first glance may be your only chance.
Don't try to be funny it rarely works and can offend.
Don't mislead people in the headline or the body will leave them with a feeling of disappointment.
Illustration
A good picture or illustration can be worth a thousand words. Would you travel to view a house without knowing what it looked like?
A poor or irrelevant picture can reflect badly on your company or products.
A good photographer or illustrator can make an average product look marvellous but it will add to the cost.
Match the illustration to the target. An engineer may be more excited by a technical illustration but a consumer may want to envisage it in their home or need confirmation that their friends and neighbours will be impressed.
If it doesn't help leave it out.
Body
The body copy should lead on from the headline.
Support your claims with facts not generalisations – its more convincing.
Always make sure you can back up your claims if asked to do so.
Ask yourself “does the body copy provide the potential customer with enough information to take action – even if it's only to ask for more details”? Does it capture the interest and imagination of the potential customer?
Have you ever noticed in a newspaper article how the first three paragraphs give the story, the rest adds detail and the last paragraph provides the summation?
Try repeating the offer in three different ways within the body.
Always write it from the customer's point of view answering the question “What's in it for me”?
Getting a response
There are responses and there are responses. Do you want an order by return or is your product or service such that you want to lead them down a path via the web site and a brochure request and a visit that results in a sale? You know your product and the normal route to a sale and the type of response should match that progression.
If you want potential customers to respond tell them that that's what you want and give them the opportunity to do it. Make sure you detail the various ways they can communicate with you. Telephone – email – fax - web site – address.
Perhaps you want to make a special offer if they respond to this advertisement. May be give a cut-off date for offers to prompt a reaction. May be you want to give them a gift or brochure in return for their contact details so that you can follow up on their interest and get a meeting.
You may want a response to differentiate on the success of various advertisements. May be they return a coded response slip or have a code in the address. You may be able to setup a separate page on your web site which is an alternative home page which leads them into the main site but allows the visits to be counted
i.e.
www.yourdomain.co.uk/special
By having several of these you can analyse which advertisement gave the best response.
Checking
I could write another page here but why not print off a copy of this article and a copy of your advertisement and tick off the points as you go!
If you have friends or colleagues who will be honest with you then let them read it because when you have spent time on an advertisement sometimes you “can't see the wood for the trees” and you lose the plot!
Format
The type face is important both in terms of the overall impression given and the ease of reading it and taking in the facts. Older people tend to like the classical fonts such as Times Roman but modern advertisements go for modern type faces. Most web sites are in Verdana or Arial. Do you want clean and smart, established and reliable or young and stylish?
Is it readable both in terms of font size, colour and boldness? Avoid lots of white text on dark backgrounds in small fonts.
Avoid many different fonts. In general two is just acceptable and one is better. More than two tends to look amateurish and confused.
Advertisements cost money and there is a tendency to cram in more than is good. If you are having trouble getting the layout right there is probably too much text in the body.
Modern printers can produce good black and white artwork however you may not have the equipment to produce good colour artwork and will need to put that work out. The print quality must be good and the paper must be of a high quality to reduce absorption and blurring.
Check with the magazine what their requirements are with regard to resolution and the type of picture files that are acceptable – tif, png, bitmap, etc.
Do check the illustrations are sharp enough and that colours really are the colour they should be and not slightly "off" that specified.
Finally, check and recheck the copy and get others to proof read it. If you wrote it there is a tendency to read what you want to read and not what is on the paper! I remember a company spending a lot of money producing an ad for a “Power Shift” transmission. Guess which letter was missing!
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