Marketing is not just about advertising – advertising is just one aspect of your marketing campaign.

3 types of advertising are

• Informative - This discusses your location and the products/services you provide, it also has your branding message on it.
• Persuasive - This is more about persuading your target market to purchase from you; it may have a special on it.
• Reminders - This method details things like events, sales, and seasonal changes

The aim of advertising is to create and maintain customers

There is a simple rule to remember when creating marketing material.

So how do you apply this basic principle to your business?

Let’s say you own a butcher shop

How do you get the audiences attention?

1. Advertise a FREE BBQ as a launch party to be held on Saturday morning.
2. Tell them they can WIN a Meat tray
3. Talk about your great range of marinated chops and gourmet flavoured sausages.
4. Tell them if they bring this flyer they will be guaranteed to get a FREE Snag

How to make an ad work.

Keep your copy

• Informative
• Entertaining
• Interesting to your target market

Decide who your target market is before you start to design your ad

Write the body of the ad first as the Headline will derive from the body of the ad.

Follow the headline with a lead in line, which explains the pitch further.

The headline should spell out what the benefit is to the target market, you should speak directly to your chosen target market in a language they understand and will respond to. Use positive words – do not start the ad with a negative statement even if it up sells your product/service, it’s just a no no.

Do not make your company logo or name the focus of the ad – the headline should take up 25% of the space available and the logo and company name should be secondary – preferably placed on the right hand bottom side of the ad (Our eyes read left to right and down)

The body of the ad needs to spell our concisely what the offer is, maintain the readers attention and start to get them to WANT and NEED the product/service – create a desire. Sell the benefits of your product/service here.

Don’t be cryptic – people are time poor – they need clear information which isn’t a guessing game. Being clever is ok, but being cryptic means you will just loose most of the audience as people cannot be bothered trying to figure out what things are about if it is not spelt out from the get go.

Conclusion
This is where you write your call to action; add in a feature or two of your service – to ensure that they will have a good experience dealing with your company. Add in contact details and ensure that the desired method of communication (whether it be face to face, telephone, email or web contact) is spelt out and the contact details in a slightly larger sized font than the body of the text.

There are a number of ways to ensure that your marketing copy is successful:

• Ensure that your products/services meet the demands of your actual target market.
• Know your target market well enough so that the ad speaks directly to them.
• Look at what your competitors are doing to attract their customers and take note of what you could learn from them and duplicate it into your business
• Ensure that you use the right language and images to encourage your target market to take action.
• Test your ad on a handful of potential customers to see if it works

Use your target market research to really pinpoint an offer that will grab their attention and make them want what you are offering.

If you haven’t done so – do out simple competitor and target market research exercise to help you with defining this.

If you have not completed our simple exercise it would be advisable to do so as it will assist with defining these answers.

Work out what your target market’s priorities are and fulfill these within your offer – this will keep them engaged through the body of the ad and help them to reach the conclusion – where the call to action is.

Other stuff you should consider

People process information in a certain way

• Left side of the brain is logical and analytical
• Right side of the brain responds to patterns and symbols.

Because you would be speaking to people through your marketing at varying times of the day and when the person is doing other tasks it is best assume that you need to appeal to both sides of the brain within your marketing.

Males and Females are also different. So if you are able to segment your target market into gender groups then ensure that you think about the following information before you design an ad.

• Females are able to deal with a variety of messages, information and offers at the same time, generally women are better at multi tasking then the male of the species.
• Males are more direct – they like clear uncluttered messages that tell them straight what the point of the ad is. Although men can also multi task they deal with tasks in a more direct fashion (unlike a woman).

Grammar

Read this sentence and think about it as you read it, you will see the point we are trying to convey.

It is not recommended to place a full stop at the end of a bullet point unless you want the reader to stop reading. Placing a full stop makes the readers brain automatically stop. If you used commas, it allows the reader to take a breath, but not come to a complete stop.

Think about the language you are using and more specifically the words you are using. There are a handful of words that create a bigger impact when used within an ad than others you might choose. The following are the words that are said to give the biggest impact when used in a relevant sentence.