Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Dear Hayley,

You'll get more bang for your buck by planning each ad. A lot of small business owners don't do this, which is why their ads "fail" and why they say advertising does not work.

The secrets are targeting, consistency, and specifics.
The biggest questions are why are you advertising? And, what do you want the ads to do?

Are you advertising simply because the ad sales rep gave you a"great" deal? If you are, you're advertising at his or her behest, not at your own.

Are you advertising to showcase a time sensitive offer? To raise awareness? To promote an event? To make yourself more visible?

To reinforce your who, what, where, it can be helpful to have common elements across ads that stay the same: typefaces, telephone numbers, websites, and so on.

To see your ads have an effect on sales, consider using offers that drive specific buyers to specific places (website, 800# etc.) where their actions can be tracked.

What do you want the readers of this publication to do as a result of having seen your ad? Bear in mind that only a small percentage of those readers will pay attention to the ad, much less respond to it if the ad's content fails to speak directly to them, about a deeply felt need, or about a pressing concern or pain point.

How your ad ties in with those concerns and pain points will have a major impact on the way people respond to it.

If your ad can speak about a future event, it becomes anticipatory, so magazine readers become programmed to look for it in the next edition. If your ad is simply a vanilla, name, rank and serial number type ad, it's more likely to be ignored.

Effective press ads stop the reader dead in their tracks. If your ad can do this you'll be better off next time because people will learn to look for the ads—the downside here is that your idea behind execution then needs to get better, or it needs to work harder to carry on the message, to, in effect, carry on the dialogue.

If you change your ads too much from month to month you risk confusing readers. If the ads are too dull, you risk losing people's attention.

If you ads are memorable, you need to up the ante next time to hold people's attention. The latter can be done, and done well, it really works to create attention.

Your goal is to make your ad speak more, to more readers, about things that are important to them, and to do so better than every other ad in the magazine, and to do this over time. It's this kind of thinking and planning that creates great advertising, which in turn, stimulates great results.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Princeton, NJ, USA

If the art is attractive and the message is short and ATTENTION-GRABBING, you're ok to use the same art.

Even if you change the art, which is ok (except your logo, of course), keep the tagline/main message the same so people remember it.

Keeping a visual image consistent is imperative. Changing copy to meet changing messages can be done while keeping the same art.

I have a ten point article on the subject of creating successful advertisements here: https://www.nmoa.org/schulte/Creating-Profitable-Small-Business-Advertising...

Hope it helps you.

Get your Name reconition first and formost, then work on a "Planned Change," Get a time line plan of what, where, when and why was the past down turn that would prompt this to arrouse a definate impact planned for the change. . .Then do it. http//handbagsbyleslie.com/ a 24/7 On-line shopping store.

It should be a series. Overall have the same design feel. Relating images. Think of it as if you were advertising on consecutive pages as opposed to consecutive issues. But keep in mind that the essentials need to be in each and each ad should stand on its own. So the copy becomes critical. Graphically grow and evolve and maybe change the copy in minor ways but keep it mostly the same. Taglines or headlines can evolve too. Each should stand on it's own but when seen together (side-by-Side) they should tell a story and not just repeat.

Also, keep in mind where it will be in the pub. What's going to be around it? Just copy cause then your ad will stand out if it's highly graphical. But if there's already alot of graphics around your ad then you have a bigger challenge to face.

Also keep in mind any themes that the pub is using. Working with their themes may be to your advantage.

At the end of it, take the design and print it to size and place it on a page from the pub, to see how it looks with everything else going around it. Many times decision makers rely just on a static design and don't think about what it looks like within the pub. The ads that have used this kind of consideration are usually the ones that can draw the attention you are looking for. Don't underestimate the noise.