How to Craft Successful Print Ads

magGreat print ads captivate a reader and effectively deliver a message. It’s important to recognize that designing a successful print ad involves more than just producing something that looks clean and professional. The ad must also be able to gain the attention of the reader and deliver the message your business is trying to convey. A compelling concept and solid composition are all it takes.

The average print ad has less than a second to grab a reader’s attention. What’s most important should be the most apparent element in the ad, and vice versa. Here are some key things to keep in mind when developing the concept and composition of your ad:

Competition:

Unless you have the back cover or a two-page spread in a magazine, your ad is competing for the reader’s attention with all of the others. There could be a vibrant article with high quality images or a bunch of smaller, busier ads that grab a reader’s focus. No matter what, that page facing your ad wants to win the reader’s attention. This is often hard to gauge because you don’t always know exactly where your ad will be printed in a publication.

Headlines & Subheads:

Nearly 100-percent of the time, your headline will be the most important element in your print ad. Be clear and concise. Don’t be too creative (this one is flexible, a little wit never hurts). It needs to be immediately understood, and where the headline is located can be just as important as what it says. It needs to dominate the other information in the ad. Don’t get lost in crazy fonts, too many colors, graphics or other visual elements. If it gets so busy that the reader can’t tell what the message is, he or she likely will just move on.

Subheads can house secondary information, so don’t forget about these when you’re writing a headline that’s too long. It can explain your headline further. Set it in smaller type than your headline.

Body copy:

This is your selling copy. It’s where you can explain your product, service and/or offer in greater detail. The biggest mistake advertisers make is too much body copy, since the average amount of time people give to text now is 3-5 seconds. Keep it brief, or possibly don’t have any at all.

Interesting, appealing visuals:

Visuals usually call attention to, or complement, the other elements in your ad. Use graphics to make your body copy interesting, and make sure they are relevant to what you’re trying to sell. Also, using an up-to-date logo keeps your business modern and trustworthy to the everyday consumer. Typography really does matter. Just like colors, fonts can give the ad a particular impact. It’s also good to know when to use photos and when graphics will better serve the ad. This depends solely on your message, business and brand as a whole.

The Basics For Developing Your Brand

By definition, branding is:

The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumer’s mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

Thriving businesses are those with successful and effective branding. Depending on the type of business you run, you might want to consider some of these branding tips before you begin advertising. Let’s cover some of the basics:

Know your target audience

Most likely, you have a specific “target” audience you want to pursue with your product or service. Making sure you understand the needs and wants of your audience will help you develop campaigns and strategies that will reach them more effectively than by just throwing random advertisements out there. These days, creating “organic” reach is extremely important to a business’ brand. People are coming to you because of who you are (your culture, things you stand for, etc.), not just for your product/service. Trying to reach every person in every demographic can hurt your brand, almost diluting it.

People can see passion

Passion leads to long-term success, and it’s obvious when a business is passionate about its product or service. Anyone can build a successful business in the short-term. If you’re super enthusiastic about something you do, it’s only natural that the right people will want to follow you. Followers lead to word-of-mouth advertising, and positive referrals (more organic reach). When you’re passionate about something, it also makes you try a lot harder to save your business if things start to go south.

Be consistent

People come back to a business expecting the same, if not better, service that they received the previous time. Because businesses are so connected through social media, word travels fast, and it’s just as simple to find a replacement for your business if you become inconsistent.

Be distinct

Everyone wants to be the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Oprah. What did their brands do to create the enormous empires they built in their fields? They created innovative products, ideas and ways of life. Even if you’re offering a product or service that many other businesses offer, what can you do to stand out from the crowd? Another huge brand, Netflix, dominates online streaming. What makes it different from its competitors such as Hulu, Showtime or HBO GO? Netflix continues to adapt. The company sponsors high quality, original programming. Netflix allow complete user control, focusing on what the consumer wants, and not just adding random features. The company has weeded out competitors because of the freedom and flexibility it gives consumers. At the end of the day, you can’t really beat $8 a month for unlimited streaming, either. Make sure your brand can hold its own, and find its niche.

Design basics

The first thing people see is color. It could be on your logo or the colors in your venue. They set the mood and have an affect whether you or the customer realizes it. There are a ton of color psychology theories out there where you can find the one that fits your image  best. Consider it a starting point if you have no idea where to begin. We’ll get into elements of design in a later post.

Maybe the first things you think about when you hear “brand” are cool colors, a logo or a tagline. Those are all super important to the overall aesthetics of your brand, but there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes planning to do before you bring your brand out into the world. This is why figuring out what you want your product or service to represent can tremendously help your future advertising campaigns. It’s much more difficult to fix a brand’s image than it is to carefully create it from scratch.

Setting Goals For Your Advertisements

If you don’t have an idea of what you want to achieve with your advertisement, it’ll be difficult to determine how successful the ad will be. Setting goals is crucial to advertising because you have to measure its effectiveness and impact in order to make changes and create new strategy. Goals can vary from increased sales, product or service awareness, to more website traffic. You can find out if you are getting a return on your investment by laying out what you hope to accomplish with your advertising campaign. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Be specific

When setting your goal, make it something measurable. To make your goals specific, use numbers. For example, let’s say you want a $300 increase in sales for the month of June, generated by your print ad in the local news magazine. The key is to be realistic: goals may not be met by one ad or over night.

2. Track Sales

Create a spreadsheet so that when you start advertising, you can gauge how your sales are improving or going downhill. Start weekly tracking about a month before your ad runs to set a starting point average. During your advertising campaign, watch how your sales fluctuate. Leave some space for a post-ad period for those who may respond to the ad in the weeks following its publication. If you’re including a coupon in your ad, use a specific code to the ad that was published.

3. Track Awareness

A major misconception about advertising is that it produces immediate results. It is possible, but the most common result of advertising is brand awareness. We’ll save explaining how to determine what your brand is for another day. But for now, keeping track of this kind of increase is important because your ad could be working without you even knowing. Also, people want to know who you are before purchasing your product or service. Keep an eye on your social media sites for increased traffic during your campaign and watch for traffic to your website. Both are obvious indicators of increased brand awareness.

By utilizing these tactics, you can draw a reasonable conclusion about whether your advertising is working or falling flat of your expectations. Instead of going in blind, be smart about how you can advertise and get the most out of it by setting specific and measurable goals.

 

 

 

Wolf’s Den Sold!

Wolf's Den BBQ RIbs
Wolf’s Den BBQ RIbs

By Gary Nager

I am both saddened and excited to have found out that owner Roger Wolf, of the five-year-old Wolf’s Den has sold his popular eatery, which once again fared quite well in our annual Reader Dining Survey & Contest, as well as in my 2014 list of favorites.Continue reading