Matt’s Creative Advertising Blog

Targeting. It’s quite possibly the most powerful factor in any advertising or marketing campaign, and for good reason: it works. But to reap results, you’ve got to get it right. And that, of course, is easier said than done.

In theory, effective targeting shouldn’t be quite such a challenge. After all, the idea is straightforward: find the right product, find the right user, introduce the two. But as most publishers know, getting those clicks, leads or purchases can be tough. It’s estimated that just a couple of users in every hundred will even think about going near your ads, which means you’re going to have to work extra hard to persuade them.

And that’s where smargeting comes in.

Smargeting is targeting with a twist. It’s smart, savvy targeting, but that doesn’t mean it’s difficult (quite the opposite, in fact, which is another reason why it’s smart).

To make a start with a smargeting approach, we’ll be thinking carefully about our ads from two points of view: the way they look and the way they perform.

There’s plenty that’s already been written about ways to enhance ad performance, and any legitimate methods that optimize revenue clearly have a place in smargeting.

But I’m about to share a smargeting concept that’s not as widely used as it should be.

The received wisdom is that ‘blending’ ads makes them more successful. In other words, if an ad’s colors and looks closely match its environment, users are more likely to click it. The reasoning behind this is so-called ‘ad blindness’, the idea that if ads stand out too much, most users will simply ignore them.

However, as audiences become far more used to advertising tactics, it seems they’re also learning to ignore blended ads, too - despite our attempts to convince them they’re part of the content.

So perhaps another approach is needed. And wha Read the rest of this entry »

Advertising has long been running in the human blood, it is an unquestionable tool of survival. A tool that makes possible the impossible. All throughout history it has played not an important but a crucial role in society. Whether it be reputation, recruiting, or information, they all display forms of advertising.

In history these were usually advertised by word of mouth, which is still the strongest form of advertisement. Building a status in society has always been a human desire and thus the more people talked good of you the better. On the other end the more they talked bad the worse and would contribute to bad advertisement. The other type is recruiting, which is usually used for war. It is great for uniting people for the common purpose and giving rise to the purpose. Last but not least is the flow of information about products, services, and everything else around. Information is what makes advertisement the most useful due to the necessity of its flow.

Information is what runs societies and advertisement is a great way to transmit it like the world wide web of today. Physical advertisement has slowly progressed but online advertisement has sharply evolved. The world wide web connects the whole world which is the ultimate network and thus is the final advertising network evolution. Although the network has been formed it doesn’t mean the advertisement has completely evolved. Advertisement is still changing everyday, improvising on its display.

This is where the “how to make your advertisement look great” comes in. See in order to have a killer advertisement it has to have a solid and firm base, which means it has to have a solid reason to be. A solid reason to sell the product or service so you can elaborate on its advertising. Once a solid reason has been established then you can take on the advertising. When advertising, i Read the rest of this entry »

As a veteran Yellow Pages rep, I’ve counseled small businesses and mid sized companies regarding their advertising for years. I get many calls from people who are recommended to me when they’re starting up new businesses.

The question I hear most often about advertising is “What kind of advertising should I do; should I do Yellow Pages?” My answer is usually “Would you look for your business in a directory if you needed the product or service?” The responses are usually very interesting.

So I’ll pose the same question to you in a different way. Can you say with confidence that most people would look for your product or service in a local directory? If you were a lawyer, plumber, or storage facility; that would be a definite YES. If you were a word processing or graphic design company, the chances would be a little more slender.

Look in your local directory and see who is listed in all your categories. Are there actual ads or just listings? What size are the ads? How competitive is the main heading? How many pages of ads and listings are there in the directory? If you are a new business in a market that depends heavily on Yellow Pages advertising, you’ll have to join the club.

Here are 10 Golden Rules for digging gold out of Yellow Page advertising.

1. Yellow Pages ads are all about service. The loudest part of your ad must scream how much service you offer to the consumer. It’s all about the benefits. That means you need to know what problems your customers are looking to solve, and let them know that you know.
2. Always include the human touch in display ads. You want to draw empathy with your customers. Don’t push features to them connect benefits to your pictures.
3. Use clear concise information and pretend that the customer has only 20 Read the rest of this entry »