Is Your Advertising Effective?
December 4th, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized — Advertising Author
What do your potential customers care about? Advertising is often written with the assumption that people care about corporate self-promotion or industry jargon. This type of advertising rarely works because effective ad writing speaks to your customer’s specific needs. If you want to see more results, write clear advertising copy that pegs the needle on their relevance gauge.
Conventional Advertising Says:
1. Target the right audience
2. Leverage the right advertising media
3. Deliver the creative brand message
Effective Ad-Thinking Says:
Good advertising is not about promoting a product or the company that sells it. Telling people how their needs will be satisfied is at the heart of good advertising. What you say and how you say it makes a difference, and speaking directly to a felt need can produce a greater response.
Example:
Instead of saying, “Fantastic Fitness is a national health club operator with the finest facilities.”
You could say, “Get in shape. You’ll feel better, be more attractive, your confidence will skyrocket, and people will admire you.”
Clarity in advertising is more important than creativity. Talk to potential customers like real people. In a normal conversation, people don’t say, “I decided to implement a full service fitness program.” They say, “I decided to get in better shape.” In trying to sound more professional, some advertising neglects to clearly answer the question “Why is that important to me?” which is what people really want to know.
Advertising works best when it is directed at needs that people already care about, which is called “speaking to a felt need.” Most of us probably don’t have a burning desire to go out of our way to get to a crowded gym and exercise on a consistent basis, but millions of us wish we were healthier, looked better, felt more confident, and that people treated us differently.
Written by Rick Smith: Online Advertising Agency, Auto Dealer Websites, Internet Advertising Service
