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How To Improve Your Newspaper Ads |
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Written by Marketing in the Valley?
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Monday, 15 October 2007 |
What can a radio guy teach you about better newspaper ads?
While it's good advice to spread your message using a combination of multiple media, sometimes budgets aren't big enough to make an effective number of impressions in each one. So, you have to pick a couple, or maybe just one.
If print is your medium of choice, consider the following points for getting your print ad to stand out in the crowd.
Construct your print ad for the radio.
As Al Ries and Jack Trout put it in their famous book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, "It's a shame that print media came first and radio second. Radio is really the primal medium. And print is the higher level abstraction."
When prospects "see" a print advertisement, they go through the process of "hearing" the words in their mind before deriving meaning from them. With radio, this doesn't happen at all. The sounds go directly into the part of the brain that gauges the advertisements level of relevancy. Print advertising doesn't register in the mind quite as quickly.
By thinking in terms of radio while putting together a print ad concept, you shift your thought into a mode that is more focused on the "sounds" the reader will hear than the words you want to say. This will result in a print ad that "feels" different than other ads, thereby garnering more attention and getting your message into the mind quicker than other print ads.
Read your ad out loud.
Some words look nice on the page. They might even sound good in your mind as you read them. But reading your ad out loud will allow you to feel the rhythm of the words as they move across the page. It will also help you identify words that sound weird or interrupt the flow of thought and discover different, more creative ways to say what you mean...
Keep it simple and relevant.
Most really good radio ads make a single point relevant to a specific audience in 30 seconds or less. If it takes longer than that to read your print ad, start editing. That is, unless, your message is more interesting than its neighboring editorial content. (Which is the only real reason why the reader is there in the first place.)
Focus on the takeaway.
Instead of getting caught up in what you want to say, think about what you want the audience to take with them until the next time they come into contact with your brand. In other words, give them something besides your name and contact information by which to remember you.
As radio is the theatre of the mind, the printed page is also a stage. If you engage your audience successfully, they'll notice you - and choose you when they're ready to buy.
So, how does your print sound?
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