business 101
Placing and Creating Ads
by John Kuraoka
It's easy to find free advertising copywriting. Radio reps will be happy to write and produce your spots using on-air personalities when you buy time on their station. Newspapers, too, will provide free creative services when you buy space. Billboard companies, television stations, printers, even the local shopping circular—all will produce free ads for you with your media buy.
This can be invaluable assistance when you're on a tight budget, implementing a simple, focused marketing plan that uses only one or two media.
ADVERTISING TO THE MAX
Here are seven recommendations to help you maximize the effectiveness of your ads.
* BEYOND COUPONS AND SALES. Your advertising should do more than attract customers; it should train customers. If you train them to buy from you only at a discount, your coupons will cost you three times—once to run, a second time to redeem, and a third time when you realize that you've built no additional customer base.
Coupons and sales help move product and generate immediate cash flow. But they're not a good foundation for building a successful, long-term marketing plan.
* BUY ENOUGH TO MAKE AN IMPACT. A rule of thumb in media buying is that people need to be exposed to your advertising message three times before they even notice it. "Testing" a medium by placing one or two ads is a waste of money. In many publications, classified ads are a better deal than display advertising.
* POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS VS. SHEER VOLUME. Reaching a vast quantity of people is secondary to reaching the handful of people who are in the market for your goods or services, and in a position to buy from you right now.
| Copywriting Tips |
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| If you decide to write your own ads, here are 12 things to remember. 1 CUSTOMER. Your ad should be about your customer. Too many ads tell me too much about a product or a company or a service, and not enough about why I should care. 2 FOCUS. Your ad should have a single focus. There is the temptation to include "supporting" features and benefits as copy points. This dilutes your message. 3 VISUAL. The best advertising concepts are visual. People scan before they read. If you don't catch them when they're scanning, you won't catch them at all. 4 IMAGES. Visuals that must be read are confusing. Phrases do not improve because they are written on a prescription pad, computer monitor, calendar, or traffic sign. At any rate, if your visual demands reading, whatever writing it has should serve as the headline. Having a typeset headline and a legible visual is doubly confusing. 5 NAME. The second-best word is "you." The best word is the customer's name. 6 GOALS. An ad must attract, intrigue, and persuade. Attract with the visual or the design, intrigue with the headline or the concept, and persuade with the copy. 7 SUPPORT. Copy points should be supported. "It's portable" should be something like "You can slip it into your shirt pocket." 8 IMPORTANCE. There are always more facts than you have room for. The desire to make every point leads to unsupported odds and ends drifting into your copy. If it's not important, then cut it. If you can't decide whether or not it's important, then find out. 9 TRIOS. There is a tendency to string descriptive words together in threes. "Luxury, performance, and style." Sometimes this word-trio has rhythm. On the rare occasions when that rhythm fits, fine. Otherwise, consider that each point, if well-taken, probably deserves its own explanation. 10 FLUFF. The following phrases are fluff, and the more of them you can edit out the better: "as a matter of fact," "in fact," "for instance," "contrary to," "furthermore," "in addition," and "not just (whatever) but (whatever else)." 11 GRAMMAR. So far as possible, make your copy grammatical—but don't be too fussy. Verb agreement and tense agreement are two common errors that should be corrected. 12 LAST LINE. Copywriters have an affection for the clever last line. If it works gracefully, and if it is relevant, then it is a small reward to your audience for completing its task. Not every ad needs a clever last line. |
* RUN ADS IN "FLIGHTS." Media studies prove that message retention is improved when ads run in flights—clusters of ads.
For example, with a six-insertion, 13-week media buy, you can run your ad every other week. But, you'll probably get better results if you run your ad the first three weeks in a row, stop for three weeks, then run three weeks, stopping the last four weeks.
| QuickTips |
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| ATTRACT with the visual or the design, INTRIGUE with the headline or the concept, and PERSUADE with the copy |
* TRACK YOUR RESULTS. This information gives you a baseline upon which to test future offers or messages, and also helps you maximize your advertising dollar by cutting media that don't deliver results.
* STICK WITH SUCCESS. When you find a medium that works, negotiate to lock in a good rate for the long-term. A one-year contract (where you promise to buy a certain number of ads in the next 12 months) is almost always cheaper than buying media on a quarter-to-quarter or month-to-month basis.
Also, when you negotiate, try to get two things:
First: A bonus for being a long-term client. It could be your ads running free in another publication or region (pick-ups) , a sponsorship, extra ads, or an advertorial.
Second: Negotiate the right to renew your contract at the same rate.
* CONSULT WITH A PROFESSIONAL. You can hire an independent advertising professional for a couple hours, just as you might consult with an attorney or tax advisor.
Although you might pocket savings from handling day-to-day details yourself, you'll also reap the rewards of making sure your overall marketing efforts are focused in the right direction by meeting with a professional. EB
© John Kuraoka, a freelance copywriter in San Diego. For more of his articles on advertising, go to www.kuraoka.com.
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