How to improve the effectiveness of your ads
Have you ever had a call from a magazine salesperson offering a cut price deal on advertising to fill space in their magazine?
The deal seems really good; their readers are your target audience, and they are offering it for hundreds of dollars instead of the usual thousands for a full page ad. It is too good to pass by, so you get to work, throwing an ad together with the publication to meet their short deadline.
But before you congratulate yourself on securing such a good deal, take a few minutes to review the content of your ad. Does it have a good headline that will draw in the readers? Is there a compelling offer, with a call to action, that gives the reader a reason to contact you now?
An appealing offer can form the basis of the headline, designed to capture the attention of the reader and draw them in to the ad.
Here’s some examples of headlines taken from ads in a website magazine:
Good headline:
- “Spend $1, get back $43″
A strong headline showing an obvious benefit makes the reader want to read on to find out how.
Irrelevant headlines:
- “Relax and let ABCompany monitor your website” (accompanied by picture of man on the phone in the middle of a field!)
This isn’t an ad for a leisure company or an overseas holiday, so the headline has little relevancy to the target audience – business website administrators and owners. - “Serious Search Analytics & SEM Tools for Serious Affiliates”
A nonsense headline hoping to leverage off a large wacky image of a hairy cross eyed man. The copy is features-based and buried at the bottom is the only benefit: a free 14 day trial. A better headline: “Save time on keyword analysis and enjoy a FREE 14 day trial”
- “Recondition your Business Image” (picture of lycra clad woman in a body building pose)
Again no benefit mentioned here. This ad was for bundled website design and hosting solutions which included a limited 25% off special offer. The headline has little relevancy to the offer.
Bad headlines:
- “Website Traffic”
- “We believe” (followed by 5 paragraphs starting with the same words)
They are meaningless and communicate nothing. No appeal, no benefit, no reason to read the ad!
You’ll need 4 key things to ensure an effective ad:
- A compelling offer
- A call to action
- A means to measure the effectiveness of the ad
- Advertising content that supports all these
If you don’t have any of these, or money to burn, then you might be better off saying ‘thanks, but no thanks’ to that last minute advertising deal.
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Posted on December 2nd, 2009 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: General, Marketing
I recognize some of those ads from Web Site Mag. Hope our ad passed muster
Hi Kal
Thanks for your comment, (and the copy of the mag).
You’ll only really know if your ad passes muster from the number of enquiries you get from it. As you have developed a tailored landing page on your website and placed the URL clearly on the ad, you’ll have a great tool to measure its success.
It is always easy to criticise than it is to create, and there is nothing worse than being faced with a blank page and a looming deadline.
One of the best places to start is to think back to why you started the business in the first place. My guess is that http://www.searchenginecollege.com came about because you saw a gap in the market for SEM training. To fill that gap you put your extensive SEM knowledge and contacts into developing high quality courses that are easy for students to access and study at their own pace, but have industry ‘cred’!
The benefit to the students, and their employers, is that the knowledge and skills they gain from the courses help them to improve the performance of their site without having to rely on (sometimes) expensive external consultants.
If so, then this gives you some direction for the ad.
A headline could be:
“Improve the ROI on your website without paying huge ongoing SE consultancy fees”
“Unchain yourself from ongoing SE consultancy fees – turn your staff into Search Marketing experts”
While question-style headings are good, the key is to make sure your target audience will clearly see the benefit and answer ‘yes’, then read on.
The body of the ad is the place to reinforce these benefits with clear examples, rather than list features – so short descriptions on each course, and most importantly the benefit they will bring to the target audience, would be relevant.
To help get them to act ‘now’ rather than put it in the ‘I’ll do it later’ basket, some kind of time based offer could also work as an incentive.
What ever any advertiser does, so long as they can measure an ad’s effectiveness, and can apply what they have learned to improve the success of future campaigns, no ad should be a total failure – maybe just an expensive lesson!