5 Tips to Create an Ad that Works

Advertising campaigns are the backbone to many companies' marketing strategy. Companies rely on ad campaigns to bring in new customers to build brand awarness. In today's market, everyone is being careful how they are spend their money; that's why it is so important that you put out an effective ad. You want to maximize the impact when you're investing your hard earned cash in producing an ad piece.

1. The 3 Second Rule Grab their attention! Quickly! You want someone reading your ad to stop, give it more time and keep reading. Tell them right away why you and your ad are worth investing that time. Create a want or a need, and then offer a solution. For example, a headline of "Delicious Handcrafted Burgers" and an offer of "FREE BURGER" is going to make that person think about getting a burger, and there's your ad, with a discount, to make it even better for them!
2. Picture Perfect You know that a picture is worth a thousand words... this is especially true when you're looking at advertising. You can easily tell your readers the who, what and hows of you business by choosing a great photo. A blurry, grainy cell phone shot is not going to have the same impact as a well-lit, well composed photo. There are lots of very affordable stock photo options online, if you don't want to invest in hiring a professional to do a shoot.
3. Show Me the Savings Having a good offer on your ad will make a world of difference on your ROI. A strong offer = more new customers. You need to make it worth their while to give your their time and money. This also applies to restrictions; making something only available during certain hours or days may be eliminating lots of potential customers from the pool, if your times don't work for them.
4. Keep it Simple You don't want your reader to have to think too much, by keeping it simple they will have to call or come in to get more information. You don't need to give them every little bit of information on your ad; if you answer all of their questions before they have a chance to call and ask them, then you don't even have the opportunity to interact with them and close the sale. The same goes for your offer disclaimers. A dozen lines of miniscule type can turn people off; they may assume there's a "catch" and will keep going, since it's too much effort to read and interpret everything that's printed there.
5. Who, What, Where, When Last but not least, always include your contact information. You want to make sure that your reader knows exactly who you are and how they can find you. We recommend putting the phone number, address and website all together, as a single entity; that way, it does not turn into a "Where's Waldo" style search for how to find you!