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Effective print advertising is challenging, but following this advice will contribute to your campaign's success.
Set a single objective for the ad. This is the most important step. Are you featuring a new product or service? Promoting brand awareness? Driving traffic to your website? Looking for a response to an offer? This will dictate all factors of target audience, message, and timing.
Your headline should clearly define your chosen objective. Assume that you have only 5 seconds to get the attention of your reader. Your ad's headline is often the only part of an ad that is read. Readers likely to consider your product or service, however, are much more likely to read copy — so your headline should draw them into reading that first, following sentence.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Appeal to their needs and perspective. Talk your audience's language — study the content of the magazine in which you are advertising.
Draft your copy. Be clear and write in a consistently apt tone and language. Keep jargon at a minimum. Your copy should be concise but substantive. Where appropriate, use bulleted lists and call-out boxes.
List benefits followed by features. Your prospects want to know what's in it for them. The benefit is the need you're offering to fulfill; the feature is how you intend to do so.
Your call to action should be crystal clear. Prospects should know precisely how to obtain the product or service.
Don't forget contact info. Keep it minimal. A phone number and website URL are ideal.
Pick one image or focal point. Cluttered design weakens your ad. Your image should depict your objective. Limit your use of fonts.
Use color. Color ads are not only read more but more frequently remembered than black and white ads.
Proof and proof again. There is nothing more embarrassing than a typo. And nothing turns off prospects more than the wrong phone number or e-mail address when they are calling to buy!
Rally the support of your sales team. Make sure they know what you're advertising when and where so they can speak knowledgeably with prospects that may have seen the ad.
Run your ad frequently and consistently. And be patient. Most ad campaigns take an average of 6 months to see a return.
Measure your ad's performance. If you are meeting the objective you initially set, keep it up! If not, reassess and try again.
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