In my experience, there are two types of advertising techniques being used at the moment by businesses – direct response advertising and branding advertising. The former is by the far the most productive way of advertising for the smaller business as it allows a way of monitoring ROI usually through making a direct ‘offer’ or appeal to the reader backed up with a simple call to action. The retail sector use this type of advertising i.e.”our product is now on sale at a reduced price, call us to find out more…”
Brand building or brand awareness advertising is becoming more and more dependent on the larger budgets and, as such, is something that is simply not possible for the smaller business.
With these facts in mind, it is not just the advertisement with the nice pictures in that work. More and more emphasis is being placed on the actual wording of the advert and, as such, I have put together some simple tips and areas to consider when writing content.
- Put the key points in the first line of each sentance to encourage people to read on
- never repeat the headline in the first line of the text
- keep in mind that you only have 5-10 seconds for your main message to be absorbed
- use simple, clear language
- avoid gender or age bias
- only ask questions that the reader will reply positively too
- use active rather than passive words
- check the friendliness of your work by reading out aloud – if it sounds stilted, start again
- keep lines to between 20 and 60 characters in length
- make sure that YOU is used more often that I or WE
- use evocative words to help paint the picture
Keep these in mind and your advertising will be more effective!
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