What makes a powerful, effective ads? This is the million-dollar question every business owner has asked at some point; unfortunately, not everyone will be able to find the answer. At the end of the day, only a small fraction of brands will get a slogan or marketing campaign as successful and memorable as classics like “Just do it” or “Got milk.”
Marketing usually requires a lot of investment and work, but no one questions that it is necessary. Without it, you won’t reach new customers. In the past, it was enough to place a print ad in the newspapers or a jingle on the radio, but today there are many new advertising tools to reach different audiences: social media, platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, live events, etc.
Although there are no magic formulas, some of the best ads out there usually share the same four qualities. Let’s analyze them to understand how they play into creating powerful and effective advertisements.
Address the Audience Directly
Companies of all sizes used to advertise in mass media (such as newspapers and television) because it was a guarantee that they would reach the widest possible audience. But things have changed and today a powerful and effective marketing campaign requires dialogue with highly targeted audiences.
Addressing the audience directly is one of the best qualities of a good ad. As each brand and business has an ideal consumer profile – and that’s the person you want to reach and attract –it makes no sense to invest in more general campaigns.
Therefore, the content of your advertising messages must be created, especially considering the needs, characteristics, and feelings of a specific target audience. A good example of this is Coca-Cola: even though it’s a globally recognized brand, the company continues to invest in market segmentation and create new products that appeal to different market niches.
Eye-Catching Design
One of the great challenges of modern marketing is to attract consumer attention, especially when you decide to invest only in the online format. According to digital marketing experts, an American consumer is exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads on the internet each day, and most people don’t even pay attention to them anymore.
In this scenario, a powerful and effective marketing campaign requires you to stand out from the competition with creativity and originality. You’ll need to come up with a different slogan, use unexpected shapes and colors in the ad design, and think of something that is completely out of the box and immediately catches the consumer’s eye.
The tool you choose will also make all the difference: if you want to attract the look, use flashy images and colors; if you want to attract with the message, invest in a jingle that is extremely catchy and memorable; and if you’re going to make videos, try to tell an exciting story that sells your products organically and memorably.
Call to Action
A powerful and effective marketing campaign cannot leave the consumer indifferent: it must include a call-for-action (CTA) to force them out of passivity and interact with your ad. There are several CTA strategies, more or less effective depending on what you are trying to sell.
A strategy that never fails, and that can be used both on the internet and offline, is to create and maintain a good mailing list. It sounds simple, but many marketers don’t realize that print or email that doesn’t reach its intended recipient (or is sent to the wrong person) has little or no impact. Let’s take a look at some tips for targeted mailing lists:
⦁ Collect data such as the address (physical or email) of your customers at the time of purchase and divide this information into specific tags: geographically, by age group, etc.
⦁ More is not always better: clean your mailing list and keep only leads or contacts that are interested in your company’s services/products.
⦁ Try to segment formats as older customers are not likely to be as sympathetic to emails and flyers may not be well received by the younger ones.
⦁ Nobody likes to receive a standardized ad, so always add a personalized greeting.
⦁ Consider your customers’ purchase history when emailing them (a regular client can get angry when receiving too many messages, for example).
Give Them What They Want
Advertising strategies can be more or less subtle. But powerful ads convey what consumers want or need (and sometimes don’t even know they want or need) through their messaging. The best way to do that is to give consumers what they want.
In addition to being original, creative, and eye-catching, your marketing campaign should primarily be persuasive. Your ads need to convince consumers that they need the product or service you’re offering, that they can’t live without them, and that these products are better than similar offerings from an increasingly numerous and noisy competition.
One of the ways to give consumers what they want is to appeal to their emotions. You can do this by building an image of ethics and social responsibility, recruiting celebrities or influencers to give your brand more authority, or simply listing some very good reasons to justify buying your product.
Create a Lasting Impact
People are bombarded with thousands of ads and marketing strategies daily. Some have already developed immunity to it and simply ignore it; others will stop to look at your ad, whether physical or online. To be successful, your marketing campaign will have to reach both audiences.
Marketing requires a lot of time, resources, and money, so it’s something you’ll want to get right from the start. Utilizing these advertisement techniques allows you to stand out from the competition and speak more directly to your target audience. Create a campaign that makes an impact and draws in longtime customers to your brand.