Useful Tips on Effective Advertisement

If you want your advertising to “stick” with prospective customers, it’s essential that you appeal to their emotions in some way. I’m sure you’ve had experiences in which you’ve watch an out-of-this-world commercial on TV (be it silly but hilarious like Jack in the Box,  or simply breathtakingly eye catching like the Chanel No. 5 commercial where Nicole Kidman and Baz  teamed up to do a Moulin Rouge style ad). Fail to do this and you might as well be throwing money out the window.

Effective ads sell your message, company, or product. They may or may not be creative, but if you can package some good creative in with a message that appeals to a strong need or want within your target audience, it will certainly help. Like a broken recorder, I emphasize on research, research, and…….research 

Effective ads are convincing. They engage potential customers as if you were speaking directly to them, and when you succeed in making this connection your prospective customer’s thoughts will become your brand itself. So the rule of thumb is that you ‘speak’ to them, to their emotions, to the core of their being.

Even if you achieve the enviable position of having a provocative ad execution with an effective message, your work is far from over. In fact, in the world of advertising, your work is never over!

Continually exposing your customers, prospective customers, and suspects (those who aren’t currently interested in your company or product, but who might be shortly) to the same messaging over a prolonged period of time will lead to stagnation. Eventually, you’ll fail not only to inspire brand loyalty, but also to retain it. Even Coke, one of the world’s most valuable brands, reinvents its messaging and image when it decides they have begun to lose effectiveness. It is human nature to get bored after being exposed repeatedly to the same old advertisement or message. In psychology language, we call this ‘repeated exposure’. Thus, change and adaptation is an essential ingredient to maintaining customers’ loyalty to your brand and services.

Creating an Effective Ad Campaign
So how do you create an effective ad campaign? One way is to go with the single benefit methodology, which directly links your brand to a single benefit. If your deodorant lasts longer, tell the world about it. The characterization or personification angle involves creating a character that expresses the product’s benefits or personality. The narrative methodology involves developing a narrative story with episodes describing a problem and its outcome.

Again, aim to produce advertising that states not only a product’s facts, but that also appeals to emotions. Using the deodorant example, you might accomplish this by playing off your customers’ fears of having body odor at an inopportune time. Your ad must make your audience feel like the MUST have it and that they cannot live without it.

Although a calculated and well thought out advertising campaign may do a good job of creating brand awareness, it may fall short of inducing product preference or, the end goal, purchase. Whatever it may be, don’t give up and treat the customers you have well. As the saying goes, a good deed goes a longgggg way….and you never know,  the power of word of mouth as a form of advertisement can be pretty effective too!