Making Advertising Work

Effective advertising sells a product or a service that fulfills all the promises made about it. On the other hand, effective advertising also sells inferior products or services, but only once!


So what makes advertising effective? Effective advertising is:

• Creative: It delivers the advertising message in a fresh, new way.
• Hard-hitting: Its headline, copy, or graphic element stops readers or listeners dead in their tracks.
• Memorable: It ensures that the audience will remember your business when they think about the products and services you’re selling.
• Clear: It presents its message in a concise, uncomplicated, easy-to-grasp manner.
• Informative: It enlightens the audience about your business and products, while giving them important reasons to buy from you.
•  Distinctive: It is unique and immediately recognizable as yours.

The well-established brands that most people use every day — brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, McDonald’s and Burger King, Budweiser and Miller, Bayer and Advil, Ford and Chevy, Tide and Cheer — live up to the promises made in their advertising. In fact, the products live up to the promise in such a dramatic fashion that those products have become a part of the everyday lives of millions of people. These products have been branded, which simply means that when you think of soft drinks, fast food, beer, pain relievers, cars, or laundry detergents, these brands come to mind. As surely as the cowboys of the Old West branded the haunches of their cattle, these products have been branded into your psyche — and the psyches of millions of other consumers.
When you begin to create advertising for your product or service, keep these suggestions in mind:

• Don’t make promises you can’t live up to. Although your ad may draw more people to your product initially, you can’t retain these people as loyal customers in the long run if you make promises you can’t keep.
• Identify the best features of whatever it is you’re selling and develop your advertising around these features. Think about how your product stands out from the competition, what sets it apart, and then focus on those attributes.
• Try to create a memorable advertising message for your product. You want people to think of your store, your product, or your professional service whenever they’re in the market for such a thing.

If your message is creative, clear, and concise, if your product or service is something that can truly benefit people and live up to its hype, then you’re on the road to producing effective advertising.

If your advertising makes bold promises about your product, you may convince a lot of people to try it. But if those people buy your product and give it a try, and the product turns out to be less than you advertised it to be, you will most certainly never see those consumers again. Think about it: How many times have you responded to an advertising message for a new, improved, astounding product, only to be disappointed with the item after you tried it? You probably even felt like you’d been ripped off. If your advertising message leaves consumers with the same feeling, you simply won’t get anywhere.