Here’s a brief checklist:
1. Clarify your objective, for example, to simply build awareness or to prompt enquiries.
2. Think about your target audience – what do they want and what will interest them?
3. Look at competing advertisements – what works well and how can you make your advertisement stand out from them?
4. Remind yourself of the one or two key benefits you can offer which set you apart from the competition.
5. Decide whether to write the advertisement yourself, or to use a copywriter or advertising agency.
6. Decide what the main message of your advertisement must be.
7. Devise a short, attention-grabbing headline, present an offer highlighting the key benefit, arousing curiosity, or containing news. This determines 80% of your response.
8. Consider whether a relevant illustration could help to attract attention or use a compelling photograph to compliment your text.
9. Build on the headline with the main body copy, for example, expanding on the key benefit(s), or supporting your claims with facts. Testimonials do this more effectively than sales hype.
10. Avoid cluttering the main message with unconnected information and benefits; if in doubt, leave it out.
11. Use simple, clear and concise language, with paragraphs broken into easily readable points; avoid cliches, empty claims and weak jokes. Less is usually more.
12. Prompt a response; include contact details and consider providing a deadline by which readers must act. Push em!
13. Reinforce your main message throughout the copy and consider ending with a pay-off line which relates back to the headline.
14. Check that your advertisement grabs attention, maintains interest, stimulates desire and prompts action!
1. Set yourself apart. Beloved Brands must be different, better, cheaper or not around very long. The story telling of the brand’s promise should help to separate the brand from the clutter of our minds. That starts with creative that feels different and makes the brand seem different. (more…)
1. One and Done. Any advertiser who runs a single ad and waits for results is wasting the money. Advertising works best when it is scheduled with some frequency. Expecting that one ad is enough is like assuming that one tap from a hammer is all a nail takes. (more…)
1. Have a goal/plan: Yogi Berra once said that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. Knowing what you want to accomplish may be half the battle in creating good advertising. (more…)
1. Stops The reader from turning the page.
2. Sells a product’s benefits rather than its features: People buy based on what the product does for them not on what ingredients it has.
3. Promotes the name of the store or brand while visually creating an image for it.
4. Speaks to a specific group of people.
5. Provides all the facts a reader needs without providing too many.
6. Conveys its message simply. It is believable and honest.
7. Is news: Readers say advertising in newspapers is as important as the news. It is in fact a primary reason that people seek out advertising in newspapers.
8. Offers answers to consumer’s current needs. Advertising sells to people’s wants and not just needs. If people need transportation, they want a Mercedes. If they need clothing, they want Polo.
9. Uses white space. Crammed ads get poor results because readers don’t want to work that hard.
10. Has a sense of urgency. It tells the reader to do something now.
Your Hood County News marketing consultant can help you design an effective ad with the help of our award-winning designers.
86% of voters who cast ballots in the last local election read a newspaper in print or online in the past week, or more often.
57% of voters rate newspapers – more than any other medium – as reliable, accurate and in-depth for local/civic issues.
51% of voters rate newspaper websites – more than any other type of local websites – as reliable, accurate and in-depth about local political/civic issues.
54% of voters rate local TV political ads as annoying, followed closely by those on network TV. Newspaper ads are rated least annoying.
40% of voters report that they are likely to read/look at a candidate’s newspaper ad.
91% of voters who contributed money to a campaign read a newspaper in print or online in the past week, or more often.
79% of voters in the 18- to 34-year-old age group read a newspaper in print or online in the past week, or more often.
83% of Republican, 81% of Independent and 84% of Democratic voters read a newspaper in print or online in the last week, or more often.
58% of voters who plan to use mobile devices for news about campaigns and elections use newspaper sources for that news.
62% of voters ages 18 to 34 who plan to use mobile devices to check for campaign/election news rely on newspaper sources.
Source: Moore Information 2012
1. Portability & Flexibility: Newspapers are portable, and ROP (Run on Press or display advertising) as part of the editorial, is more likely to be carried. ROP also allows ultimate control of size and position.
2. Specificity: Advertisers can request to have their ads in specific sections that appeal most to their customers; e.g., tire ads in sports sections.
3. Reader Involvement: Newspaper readers are not passive (like television or radio users). They have to spend time on a page reading an article, which means longer eye contact with adjacent ads. According to NAA’s Consumer Usage of Newspaper Advertising study, over two thirds (68%) of newspaper readers regularly read or glance through ROP advertising when reading the newspaper.
4. Avoidance of Clutter: Newspaper ads offer a less competitive environment.
5. Reach: You can reach prospects in addition to customers. Newspapers offer the fastest way for an advertiser to reach a local mass market.
6. Superior Audience Quality: Whether it is higher income households, higher educated households or households holding higher level jobs, newspapers do even better reaching a higher demographic audience. . In 2010, more than 73% of adults with $100,000 or more household income read a newspaper in an average week., 80% of College graduates read a newspaper in the past week Professionals involved with management, business and financial operations, more than 70% read a newspaper in the past week.
7. Editorial Environment: It builds incremental credibility for the advertiser.
8. Immediacy: ROP has the shortest deadlines of almost any medium and can produce immediate results for advertisers.
9. Permission Marketing: Readers buy their newspapers and look forward to ads, especially in the Sunday newspaper.
10. Selectivity vs. Intrusiveness: Turning pages is faster than a speeding remote control.
Ask your Hood County News marketing consultant how you can put your message in the hands of all of Hood County readers.
1. Impact: Preprints tend to slide out of the paper demanding to be read
2. Control: Advertisers control, size, color, pages, items, reproduction with a preprint
3. Targeting: With newspaper inserts advertisers can cost effectively distribute, by zip code or by market and everything in between.
4. Flexibility: Newspapers can deliver single sheets, cards, and catalogs, they can distribute large format and small, heavy stock or light, and on the day needed
5. Efficiency: Newspaper inserts are cost efficient in terms of distribution costs often able to deliver for less than 5 cents a household.
6. Date Specific Delivery: Newspapers deliver inserts on the day chosen as opposed to within a window of time. Sunday delivery or daily.
7. Environment: Because newspapers are a welcomed guest in a subscriber’s home, inserts coming in newspapers are more likely to be seen and read.
8. Response/results: Newspaper preprinted inserts can achieve redemption rates of up to 10% depending upon the offer. Inserts have a proven results track record.
9. Deadlines/Timing: Newspapers can accept preprints on a shorter lead time than other distribution vehicles allowing the ultimate in advertiser responsiveness to market conditions, product and pricing needs.
10. Saturation: Newspapers are able to distribute preprints to the masses. Both subscribers and non-subscribers can be reached through the typical newspaper program.
Ask your Hood County News marketing consultant how you economically can reach all of Hood and Somervell Counties with inserts. We offer complete service from design to printing and inserting-all at competitive prices.