Don’t have the budget for an ad agency or in-house marketing department? Don’t worry; you can still make an effective ad. Follow these steps and chances are good that you’ll at least have a return on your investment.
1. What format will this ad be seen in? Television, print, social media, radio, an online banner, billboard, point of sale, decide what media you are going to use. This will determine the ad’s style, length, even viable objectives of the ad.
2. Have a clear and specific goal. This doesn’t include “make more money” or “be super awesome,” even though both of those things are good. It needs to be a calculated goal like; X number of phone calls per dollar spent, X number of clicks per dollar spent, X number of customers coming in the store per dollar spent—and there should be a way to measure it like analytics or a reserved forwarded number, even sales figures before and after a spot (though keep in mind additional factors that could affect those numbers like weather or tax returns). Or if your goal is pure branding, which is important if somewhat difficult to measure, you may want to consider surveys or long term sales measurements before and after branding efforts. If branding is the goal, be aware that it’s a long term investment. Imagine it like the difference in between regular exercise to keep your heart in shape, and nitroglycerin. Both work great, branding works better long term but is less helpful if you’re in the middle of a heart attack right now.
3. Have a specific person in mind when writing an ad. They don’t have to be a real person, just a compilation of demographic information. For example if 61% of your customers are female, most are 40-45 years old, most make 35k-45k a year, most are fans of Oprah, most have cats as pets, then write your ad to a 43 year old female making 40k a year, who likes cats and Oprah. Ads need to be written to 1 person. Counterintuitive as it sounds, more people will like an ad for one person than an ad for everyone. To help keep this person in mind, make a caricature with all of the defining details of the individual, and give them a name and have that close to you while making the ad.
4. What is your product or service fulfilling in your customer’s life? Your product does something for your customers not only in the physical literal world we are usually thinking about when marketing a product, but also it is doing something on the psychological level. It makes them feel something and is fulfilling a desire. For clothes maybe it’s to fit in, for laundry detergent maybe it’s the need to feel like a good mom, for plumbing maybe it’s the nesting instinct. You have to think deeper than the surface and tap into this inner primitive desire. That is where the ads that make a lot of money for businesses come from.
5. How are others talking to the same target audience? This can be your competitors or it can be completely unrelated businesses which just happen to have the same basic target consumer. Look at what others are doing, and importantly what’s working and what is not. Never assume just because another business is doing something that it is working, the vast majority of marketing efforts unfortunately (especially for small and midsize businesses) are simply bad ideas. When you know what is working and what is not you have two options; you can use it to emulate a strategy, different enough to set your business apart, but which sticks to the basics that are working, or use the information to create a brand image that stands out. For example if your competitor seems to have the market cornered when it comes to cheap, fast, affordable, super cheap—well fine maybe you want to let them have that and instead, you’re the quality choice, or you do it right the first time not cheap 4 or 5 times—something like that.
6. Stick to your theme. Businesses tend to have benefit turrets, and like the unfortunate case of this on the public bus, it comes off as crazy and insincere usually, never as the all-everything-best-ever-of-everything the business is after. If you are the quality choice, you are not the cheapest—even if you are, don’t confuse the message, stick to quality. If affordable is the benefit, stick with it. If you make life easier, don’t worry about the complex system for creating your high quality product in your ad, there’s no point.
7. Don’t focus on your business. The focus needs to be on the customer. They are the main character and your product, service or business is just a supporting actor.
8. Tell a story. You’ve seen commercials that don’t tell you anything interesting, and you’ve seen ones that do. Which ones work better on you? If you’re like most people (and statistically you probably are) then you thought two things just now: 1. “Commercials don’t work on me” which statistically is also probably incorrect, and 2. You thought of some commercial that told a story, not one that was a list of benefits. Put your customer, the one we talked about, in some situation in which your product or service is going to play a vital role, then tell the story. It can be funny, inspiring, exciting, sad, hopeful, surprising, anything as long it’s a story.
9. Evoke an emotion. Pick which emotion you are going to try to manipulate with this ad and stick to it. See the above options.
10. Make sure the story is relevant to the emotion, and that they are both relevant to your target audience, product and/or service. If making an ad that works was as easy as making something that people liked, every commercial on earth would have kittens and babies in it. The reason the professionals don’t use kittens and babies every single time, is because kittens and babies are not always relevant. What’s so important about relevance? It’s a matter of psychology. Relevance is a trigger. The human mind naturally makes connections in between those things it deems are relevant—and while, if you have an advertising budget in the billions, you can saturate the world until some irrelevant thing becomes relevant in a target audience’s mind, most of us will have to make do with stuff in the world that audiences have already decided are relevant. One idea triggers another, which triggers the idea of your brand, product or service. If this doesn’t happen in the course of the ad the customer won’t remember you even if they do remember the ad.
11. Ignore this checklist when… You have a really good idea that is relevant, that improves your brand image, and which your customers will remember. There is no checklist for a really good ad, but if you don’t have a really good idea (or even more common, don’t even know what a really good idea would look like in advertising) this checklist is a smart place to start.