Advertising is a marketing tactic involving paying for space to promote a product, service, or cause. The actual promotional messages are called advertisements, or ads for short. The goal of advertising is to reach people most likely to be willing to pay for a company’s products or services and entice them to buy. Traditional advertising outlets include newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations. Today, however, advertisements are placed nearly everywhere and anywhere, including:
- Roadside billboards
- Sides of buildings
- Websites
- Electronic newsletters
- Print newsletters
- Inside bills
- Product packaging
- Restaurant place mats
- Event bulletins
- Store windows
- The sides of cars and trucks
- Subway car walls
- Airport kiosks
- Sporting arenas
- YouTube videos
Creating Effective Ads
Advertising messages themselves are designed to persuade an individual to buy a company’s goods or services. Even in business-to-business transactions, individuals have to first be convinced to choose one product over another. To accomplish this, ads have five main components:
- Headline - This is the key attention-getting message. “Got milk?” is a perfect headline. Or Wendy’s old, “Where’s the beef?”
- Subhead - Some ad headlines need clarification, much like a book’s subtitle.
- Body copy - The meat of the advertising message occurs in the main section where the product or service’s features and benefits are highlighted.
- Image - Unless you’re advertising on the radio, including a product photo, or image illustrating a key benefit is critical.
- Call-to-action - At the end of the ad you want to invite the consumer to take a step towards doing business with you, such as calling a toll-free number, visiting a website, texting a certain number, or pulling into the drive-thru window.
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