After you’ve researched your target market, analyzed your competition, and found out how your business differs (from preceding section), you should also review ads from other businesses (not in your industry) that appeal to you.
Looking at other businesses’ ads can help get your creative juices flowing, so you can start developing ads for your business that will hopefully appeal to your prospective customers. Great advertising ideas are all around you, from the funny to the heart warming. Even though a magazine ad, newspaper ad, Internet ad, or radio or television commercial features a product, service, or business that’s nothing like yours, you can still get creative ideas from what you respond to.
I have the strongest response to ads that use humor. The humor appeals to me, so I pay attention to what products the companies are advertising. And if I’m in the market for such products, I’ll be more likely to remember the ads because of the humor.
But you (and your primary market) may respond best to other types of ads. For example, you may respond to straightforward descriptions of what the product or service does — especially if humor isn’t appropriate in your business (if you run a funeral home, for instance). In the same vein, you may respond best to a simple picture, which can be worth more than a 1,000 words, as in the following examples:
- If you run an exercise center or a weight-loss service, or a hair salon that specializes in highlights, you can use before-and-after photos to great effect.
- If your business is food related (either a specialty store or a catering service),you can feature pictures of truly mouth-watering, appetizing food.
- If you focus on anything creative — you design and make clothing or knitwear, photo albums or picture frames, or furniture or cabinetry, for example — you should consider showing pictures of your work.
- If you run an automotive body shop, you may want to show sequential photos of how you brought it back to life — a prolonged before-andafter, so to speak.
You should be your first resource when it comes to what advertising is appealing . . . but don’t stop there. Ask your family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues what appeals to them. This informal research is easy to do (and free!).
You have one more resource that can help you develop a new ad campaign: your old ad campaigns! In addition to checking out your direct competitors’ ads and looking at other business’s ads that appeal to you, review what you’ve done in the past to see what worked and what didn’t (if you have that information). If you find something that worked really well, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. On the other hand, if you need a fresh approach, at least you’ll know what not to do!
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