It is estimated that everyday people are subjected to around three thousand commercials. That is a huge number and if someone desires to be noticed, he should certainly be different. Not only the services and product sold should be unique in the market, so should be the advertisement. For example, if a business selling mattresses says, “We sell mattresses”, it will not make a statement and will be passed off as any other mattress advertisement. But if they say, “Our mattresses are of the finest quality”, it will make the advertisement stand out in the crowd. Other catch lines are “Are you suffering from back pain? Probably you must try our mattresses ”, are more specific and will catch the fancy of the people who are suffering from back pains since a long time. The advertisement should also focus on the uniqueness of the product and how it is better compared to the competitors’ product.
Focusing on the problems of the customers and giving a solution for them, is what a customer demands. A customer does not buy a product; he buys benefits in the form of a product. The real value of the product should be realized and a clear picture of it should be presented to the customer so he will be able to relate with the product. If the advertisement doesn’t specify the solution it can provide, the customers will never know of it. So focusing on the customers problem is what some ads miss.
The last thing missing in most of the advertisement is motivation for the customers. If the advertiser has designed the advertisement and the customer had read the advertisement, all efforts and money invested will be wasted if he doesn’t get up and do something about it. It shouldn’t be assumed that the customer knows what to do; instead the advertisement should influence the mind of the customer and should tell him what to do. Call of action is the final job of the advertisement. It should call for information, or visiting the store or even visiting the online store. The message should sound confident and clear.
How to Write a Good Headline for your Ad
There is no denying the fact that the success of an advertisement lies mostly in the headline. The headline should attract the reader and make him read the rest of the advertisement. The headline should be simply catchy and various key points should be embedded when deciding on the headline for the ad.
The headline should catch attention of the eye at the first glance. Words in headlines should act as tags for the advertisement. It should say it all about the content that follows. If a company is selling reasonably priced furniture, the headline of their advertisement should be ‘Durable furniture for less price’. This headline will attract the right customers who are on a look out for durable furniture as well as low cost furniture.
If the customers to be reached belong to a category that are interested in decorating their house with beautiful furniture and aren’t concerned about the price to get the right look, then the headline can be ‘Change how your house looks by our oriental furniture’. Anything other than the prospects should not be included in the headline. If both men and women can use a product, both of them should be referred to in the title, missing out even one of the category is like losing a huge number of potential customers.
The title should be instant product seller. According to a research, five times more readers read just the headline when compared to those who read the complete advertisement. So the investment is of no use, if the title isn’t good enough to sell the product. There can be a possibility that the content of the ad isn’t strong enough. All the harm can be undone by having a powerful headline.
The headline should be centered on the product and not the company that is selling the product. The customer’s interest should be reflected and he should feel that he is directly addressed. Start with ‘you’ and not ‘we’. So if the client specified on mentioning the company’s name, don’t start the sentence with it. For example, instead of writing ‘Tylenol – solution for sever cold ’, write ‘Got sever cold? Try Tylenol’. Never forget to mention the name of the product in the headline. The product name should be of top priority.
A snapshot of the benefits of the product should be given in the headline. This is an important quality of a well-phrased headline. The customers look out for advantages when he thinks of buying a product. Keywords like whiter teeth, nutritious cereals, or miraculous growth should be incorporated in the title.
If inculcating all these factors have made the headline long, it should be remembered to write the product advantages in bold. If a visual is placed in the advertisement, it will be a good complement. As a picture speak thousand words. But care should be taken that the headline should say some part of the story and the visual should say the rest.
Too much of cleverness should not be applied to design a headline. Reader will be able to classify between a false heading and a genuine heading. No false promises or information should be included in the headline. Over smart headlines are good for award competitions, but don’t really work with the savvy customers.
The headline should give out a positive feeling to the reader. Negativity should be totally excluded as it not only creates a negative impression but the mind will also be not receptive friendly. It sometimes confuses the mind and it interprets a negative meaning of the message being delivered. Confidence should be reflected in the headline. Don’t include any doubtful words like if and but. Conditional phrases are a strict no. The sentence should be in present tense, instead of past or future.