Strengthening the Elements of Your Advertising Campaign Headlines

Since the headline is the first contact your readers have with your message, it must reach out to them. Promise them a benefit. Tell them how they will be better off if they read the rest of the ad. Use action verbs. Save ten dollars is a stronger heading than Savings of ten dollars because of the verb.

Headlines can be classified into the following five basic types; effective headlines frequently combine two or more of these kinds.

News Headlines: This form tells the reader something he or she did not know before. Using the word news does not make it a news headline. "Now - a copy machine that copies in color" is an example of this type headline.

Advice and Promise Headline: Here you are promising something if the reader follows the advice in your ad. "Switch to Amoco premium, no-lead gasoline, and your car will stop ringing."

Selective Headline: This headline limits the audience to a specific group. For example: "To all gray-haired men over forty." Caution! Be absolutely sure you do not eliminate potential customers with this type of headline.

Curiosity Headline: The intent here is to arouse the reader's interest enough to make him or her read the ad. The danger is that this headline often appears "cute" or "clever" and fails in its mission. An example: "Do you have trouble going to sleep at night?"

Command or Demand Headline: Watch out for this one as most people resist pushiness, especially in advertising. "Do it now!" or "Buy this today!" This headline generally can be improved by changing to less obtrusive wording such as: "Call for your key to success!"

One common misconception about headlines is that they must be short and easy to understand. This is not always true. Here is a headline that was used extensively in print ads by Ogilvy and Mather for one of their clients: "At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock."

Illustrations

There are three primary reasons for using illustrations in an advertisement.

To attract attention to the ad.

To illustrate the item being featured.

To create a mood in the mind of the reader.

Everyone has heard, A picture is worth a thousand words; in advertising, the illustration frequently helps the reader visualize the benefits promised. You can almost feel the warmth of the tropical sun when you see the photos in January travel ads. Cost and practicality may dictate whether your ad uses photographs, artists' drawings or merely canned artwork. Any of these can make the ad more appealing to the reader's eye.

Effective Copy

If you follow the three principles of good copy, your ads will be effective:

Good copy should be clear.

Good copy should be crisp.

Good copy should be concise.

Clear, crisp and concise . . . the three Cs of copywriting suggest that the words in your advertising message merely do a good job of communicating. Do not use big words when small words can make your meaning clear. Use colorful, descriptive terms. Use the number of words necessary to make your meaning clear and no more-but also no less! Selecting the right words is critical to the success of the ads. Recent research conducted at Yale University found that the following 12 words are the most personal and persuasive words in our language.

You Discovery Free

Money Proven Results

Love Guarantee Save

New Easy Health

REMEMBER THAT WHEN YOUR MESSAGE IS PRINTED IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS INSTEAD OF UPPER AND LOWERCASE LETTERS, IT IS FAR MORE DIFFICULT FOR THE READER TO FOLLOW AND REMAIN INTERESTED. EVEN IN HEADLINES ALL CAPITAL LETTERS SHOULD BE AVOIDED.

Price

Should you or shouldn't you put prices in your ad? Yes! Yes! Yes! Since price is the one factor that allows the consumer to determine whether an item represents an adequate value, an ad without price makes the buying decision difficult if not impossible for the reader. Can you imagine how uninteresting your daily newspaper would be if there were no prices on the food store ads or the department store offerings? Yes, price belongs, and it belongs whether you are advertising a home for $175,000 or a ballpoint pen for 49 cents.

Logo

Can you visualize the corporate logos for such firms as Chevrolet, Ford, Playboy, Coca-Cola or Levi Strauss? There is an identification advantage in developing a logo design exclusive to your firm. Using a logo also helps give your advertising continuity. Use the logo consistently on all printed pieces, including stationery. Use it in Yellow Page advertising, on the side of your truck or company car, on bags or boxes and anything else your customers or prospects may see.

Type

The typeface you use in advertising plays an important role in how the message comes across. Printers are very knowledgeable about typefaces and happy to help you make choices.

Refining Your Advertising For Greater Results - Developing Cost Effective Advertising Campaign

One of the greats in the advertising business, David Oglivy, preached this philosophy to would-be advertisers: Never run an ad unless you have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). It's still a sound philosophy. If you can substitute your competitor's logo in your ad and it still makes sense, you are not going to get your money's worth out of the ad. Having a USP, as it has come to be known, is difficult with today's brand name merchandise and competitive pressures, but it is important.

Every item you advertise and every word and illustration you use becomes a part of your firm's image. Your ability to develop a USP depends on your knowing what you want your image to be and then doing those things and only those things that reinforce that image.

A men's clothing store can become the store with fashions for the man who thinks young. A nursery can create the image of the home of the talkedto plants that will respond to you. A car dealer can develop a following and a reputation for his automatic three-year trade-in plan. Once you have arrived at a USP that you think will appeal to your customers, translate the idea into a selling slogan of three to ten words that can be used as the theme of your advertising campaign. Use it consistently until your customers learn to associate your business with the selling slogan.

Before opening your business you must decide upon the general Cost Level you expect to maintain. Will you appeal to individuals
buying in the high, moderate, or low budget? Your choice of location, look of your establishment, quality of goods handled, and
solutions to be offered will depend on the clients you hope to attract, and so will your costs.

After establishing this overall price level, you are ready to price Individual products. Generally, the purchase price of an item
has to cover the price of this item, all other costs, and a profit. Therefore, you will need to markup the thing by a certain sum
to cover costs and make a profit. In a business that sells few things, total costs can readily be allocated to each product and a
markup immediately ascertained. With a variety of things, allocating costs and determining markup might require an accountant. In
retail operations, goods tend to be marked up by 50 to 100 per cent or more simply to make a 5 percent to 10% profit!

Let us work through a markup illustration. Suppose your company sells 1 product, Product A. The supplier sells Product A to you
for $5.00 each. You and your accountant determine the prices involved in selling Merchandise A are $4.00 each item, and you want a
$1 per item gain. What is your markup? Well, the sale price is: $5 plus $4 and $1 or $10; the markup therefore is $5. As a
percentage, it is 100%. So you have to markup Merchandise A by 100% to make a 10% profit!

Many small business managers are interested in understanding what Industry markup norms are for a variety of products.
Wholesalers, distributors, trade associations and company research companies publish a huge assortment of these ratios and company
statistics. They're useful as recommendations. Another ratio (in addition to the markup percent ) important to small firms is your
Gross Margin Percentage.

The GMP is similar to your markup percentage but whereas markup Refers to the percent above the cost to you of each item that you
must set the selling cost in order to cover all other costs and earn profits, the GMP shows the association between sales revenues
minus the cost of the product, which is your gross margin, along with your earnings earnings. What the GMP is telling you is that
your markup bears a certain relationship to your sales revenues. The markup percentage along with the GMP are essentially the
exact same formula, together with the markup referring to individual item pricing and GMP referring to the item prices times the
amount of items sold (quantity ).

Maybe an illustration will clarify the purpose. Your firm sells Product Z. It costs you $.70 each and you choose to sell it for $1
each to cover costs and gain. Your markup is 43%. Let up state you sold 10,000 Product Z's Last month thus producing $10,000 in
earnings. Your price to buy Product Z was 7000; your gross profit margin was $3,000 (earnings minus cost of products sold). This
is also your gross mark for your month's volume. Your GMP will be 30%. Both of these percentages utilize the same basic numbers,
differing only in branch. Both are utilized to set up a pricing method. And both are printed and may be used as guidelines for
smaller businesses beginning out. Often supervisors determine what Gross Margin Percentage they'll need to earn a profit and just
go to some published Markup Table to discover the percentage markup which correlates with that margin requirement.

While this discussion of pricing may appear, in some respects, to Be directed only to the pricing of retail merchandise it could
be applied to other kinds of companies too. For solutions the markup must cover administrative and selling costs as well as the
direct cost of doing a specific service. If you are manufacturing a product, the costs of direct labor, materials and supplies,
components purchased from other concerns, special equipment and tools, plant overhead, selling and administrative expenditures
have to be carefully anticipated. To calculate a price per unit needs an estimate of the number of units you intend to produce.
Before your factory becomes too big it would be smart to consult an accountant about a cost accounting system.

Not all items are marked up by the typical markup. Luxury articles Will take more, staples less. For instance, increased sales
volume by a lower-than-average markup on a specific item - a"loss leader" - may bring a higher gross profit unless the purchase
price is reduced too much. Then the resulting increase in sales will not increase the entire gross profit enough to compensate for
the minimal cost.

Sometimes you may wish to sell a certain item or service at a lesser Markup so as to boost store traffic with the hope of
increasing sales of Regularly priced merchandise or creating a large number of new service contracts. Competitors' prices will
also regulate your prices. You Can't sell a Product if your competitor is greatly underselling you. These and other reasons May
cause you to vary your markup among items and services. There is no magic Formula that will work on every item or every service
all of the time. But You ought to remember the overall average markup that you want to generate a Profit.

 brick-and-mortar bridal building-material bulk-sms burger bus business-broker business-coaching cabinet-making cake cake-shop campground camps-for-children candy candy-apple car-import car-painting carpet-installation cbd cell-phone-repair charter-fishing chauffeur chicken-shop childrens-party-planning childrenwear chocolate christmas-light-installation cigar-lounge cinema-hall cinematography civil-contractor clothing clothing-line cna cnc-machine coffee-van collection-agency commercial-cleaning computer-shop concrete content-writing cookie cosmetics-retailing cpr-training craft-beer crafts credit-repair crochet crystal csa-farm