Useful And Best Advertising Tips.

When planning advertising of your products or services, it is advisable to pretest your advertisements to see how effective they actually are in influencing consumers.  It is common to have to redesign an ad if it is found not be to be as effective as targeted. You may read more on this in my blog Quick Ways to Influence Buyers. Note that selecting advertisements is often a tedious process of trying and testing and keeping the best, while trashing the rest. Be prepared for trials. It takes time!

Advertising Strategies

Different advertising strategies and approaches may be taken to promote your product, depending upon the promotional objectives sought by a particular company.  The following are some commonly used content strategies commonly used.

Persuasive Information – comparison based ads attempt to get consumers to believe that your product is better. Although it has been noticed that Americans frequently dislike comparison, they continue to be among the most effective ads in the U.S.  Comparative advertising is considered very inappropriate culturally in some societies, especially in Asia, it is even illegal in some countries.

Fear Factor- fear appeals play with the minds of consumers by telling them the about consequences of not using a product.  Toothpaste ads, for example, talk about the how tooth loss can result from poor oral hygiene. Note that it is important to directly suggest a specific way to avoid the feared stimulus, in the ad.  Like, by simply using the toothpaste advertised, these terrible things can be avoided.

Belief Factor- changing the consumer’s attitude through the addition of a belief is a topic that is often discussed under consumer behaviour. It is usually easier to get the consumer to form a new belief which is not inconsistent with what he or she already has, than it is to change currently held beliefs. So focus more on implementing new ideas, rather than changing or removing the existing ones.

Fun Factor- humor has been commonly and successfully used in advertisements since forever. This method doesn’t particularly persuade the consumer; however, more and more advertisers have been using humor to gain the consumer’s attention. Note that humor often actually draws attention away from the product, as people will remember what was funny in the ad but not the product that was advertised.  Thus, for ads to be effective, always keep your product as an integral part of what is funny.

Classical Conditioning- this aims at forming a more favorable brand image among consumers, by associating your product with an object or idea that is already famous and liked. For example, showing an automobile, paired with a beautiful woman, or showing a product in a very upscale setting.

Repetition- this is critical, whatever specific objective is sought. More so when the objective is to communicate specific information to the customer. So, repeat your advertising message. Even simple messages are often understood by consumers who have little interest in your product, and the message remains in their minds to be used when the need arises. Therefore, if the message is conveyed just once, very little processing is likely to be. Cumulatively, however, a greater effect may be achieved.

Celebrity Endorsements – this is self-explanatory. All of us know that today, celebrities are engaged more in advertisements than they are in their own field of work. This is happening because a consumer connects with a product when he sees his favourite celebrity endorsing it. Celebrities have been proven to increase the amount of attention given to an advertisement. However, these celebrities may not be consistently persuasive. Reasons are many, but the main reason is the consumer’s perception of a celebrity, which keeps changing. As soon as a celebrity is involved in a scandal, for example, it may have a direct impact on the sales of your product.

Attitude Change

A significant objective of advertising is to change the existing attitude of an individual, a gender, a society or an age group. The attitude of your target audience toward a product refers to his or her beliefs about, feeling toward, and purchase intentions for the product. HyperEffects helps you reach out to your target audience in the most effective way, through advertisements custom-tailored for your product and target. At HyperEffects, our aim is to make small business owners aware of different advertising programmes available for them; our one-hour free consultation program is specially designed to achieve this.

Beliefs can be both positive, e.g., McDonald’s food tastes good and is convenient but is high in fat. In general, it is usually very difficult to change deeply held beliefs. Thus, as discussed above, emphasise on adding a belief e.g., beef is convenient, rather than trying to change the belief to – beef is really not very fatty.