Effective Print Advertising

The Ad’s Objective

The first step in effective advertising is to set a clearly defined objective for your campaign. Remember, there are many, many other advertisements and articles in the publication your viewers will be reading, and that you only have a couple of seconds to capture their attention. That being said, your ad should focus specifically on your objective, whether that be building awareness about the event, making a call to action such as visiting your website or calling a phone number for more information, or informing viewers of features planned your the event.

Once you have an objective, stick to it. Don’t try to cram as much info as possible into a small space, but introduce only the elements you absolutely need to state your objective as clearly as possible. Your text should share its general intent with the headline, and any pictures you use should add clarity to the overall communication. Remember that the goal is to communicate your objective, not to use gimmicks to grab the viewers’ attention & leave them scratching their heads wondering what your picture has to do with your event. In general, the greater the integration between all elements of your ad, the quicker and easier it is for the viewer to take away the maximum impact of your objective.

So, what should you say in your ad? When looking at anything, viewers are continually asking “What’s in it for me?” so make sure you tell them. Your ad should specifically address who this event is for and how exactly they will benefit from attending. In most cases, viewers are more concerned with what they will take away from your event rather than a bunch of facts and “we are …” statements. Once you’ve gotten the viewer’s interest, provide them with sufficient information to make a call to action, whether that be visiting your website or calling to register for the event.

The Design Component

Nowadays, with desktop publishing tools like Photoshop and Quark XPress readily available, and with the ease of gaining fonts and stock photos, it is tempting to utilize as many elements as possible to distinguish your ad from everyone else’s. That’s not always the best strategy when trying to communicate a specific objective. A good design layout adhering to basic layout principles is key to making your ad readable and understandable. Some design tips include:

Emphasis

Make the most important elements of the ad the most prominent and the easiest to pick out at a glance.

Balance

Good ads can either be symmetrical or asymmetrical in layout, but they should be balanced in terms of elements that make up the composition. Try grouping similar content together and counterbalancing groups with another element of your composition. Stick with about 3 groups of text content – the headline, the bulk of the text, and a smaller group of text. Too many elements clutter up the ad and make the reader guess where to start.

Fonts

Pick 2 non-competing fonts for the ad. Competing fonts tend to be fonts that look very similar but aren’t – such as Verdana and Arial. It is much better to use contrast when picking fonts, such as a serif (with “feet” like Times New Roman) and a san serif (like Arial) font together, or a script font with non-script font. Use one for the bulk of the text and another for headlines. Keep the format of similar headlines the same style (bolded and underlined, for instance). Try to avoid vertically stacked text and large portions of rotated text, both of which are hard to read.

Alignment

Try to keep one alignment consistent throughout the document. For example, have the edge of a picture line up with the text of the headline or have the headline at the top of the composition line up with the text column at the bottom of the composition.

Evaluating the Results

As advertising is not an exact science, if you find your ad isn’t as successful as you had hoped, try something else. Repeated exposure of an unsuccessful ad will not improve performance rate. If your ad is working, repeat its usage a couple of times. Frequency will help in your branding strategy and will aid in the long-term campaign success.

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