Blocks that should be in ads content

Whether you are advertising an event, new product or a service, creating an ad can help you inform, persuade and even remind current and potential customers about your brand. Advertising ads are placed in many places, including newspapers, magazines and on websites, just to name a few. Regardless of where you place your advertisement, successful ads contain five major parts.

A Catchy Headline

The headline is a major aspect of an advertisement. It often appears at the top of an advertisement or in the middle so that it immediately attracts attention from potential customers. Headlines contain a few words of text and they should be direct and to the point so as not to overwhelm readers.

Your headline should make a promise to the reader, stating what they’ll discover if they continue to read the rest of the advertisement. The headline and its promise should address a concern, problem or interest your consumers have. Avoid “clickbait” headlines commonly found on “sponsored content” website ads.

An Effective Sub-headline

A sub-headline is one of the key components of advertising and appears directly under the headline. The text is typically smaller and it gives more insight into the product you are selling, while further outlining why the customer should care enough to keep reading. The sub-headline can be the length of a sentence.

Think of the headline as the quick hook that grabs a reader’s attention, while the sub-head is teaser information that makes a reader want to find out more. You can try a question-and-answer combination, like, “Looking for a reliable house painter? Ask these five questions when interviewing painting companies.”

Selling the Benefits

Quite often, people purchase for the benefits a product offers, not the product itself or its features, according to Entrepreneur magazine. That’s why advertising often promises quality, affordability, convenience status, fun, or another benefit.

For this reason, it is important to turn your product or service features into benefits. If you are selling a microwave, one feature is fast-cooking times, so a benefit might be that parents spend less time in the kitchen and families get to eat faster. If you’re selling a food item, benefits consumers seek include health, weight loss, convenience, family acceptance and cost. You can list your benefits in bullet points, as individual words or even in paragraph form.

Images and Packaging

While not all ads contain images, many companies use images of their products, or people using their products, to grab consumer interest. Ensure that the image you use fits the scale of the advertisement and is clear. If you do not use an image of your product, you can include an image of your logo.

Some products use a unique shape for their packaging or an identifiable color scheme. Think of Mrs. Butterworth’s female-shaped syrup bottle or Progressive Insurance’s blue-and-white theme

Call-to-action

Get your potential customers to act on your offer by including a call-to-action in your ad copy, recommends Inc. magazine. The call-to-action typically appears at the end of an advertisement and is used to add a sense of urgency. It should instruct customers what steps they should take to purchase your item or sign up with a service through your company.

You can ask customers to visit your website, call to book an appointment or drop by your location. Adding a clearly visible toll-free number, address, website URL or Twitter handle is an important piece of a call to action.

Design guidelines

Don’t know anything about graphic design? That’s ok — you can make sure your ads are as visually compelling as possible by following these simple guidelines.

1. Create a hierarchy of information. Choose the information from the above list that’s most important and make it the main element of the ad. Every piece of information in your ad should be weighted according to its importance. It’s hard to read an ad in which everything is the same size.
2. Remember, less is more. Don’t overwhelm people with information. Keep it as simple as possible while getting useful information across to the viewer.
3. Use your space wisely. Don’t use every inch of white space because you can. Leave some “breathing room” so people can digest your message.
4. Use contrasting colors. Strike the right balance between fonts and backgrounds to make sure that your copy is readable. The best combo is dark type on a light background because it’s easier to read.
5. Think hard about typography. Use mostly sans-serif fonts, use different font sizes to highlight the importance of the copy. However, don’t use too many font types or too many font colors (think one or two max). The biggest font offenders that tend to thoroughly annoy people include comic sans, curlz and papyrus.

Review and edit. Have at least one other person who isn’t working on your ad read it over to make sure there aren’t spelling errors, incorrect information or missing information.