The Four Elements of a Successful Ad

Here's how to get the best readership on your ad and beat out the competition:

Work most on what's important. Readers usually view your ad elements in this order: photo, headline, caption, and text. Notice that the text (a.k.a. body copy) is at the bottom of the list. Lets take a look at each element.

Photo
Pick up any newspaper or magazine and find a page with several ads on it. Pay attention to what you look at first. If there are a lot of text ads but one with a photo - I'll bet your eyes went there first. It's nearly impossible to control. Now, if there is more than one ad with a photo, but only one has a picture of a person you will jump to that ad. Photos draw attention away from your competitor's ads.

Headline
If you don't have a photo, the next best thing is your headline. (Of course you need a good headline even if you have a photo.) Keep it short and to the point. Nothing kills an ad worse than a long, rambling headline. Important: spend more time on creating your headline than you do creating your body copy.

Caption
People may not read your body copy, but they nearly always read the caption under your photo. In fact, if you have an important point you want to make, try putting it in the caption.

Text (body copy)
This is the least viewed part of your ad. There are two things you can do to make it more likely that your reader will, in fact, read it. (1) Keep your text down to as few words as possible. People tend to avoid large amounts of text. (2) Keep it focused on what's important to your customer.

Paying attention to these four elements will pull the reader to your ad and away from the competition's. Back to Top

 

Writing a Successful News Release

There are several methods of getting free publicity. One of the most common is the news release. The challenge is getting it printed. The publication decides if they are going to print your news release and so you must make it worth their time and cost. Here are a few tips on how to make your news release more enticing to the editor.

Real News
The quickest way to the round file (trash bin) is to send a fluff piece about how great your company/product is. The article should be a legitimate news story - not an advertisement. This could be the hiring of a new employee, a company expansion that creates new jobs, awards or other recognition, charitable efforts by your company, community events you sponsor, etc. Remember, the primary word is NEWS release. Make it real. Make it relevant.

Timely
Make sure your news release is covering relatively current events. A new CEO who just came on board fulfills the publication's need for current news. If the CEO joined your firm a year ago, it is too late for that angle. Find something about him/her that is relevant to today.

Write from a reporter's viewpoint
The company owner and top executives should not write the news release. Instead, find an employee who doesn't know everything about your business. Then have him do interviews and put together the release as if he were an outside reporter.

Four W's and an H
Journalism 101 - get answers to these questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. Do this and the news release will practically write itself.

Inverted pyramid
Due to space limitations, the editor may cut part of your story. Editors always cut from the bottom - so be sure your most important points are near the top of the article. In fact, your first paragraph should contain the main message you want to communicate, the second should fill in the details and the third should cover less critical background information. Think of this structure as an inverted pyramid where the most important information is on top and the least important is at the bottom.

Keep paragraphs small
Try to have no more than three or four sentences per paragraph. Most articles are printed in narrow columns. This is especially true with newspapers. Editors don't like too many lines in a paragraph because it creates a large block of text, which often looses the reader.

Include a photo
This is the most important advise of all. Send a photo with the news release whenever possible. And better yet, have a person in the picture. Your chances of getting printed are multiplied when you include an interesting photo.

Advertise with the publication
Large news publications keep their editorial department separate from their advertising department for obvious reasons; they don't want advertisers driving their news. Trade publications are less concerned about this. In either case, though, a regular advertiser pulls more weight when it comes to news releases.

Hire a professional writer/photographer
You knew this was coming right? Yes, it is self-promotion on my part. But there are advantages to going this route. First, keeping a regular flow of timely news releases is a time-consuming task taking your employee's time away from productive work. A professional is good at maintaining a working relationship with the publication's editorial staff. He also has a good feel for how often to send a release to a particular publication and more importantly, has a feel for their editorial style so the release will fit in well with other articles in the magazine or newspaper. Perhaps most important, if you hire a professional writer/photographer who has a background in journalism, your news release stands a much better chance of getting published.

Whether you decide to do it yourself or hire a professional, properly produced news releases will help develop a positive image of your company to prospective clients and the community. Back to Top