Marketing and advertising are essential to driving sales, but sometimes you might feel like you’re getting less than stellar results from your efforts. That’s why we’ve laid out the following 5 tips that can be used in any ad campaign to engage consumers and drive action.
Keep reading if you want to start getting better conversion rates today!
1 - Communicate the Value to Your Customers
This should be the first and most important goal of all of your ads. In a competitive business, effective marketing is more about knowing your customer than anything else. Approach every ad campaign thinking about what makes your product or service valuable to your target customer, and then center everything else around communicating that message well.
Why should consumers care what you are offering? Why should they even want to read the rest of your ad? Will they save money? Impress their friends and family? Have more energy and sleep better at night?
Lead with your main benefits and make sure the message gets across by making it clear and noticeable.
2 - Use Numbers
Consumers respond well to seeing numbers such as pricing, discounts, promotions, and incentives. Numbers grab the attention of scanning eyes, help frugal shoppers make buying decisions, and provide compelling support for your benefit statement.
If your benefit statement is about the affordability of your product or service, for example, it would be far more compelling to see, “Get this affordable [product or service] for just $5.73 a week ... that's only 82¢ a day!” rather than simply, “This [product or service] is affordable.”
The numbers illustrate just how affordable it is and make the statement more believable. Additionally, as the above example shows, the smaller the unit (days vs. weeks and cents vs. dollars), the more affordable the cost is perceived to be.
What’s more, if a consumer sees pricing information in your ad and decides to take action by visiting your website or coming into your store, you know they are not only interested in the product or service you are offering but also prepared to pay the price you are charging.
3 - Include a Clear Call-to-Action
One common mistake we see our clients make is to not include a call-to-action within every ad. It’s not enough to list your offer’s benefits and then hope the reader will take action – you’ve got to tell them exactly what they need to do.
Often associated with webpages, emails, and other forms of digital advertising, a call-to-action is equally as important on print media. Without a clear call-to-action, a potential customer is much less likely to convert to a customer. They may not know the next steps to take and are likely to leave your ad without accomplishing anything.
Do you want them to call a specific 1-800 number for more information, visit your website, or sign up for a newsletter? Maybe you want them to clip out a coupon and bring it into your store for 20% off. Whatever it is, you want to be sure to let them know with a clear call-to-action that stands out on your ad.
If you want to get an even better conversion rate, try including more than one way for customers to take action. A Direct Marketing Association study found that ads that offered prospects more than one option of how to respond (say calling a phone number OR visiting a web address), got a higher response rate than those ads that only offered a single option.
4 – Create a Sense of Urgency
Maybe you’ve heard people mention the cultural phenomenon of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), and you’ve probably even experienced it yourself, but you may not have realized that this social phenomenon can actually be used to drive sales! Making people feel as if they’re about to miss out on a great opportunity is a powerful way to drive conversions.
The longer someone deliberates over whether to buy your product or service, the more likely it is that they’ll talk themselves out of it. If you can create anxiety in your audience with the idea that your product or service might not be available in the future, people will be much more likely to take quick action and make a purchase.
Urgency can be created in many ways. You can easily do it by setting deadlines for limited-time offers or advertising a sense of scarcity with terms like “limited quantities” and “while supplies last.” This is also a great place to use numbers to advertise things like, “only 50 available!” or limited offers such as “first 15 orders get free shipping.”
Like many other techniques, urgency is best used in moderation. Don’t try to put pressure on your potential customers all the time. Instead, focus on periodically offering great deals that really are limited.
5 - Be Creative
Creativity in advertising has been defined as “the extent to which an ad contains brand or executional elements that are different, novel, unusual, original, unique, etc.”
Numerous experiments have found that creative messages get more attention, lead to more positive attitudes about the products being marketed, and ultimately raise sales revenue more than standard advertisements.
Even so, many advertising campaigns are anything but original. The typical detergent spot shows a homemaker satisfied with an even whiter wash; perfume ads feature picture-perfect models; and cars cruise through beautiful landscapes free of traffic. Tying these familiar products to unexpected people, places and things can make a huge difference.
Tide is one company that pushes the boundaries of the products they sell to consistently offer up creative ads. Take their 2018 Super Bowl ads as an example, Forbes called it the most memorable ad campaign from that year's game—which has become just as much a competition of creative advertising as it has a competition between football teams. Using traditions and imagery associated with other major companies and industries, Tide surprised and delighted viewers by claiming that every ad is a Tide ad because the people in them are always wearing clean, stain-free clothes. They found a way to simultaneously poke fun at the advertising tropes consumers have come to expect and make their benefit statement of stain-free clothing abundantly clear.
You don’t have to have the budget for a Super Bowl ad to set yourself apart by thinking outside the box and creating fun, unique, and visually stimulating advertisements and promotions that consumers will respond to. Start taking the time to surprise people.
Bonus Tip: In a world where consumers are continually inundated with advertisements, a strong offer can be the difference that makes or breaks your campaign. One of our clients was recently trying to get people to sign up for his text marketing list by advertising on social media. For weeks he offered 15% off their first purchase if they signed up. He only received three responses. We decided to switch things up and had him post a giveaway promotion of a big screen TV just in time for the start of football season. To enter the giveaway people need to sign up for his text marketing list. Over 100 people signed up in just the first three days! Boosting his conversion rates didn’t require us to change anything major like his call- to-action or marketing channel—his offer just needed to be a whole lot more compelling.
Looking for help getting your ads to convert? Contact a Banner Marketing Rep to get started on your next great campaign today!
