Advertising Tips Which Will Prevent You Losing Money

The goal of advertising is to get people to act. Advertising is not journalism. It’s not news reporting. When you write an ad, you want people to do more than just read and simply say, “Wow…great ad!” and then toss it into the kitchen trash on top of the grapefruit skins. Drew E. Whitman

I couldn’t agree more! Why do companies do advertising? To enrich the creative team’s portfolio? Or maybe to win an award? Of course not. The ultimate purpose of any ad is to generate revenue. Anything else is a waste of resources. As my beloved David Ogilvy says: A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

This time I collected some tips to make your advertising even more effective. Let’s check them together!

The FOMO Factor

Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is the real pain in the back for us — consumers. We hate missing the final day of promo campaigns. We crave to get the product at all costs if the stock is limited. All the pro advertisers know that the fear sells. It moves people to action, because it suggests loss. In order to craft an effective fear appeal, your ad must contain believable recommendations for reducing the threat that are both credible and achievable. Use the fear factor but don’t scare people out. Your “fear and its remedy” must go in a bundle.

Social Currency

People would rather look smart than dumb, rich than poor, and cool than boring. What we talk about unambiguously shapes our image in the eyes of others. Therefore we want to talk about useful, fun, cool, and interesting things like a blender that can tear through an iPhone or tips about how to stay fit while gobbling burgers. This is called a social currency. So to get people talking we need to craft messages that help them achieve these desired impressions.

Laziness

Yes my dear reader, we humans are lazy creatures. We want to be satisfied now. We wanted results yesterday. We love low hanging fruits. The good news is that we’re ready to pay for it. One of the masterminds of advertising Claude C. Hopkins says “changing people’s habits is very expensive.” Then why not use them? In two simple steps you can get people into action:

1. Make it easy to act, and then
2. Ask for action (Yes you have to. There is a reason why “click here” button is not called “maybe you might want to click here”).

I believe that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death. Leo Burnett

Selling The Benefits

For Odin’s sake, stop boring us with information that tells nothing. I hate your more-than-30-minute commercials. If you sell microwave ovens, people don’t want the big electrical box with all the fancy buttons. They do want to be able to cook and eat quickly so they have more time for other things.

Is a benefit the same as a feature? No! The features are the attributes. The benefits are what you get from those attributes. Example:

Product: Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé.
Feature 1: Top-grade hand-selected seat leathers.
Benefit 1: Luxurious comfort in all climates.
Feature 2: 453 horsepower, 6.75-liter V-12 engine.
Benefit 2: Power, control, supreme reliability.

Social Proof

People have an innate drive to copy others’ decisions and behavior. When more people approve of something, we’re more likely to like it too. “90% of people do X. Don’t do X!” — research shows that this strategy makes people perform X more because they see it as the norm.

Opinions from others who are similar to us are especially valuable. Social proof works especially well when it is not clear what the correct decision or behavior is in a specific situation.

Anthropomorphism

When a brand or product is seen as human-like, people will like it more and feel closer to it. Anthropomorphism makes us bond with objects. When we anthropomorphize, we think that the object, brand, product, or animal is actually more like us. We tend to add thoughts and emotions to objects in a similar way to how we would experience things ourselves, which stimulates liking and empathy for the object. The more we like an advertised product and have “feelings” for it, the more likely we are to bond with it, and thus buy the advertised product. A phone that understands you, an armchair that hugs you, a mug that kisses you…

If you an advertising pro what would be your recommended tips?
If you a consumer what makes you hate and love an ad?

Comment your opinion below!

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Bibliography:

• Cashvertising: How to Use More Than 100 Secrets of Ad-agency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone by Drew E. Whitman.
• Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins.
• Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy.
• Hidden Persuasion: 33 Psychological Influences Techniques in Advertising by Marc Andrews, Mattheis Lars van Leeuwen, and Rickert Bart van Baaren.