When Don Draper from the Madmen series said, “ Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s the freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK. You are OK.” He knew exactly what his target group wanted. This understanding gave him the leverage to become one of the most sought after ad men of his time.

Advertising is a form of marketing communication used to sell or promote something, usually a business’s product or service. There are different types of advertising based on the medium used. Newspaper, magazine, television, radio and outdoor advertising are the traditional forms of advertising. New age advertising comprises of various forms of online advertising such as Facebook ads, LinkedIn campaigns, Twitter and Instagram ads to name a few. Advertising content writing requires a certain amount of creativity, a good understanding of consumer behaviour and the ability to articulate well.

Today we are going to discuss a few tips on how to write powerful, responsive yet evocative advertising content:

Get your basics right

Advertising content writing is no child’s play. You need to do research to understand what appeals to your audience. Find out what are the preferences of your audience. This might require you to do some amount of primary research and arrive at results based on the data collected. While you do this, don’t forget to do competitor research. This will give you a fair idea of what motivates your audience. You will then be in a better position to influence your target group.

Segment your target market

This is particularly important if you are catering to a particular type of audience. For example, a cosmetic brand will segment their target group based on gender, age, socioeconomic status etc. Similarly, you also will have to segment your audience and then understand their behaviours, their need for your product and what they think about their needs in relation to your product. This information will then form the basis of your advertising and marketing strategy.

Use powerful ideas

Behind the success of every award-winning ad is a powerful idea. It’s only when you communicate boldly that your audience will take notice. Here are a few examples of ads that used impact-making ideas to convey a message and sell their product or service:

Source: http://mindblowingresources.blogspot.in

Tagline: “When you text while you drive, your head is somewhere else”

This is a screenshot from Adflash.eu

Credits

Client: Snickers

Advertising Agency: BBDO, New York, USA

Creative Director: Gianfranco Arena, Sei Rey Ho

Art Director: Gianfranco Arena, Diana Chen

Copywriter: Rich Douek

Photographer: Lahdesmaki, Markku, Malibu

This is an ad copy example found on Behance.

Have a great ad headline

These days people have short attention spans. With the multitude of content floating around on the web, it is not easy to catch the eye of your target group. So, you will need to invest in great content to get your audience to pay attention to your brand. How do you this? To begin with, you need to have a short, catchy and relevant ad headline. The headline is technically the first thing people read in any ad copy. Hence, you need to pay special attention towards this aspect of your ad copy.

Avoid overselling

In this information age, people are more well-informed than ever. They are smart enough to distinguish between fluff and relevant content. The moment a reader realizes that you are overselling your product or service, they lose interest in your pitch. Advertising is no doubt about selling, but you need to do it more organically, in a way that allows people to connect with the message you are trying to convey. So, for writing good advertising content, overselling is a big ‘NO’.

These were a few tips for writing compelling advertising content. If you wish to know more on this topic, refer to our blog post on writing advertising content on the internet.