Advertising plays a significant role in marketing—all the good advertisements make a difference, but bad advertisements differ from each other in their failures. Based on the “three stages of advertising”, we cannot ensure a classic advertisement that can be awarded, but non-error one of 80 scores can be produced.

Three Stages of Advertising
Advertising usually comprises three stages: the first stage is displaying the differentiation in main slogan; the second is writing your credential; the third is exploring your tempting functions.

 

The first stage

The second stage

The third stage

 

Displaying differentiation in main slogan

Writing your credential

Exploring your tempting functions

The First Stage: displaying differentiation
We can never think that the slogan is a matter of the marketing department. In fact, the slogan is related to the brand’s competitive strategy. A good advertisement is characterized in that differentiated selling points must be contained in the slogan and can be converted into sales terms by sales people to use.

Types and characteristics of good advertisements

1. Explicit solution expressed by concise sentence
   In the main slogan, the demand  of consumers that the product can be satisfied is directly explained. The sentence must be concise enough without excessive adjuncts or any redundant words.
2. Dramatic expression
   Consumers are often deeply impressed by the advertisements of breaking stereotype and non-conventional expression. Such advertisements are dramatic and are easy to create a refreshing feeling.
3. Presentation in style of news
   Everyone has seen the news. Due to the habit having been cultivated for many years, most consumers believe in authority and objectivity of the news when they first hear it.
4. Problem posing advertisements
   It refers to asking questions in the advertisement and give a solution. For instance, the question is: “Are you afraid of traffic jams, congestion, and hurry?” Then the answer is given in the next sentence.
5. More Expressive
   Please believe that speaking is the origin of human beings. Good sentences—spoken language, slang and polite formulas—are simple enough, and are particularly easy to stir the minds of consumers.

 

The Second Stage: writing your credential
A new brand needs to utilize credential to stir the minds of consumers and enhance the trust of consumers. Credential is a set pattern. To convince consumers, you have to use the following 8 points that they generally believe.

1.  Intriguing follow-suit by hot sale

The so-called hot sale is actually the “psychology of conformity”. This kind of characteristic is a strong credential of a brand, which is easy to trigger consumers to follow suit. The hot sale will affect the minds of consumers, and the classic method of making hot sales is  hunger marketing that sells out of stock. Queuing can also lead to hot sales—people tend to choose the restaurant of longer queue to eat.

2.  Endorsing with favor of opinion leaders

Favor refers to the preference of a particular group or individual for a product, which is also a social identity. The specific expression of favor includes endorsing of fashionable stars, groups or institutions, or online celebrities.

3. 3.  Highlighting status of leading brand
4.  Shaping professional image with authority of experts

Generally, people have an inherent cognition of an institution or business that focuses on something or a particular product: since it is an expert or insider in one area, it must have more experience or a higher taste and more strict requirements.

5.  Providing a senseof security for consumers with long history
   Products with a long history often provide consumers with a strong sense of security.
6.  Creating the brand’s non-duplication with the pioneer image
7.  Impressing consumers by excellence of manufacturing method
8.  Blocking opponents with a novel upgraded generation

The third stage: temptation of functions
After a detailed introduction to the ways of writing the main slogan and the credential, let’s turn our attention to the temptation of functions. Temptation of functions, also known as benefit presentation, is the most abundant source of differentiation, such as advantages of being delicious, beautiful, durable, fast, safe, portable, easy to use, funny, developmental, moisturizing, and skin whitening, as well as functions of anti-dandruff, hemostasis, anti-aging, fast settlement of claim, good environment, good service, energy conservation, strong effect, long lasting, quick acting, painlessness and the like.

The main point of function seduce is simple but powerful, which means using shorter paragraph to explain the benefits that can be brought to the users, and directly hitting the user’s weakness.

How to Improve Conversions with Pictures and Typesetting

Advertisement is basically an image expression, in which text content is one part, and pictures and typesetting is the other more important aspect. What we said before is how to differentiate the selling points through the text focus, and now let us talk about the advertising pictures and typesetting.

The main visuals of the advertising pictures are roughly divided into the following five types:

1. Product-based main visuals
   There are different forms of advertising picture main visuals. It means that using a certain product as the main part of the visual, so that consumers can see the purchasable products through advertisements, and their desire to purchase is directly stimulated.
2. Result-based main visuals
   That is, what kind of changes can be made to you or what kind of service you can enjoy through using a product. The old saying goes, “Words are but wind, but seeing is believing.” Consumers are more willing to believe what they see with their eyes, then we should make the effect of the product “proven by a picture.”
3. Service using scenario-based main visuals
   The advantage of directly using scenario is that it allows users to have a more intuitive understanding of the service. The brand essence is shown as much as possible to stimulate the user’s sense of immersion, and ultimately to break the user’s psychological defense.
4. Spokesman-based main visuals
   As the name implies, it means that the spokesman and the product are placed in the same picture. Many brands would invite stars or celebrities to endorse, and this is another form of expression of credential. Many stars have followers and admirers, and every word and action of the stars will attract their attention. Wherever the stars appear, such as on a big screen, a billboard next to a highway, or a TV or poster in an elevator, people always want to see them and what they are doing. Therefore, the main advertising visual based on spokesman will significantly increase the audience contact rate of the advertisement, and the brand awareness will also increase. Of course, the money paid for endorsing of A-list celebrities and B- and C-list celebrities are very different, and the effect of boosting the brand also varies widely. Hence the choice is a matter of opinion.
5. Text-based main visuals
   As the graphical design is more likely to attract users’ attention, most of the advertisements we usually see are mainly based on patterns and supplemented by texts. However, we can also take the text as the main part. Of course, the appearance of the text is not random in such a main visual. After putting forward the slogan that highlights the brand differentiation, displays credential and temptation of functions, we need careful typesetting, modification and processing of the text.

This involves our next topic— typesetting.

1. Typesetting headline

For advertising images, the safest typesetting method is the “three stages of advertising” mentioned before. The first step is putting the main headline in a sufficiently eye-catching position, followed by credential and temptation of functions. I prefer simple but powerful ads, which may be opposite to opinion of 4A advertising companies at this point. For instance, the ad of GANI MARBLE TILES (“high-end decoration with GANI MARBLE TILES”) shows standard “three stages of advertising”: the main title accounts for 1/3 of the overall advertising screen; and this typesetting will never be wrong. Under this circumstance, the aesthetic feeling should give way to the effectiveness of information transmission.

1. Typesetting color

After the “three stages of advertising”, let’s look at the color. Generally, apart from white, the alternative is using bright colors or white as background. The complicated picture is a mistake often seen in many advertisements. The most important is the advertising content, so we should not blindly pursue the diversity of colors.

Finally, we would provide you with a checking method: randomly send the designed advertising pictures to several people, let them see for three seconds; then ask them how many contents in the advertisement they can recall, and check whether they can remember the main slogan and the name of the brand. Language and brand name. If they can remember, the advertisement is basically qualified; if not, please abandon the idea of leaving things to chance. We often say that “market is the sole criterion for testing advertisement.” If you can’t even impress random users, you can never think that the market will give you a positive response.