How to Craft the Most Effective Advertising Messages

You might think you know what your customers want, but do you know what they need? If your advertising messages are too broad, too narrow, or focused on the wrong points, your customers will tune them out. Here are some helpful tips to help you craft the most effective advertising messages to help grow your brand!

Who to Create Your Advertising Messages For

The bulk of advertising messages are what we call “one-to-all” communications. In this case, brands broadcast a single message to the masses. However, customers aren’t sunglasses and one size certainly does not fit all. That means your first step in creating an advertising message is deciding who you want your audience to be. 

Don’t just look at demographics; do a deep dive into the comprehensive makeup of your audience, looking at things like social media use and interaction, socioeconomic goals, problems, and behaviors. You should be able to break down your audience into customer profiles or representations of a specific customer type. 

Use those profiles to create unique advertising messages that appeal to each individual customer profile. Some messages might appeal to more than one customer profile. Since your customers like to feel valued, remember to craft personalized messages. This approach is called “one-to-one” communications, and it’s the most effective form of advertising messages. 

Ultimately, your goal in creating these messages is to solve customer problems in a unique, differentiated way. That means the next step, once you’ve locked down who you’re creating your messages for, is to make those messages persuasive. 

How to Create Persuasive Advertising Messages

Your audience should be able to easily deduce how your product or service solves their problem. To that end, you should use a strategic mix of images, video, and copy replete with both statistics, appeal, and your brand’s point of differentiation. 

For example, if your brand sells skateboards, you might do well to incorporate photos and videos of popular skateboarders using your products, testimonials from satisfied customers, descriptive product listings with engaging images, and something to separate your skateboards from those of the competitors. Maybe your skateboards ride 50% more smoothly or your wheels last two times longer. Whatever the case, leave no doubt in your customers’ minds that you are the best, you have the best, and you offer the best experience. 

Decide how you want to frame your messages. Do you want to focus on positive aspects your brand exemplifies or negative aspects of other brands upon which your brand improves? Do you even want to concede the existence of the competition? Or is it more beneficial to act as if your brand is the only choice? 

Obstacles to Overcome

Your biggest obstacle is the inherent biases that lie dormant in your audience. These can be personal, like the confirmation bias, or general, like the halo effect. First, however, you have to make sure your messages don’t go overlooked. 

People have a tendency to ignore weak stimuli. There is so much going on around us these days that we make subconscious decisions on what to pay attention to and what to overlook. That means it’s important to make sure you do what you can to make your advertising messages stick out. 

That’s where the halo effect, or the tendency to evaluate a person, object, or place based on a cursory, one-dimensional evaluation, comes into play. You want to make sure your audience doesn’t craft an unfavorable first impression of your brand based on your advertising messages. To that end, refer to your original content strategy!

As for the confirmation bias, it’s up to you to change your audience’s mind. If they have a preconceived notion that a competitor is better than you, changing their mind is a tall order. Avoid preaching statistics; instead, try to offer an experience. If they can see for themselves that using your product or service will evoke a positive emotion or lead to a positive result, you’ve put yourself in the driver’s seat. 

Advertising Isn’t Easy

Crafting successful, engaging advertising messages that lead to conversions is no easy task. It requires a fundamental understanding of your customer base, including how to appeal to multiple facets of their personalities, as well as making important framing decisions, all while overcoming tricky obstacles. At the end of the day, however, if you do it correctly, your audience will notice-and your bottom line will too!