Magazine awareness to provide marketing value

Guest post by Tamra Booth, Editor of Vive Magazine

Combining design with marketing? Well, this is absolutely essential if you want your marketing to be effective and to deliver value for money.

Magazines and newspapers are notoriously terrible at making sure their clients’ adverts are effective. How many times do you hear people say, ‘I never advertise, it doesn’t work’. Well, I have a fair few times, but that is because they have had an advert designed that might look pretty but it does not grab the reader’s attention, it does not relate to the reader, there is no call to action, so the reader’s eye moves on to the next advert. If we are sent an ineffective advert by a client then we send it back with suggestions. Our designer has a marketing background. Also we offer packages to clients so they reach their customers in different ways, so a mix of designs to drive home a clear and eye-catching marketing message.

Advertising can and does work wonders but it is all down to this Design/Marketing theory that Alice wisely promotes. Whether online or in-print marketing, a clear marketing objective is the way to go. Otherwise you might as well throw your money down the drain.

Tamra Booth | Editor | Vive Magazine
Tel/Fax: 01753 857855 | Mob: 07798 501549 |
25 Hemwood Road, Windsor SL4 4YX | tamra@vivemagazine.co.uk

Alice’s comments: Tamra failed to mention the importance of headlines highlighting the customer’s pain, the subheading announcing your solution to that pain, bullet points listing the benefits behind the purpose of the advert, provide an incentive-laden, time dependent call to action and make sure your contact details are large, clear and accompanied by a demand to ‘do’ something!

What should you say and how to say it within your leaflet campaign

Quick reference:
How to get your leaflets to start working for you
How to get your successful leaflets to look good

It’s not what you say, but how you say it, that contributes towards a successful campaign. Be aware that your customers come first; after all, your business would not exist without them, so therefore they need to be the main focus for your campaign. This means you need to turn your mindset around to accommodate the fact that your business comes way down the pecking order of importance.

Each element of your message needs to be carefully planned, placed and executed. The first thing at the top should not be your logo and company name. Even though most leaflets and adverts blare theirs out from this position, this only works for worldwide recognised businesses; otherwise the reader’s reaction is ‘who?’ or ‘so what?’.

The main key element is the headline, which should be designed to attract attention. Begin your campaign with a statement or question that stimulates a positive response to your customers’ pain or problem. You should have done adequate market research to find this out, so position yourself inside your customers’ head and start to think like them. Work with something that will result in the reader saying ‘yes’.

The subhead should provide the resolve or solution to the headline, and there you can subtly drop in the name of your company.  I mean subtly, as the solution should always come first. The result should be to increase the readers’ empathy towards what you are offering.

Next highlight your benefits in bullet points. Here most businesses happily list their features, but remember since you are focusing on your customers, turn these features around to their point of view, so that they become customer benefits. Take out all the ‘we’ and ‘our’ and substitute them with ‘you’ and ‘yours’ to achieve this.

Why use bullet points? Readers find it easier to scan or quick read through a list than to trawl through a dense paragraph. In this fast moving 21st century, bombarded with stimuli from every direction, people don’t have the time or inclination to read everything. A list containing concise, focused and relevant points is more likely to be absorbed.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. How many campaigns forget to include a call to action? The remainder of your leaflet could contain all the right ingredients, but if you don’t ask your readers to do something, even to tell them to call you for more information, then what is the point? And by making this time-dependent you are more likely to stimulate a response, otherwise, even if they have the best intentions towards your campaign, there is no stimulus to demand a quick reaction and your leaflet could get forgotten.

And last but not least, make sure your contact details are large, clear and easily accessible. If your telephone number doesn’t jump out to hit them between the eyes, your landing page web-address is not clearly visible, or your email is hidden amongst other text, you will not encourage your customers to make contact. And no customer contact means no sales.

How to get your successful leaflets to look good

The misfortune of the single leaflet (or postcard) campaign is that there is limited space for what you have to say. By choosing only one shot at your potential customer market, you will have to cram in a lot of information into a relatively small space to get the full message across.

The initial reaction, after scanning the grey mass in front of them, is that readers will look for a way out: get rid. Even if all the marketing criteria are met: headline, sub-headline, bullet points, call to action, special offer, contact details, the fact that they are virtually sitting on top of each other defeats their objective.

When laying out your leaflet, the first thing to consider is your margins; wide borders navigate the eye towards a focal point: the message inside. Adequate white space provides sufficient elbow room to allow the leaflet to breathe, so each marketing element has a chance to succeed.

Next, consider which kind of picture you are going to have. Background images can backfire: one particular advert had a relevant picture behind all its text, but it was so complex you couldn’t make out what it was trying to say. Presented by itself it would have been easier to understand its message, therefore providing a more effective contribution.

Another problem with a complex background is that it detracts from the words in front of it. Messages are not easily understood if they have to compete with their surroundings. Clean, clear backgrounds, preferably white or pale in colour, combined with a darker colour for the words, will have far more impact for quick recognition and readability than the reverse.

Pictures should be relevant, and not just a smiling tele-operator who looks good. It’s easy to get a picture off the net that will do, but then it may be so popular that everybody uses it, thus reducing your impact. A good quality, well produced photograph is vital, with excellent focus and presentation within its own frame; a home produced job with camera shake or low resolution taken from a mobile phone will not cut to the chase.

And finally how the leaflet is prepared for the printer will make or break a good campaign. Customers respond to quality, and an obvious product of the office ink-jet will certainly not provide the impression you are looking for. Neither will a leaflet whose pictures are not converted to the printers’ resolution, as failure to do so will result in flat, 2D, uninteresting images that also suggest low quality.

Also the kind of paper or card used will make a difference: good quality with a clean finish will easily sway the customer to read, absorb, understand and therefore take action – ultimately resulting in a sale.

Postcard Pointers for Pertinent Promotions

This is my version of the subject on postcards mentioned a few posts ago:

Take another look at the humble postcard. Size A6, although appears small, is actually quite versatile (and fits nicely into a C6 envelope if necessary), and even though it’s dimensions restrict the amount of content you can fit on it, there is no reason why you should stick to only one at a time.

Set up a series of postcards as part of a promotional exercise. Think of a story you would like to share with your prospective customers, or isolate valuable items or points you would like to tell them about. Put together a coherent message in separate episodes using a connective theme, target your audience, decide on a timeframe, chose which day they will receive your postcards, and remember to get them professionally designed and printed.

You will make it easier for your target market to cope by sending out your mail-shot in manageable bite-sized amounts, because at the end of your campaign you will need to call each recipient to ask them if they have received your postcards, find out what they thought of them, ask if they struck a chord with their business and whether they interested in what you are offering.  Restrict your mail-outs to a small number at a time to make the follow-up a little easier and less daunting.

Using this slow trickle of reminding advertising will give your potential customers a chance to remember you, especially if the theme is clever, relevant, amusing or eye-catching.  When you do make contact, remember to listen carefully to their answers and take their lead to arrange a meeting with them to discuss their part in your campaign.

What to include in your postcard

The beauty of the postcard is that it can be used in so many ways.  Both sides can be filled with information, or one side only with a picture that is relevant, coercive, stimulating, funny, different or influential. The other face could be designed like a postcard with separate areas for the message and address.  If you’re doing a long-term campaign remember ‘more is less’, especially if your message is thought-provoking, contains an incentive-laden cliff-hanger, or maybe includes a series of clues to culminate in the final issue.

An excellent headline is vital to draw attention to your reader.  Make it short and snappy, rememberable by being amusing, using gimmicks like alliteration or playing on a colloquial phrase, or posed in a question leading to an affirmative answer relevant to your purpose. A sub-heading or catch-phrase will help emphasise it further, or even explain or support particularly ‘clever’ examples.

Advertise your solution to your customers’ pain by highlighting your business benefits, arranged in a scanable format with jargon-free, simply digestible words. Add a time-induced call to action, laced with gifts or incentives, to keep the momentum going.  And make sure your contact details are always highly visible, just in case they don’t want to wait until the end of your campaign.

Presentation is always important, as good quality and well designed publicity reflects well on the professionalism of your company. Care should be taken on the materials used, colours and fonts for modern and noticeable effect, and layout for efficient use of space. If you want to know more, then just go ask Alice!