Three tips to make your print advert perform better

Flicking through a local magazine lately, I had a few cringe moments when I saw some of the adverts businesses had gone to print with. Spending £100’s on a print advert to get very little return from it because you didn’t get a decent advert made, seems such a waste.

Most of the issues I saw were quick, simple fixes. Yet I see them time and time again. Fixing them will make your advert stand out, enable your intended audience to better understand what you do, and portray your business in the best possible way.

So when you commission your next advert to be designed, make sure you’re taking note of these little tips:

1. Don’t use so much text content!

I know you’re passionate about your business and you want to tell everyone absolutely everything you possibly can about it because it’s amazing and wonderful and you sell the best products and you have offers that are difficult to ignore and your customers say brilliant things about you and the benefits they get from it will far surpass the, sigh, I’ve forgotten what I was saying…

Fact is –  attention spans are short.

Nobody is going to sit there reading a 200 word advert. Make it snappy. Make it memorable.

Selling products? Pick one or two to showcase.

Selling services? Focus on one message.

Pick out the best benefits, communicate only those. If you’ve taken out a repeat advertising bundle, change the advert each time. That way you can see which advert performs best and have some feedback on what your target audience actually are interested in!

Less is more!

This is the single biggest issue in print advertising I see on a daily basis, especially for small businesses.

2. Don’t use too many images!

Pick a hero image, and try to stick with just one. Two at a push. All those little logos that you’ve crammed on the bottom to show your accreditation or explain more about your product/service? Get rid. Your website can explain more. Competing visuals make clutter, and clutter causes confusion.

The image/s you use should be real attention grabbers . And if you haven’t got an image that oozes quality, find one.

Depending on your product/service there are some really great options out there. Free sites such as  Unsplash and Gratisography, or if you need something a little more niche you can find affordable stock images on Shutterstock or Adobe Stock.

3. Take your audience on a journey.

The eye naturally starts from top left of the advert and moves towards the bottom right. The most effective advertisement helps this journey by laying text out along the natural ‘route’ across the page. Don’t break this up too much with icons, sticker graphics, bells and whistles. Don’t forget the call to action. Once the reader has finished the journey – what do you want them to DO? Don’t give them too many options.

There is more to creating the perfect print advert, and if you would like our help with that then

Lyndsey