American advertising, and global for that matter, is a part of everyday life. We are inundated with companies selling the latest and most outstanding products or services from morning to evening. To some, they are just something that may or may not occupy our time while we are waiting for our video to load. To us marketers, we see advertising in a much different light. There are many ways to make a great ad and even more ways to create an awful, forgettable video or image.
With all the smoke and short attention spans of consumers, here is a list of the attributes of a good ad.
- Gain Attention in the First 3 Seconds
- Otherwise known as “The Hook,” the first 3 seconds is your opportunity to grab your viewer’s attention. It is the setup for what is to come in the video. A successful intro can range from asking an outrageous question, making a bold assumption, or an “ice cold” take on a popular topic. Can you tell what we are alluding to? MAKE IT MEMORABLE. Some advertising greats; Purple, Progressive, or Jack Links, all have the memorability factor with their ads.
- So you have the Hook, but do you have the structure?
- Use Structure
- The Hook is fine and dandy but useless without the rest. You need to identify the problem right after to motivate your view to find a solution. Naturally, you would present the solution immediately and then kindly (or rudely, dependent on the brand) and ask for the sale clearly. Regardless of how great you are, there will be some doubt about the product or service. This stage allows for you to resolve those common concerns and establish your authority. The last two stages are a second call-to-action and the outro ( the outro enables the consumer to take action.)
- Don’t Create an “Ad”
- As we have started advertising on TikTok, a commonality of “create TikTok’s, not ads” has been blatantly obvious. TikTok has nudged us as a marketing agency to strip advertising to its fundamental level. People remember great advertisements because it doesn’t seem like an ad. It tells a story and captivates a consumer. Keep TikTok’s phrase in the back of your mind when you are creating content, especially native content.
- Create Native Content
- The content that you are creating needs to be native to the platform. The amount of times our agency sees square images on story ads is overwhelming. Create your content for the medium and placement. Without formatting, you will lose brand authority with your targets.
- Understand your customer Journey
- Digital advertising has allowed marketers to view real-time data from the second you click publish on a campaign. Understanding where your customers are at, where they fall off (abandon carts) or when and where they buy is astronomically beneficial to you. You can offer free shipping and discount codes to consumers that added to the cart and didn’t buy, or even if they stayed on a particular webpage for an extended period. You can target that specifically. Know your buyer’s journey and continue to test so you have a benchmark.
- Test
- We cannot state this enough. Marketers are borderline mad scientists. As a marketing agency, we do our clients a disservice to their entire organization if we are not constantly testing. As you go through every testing phase, you find clear winners. Those winners then get tested against other winners, and bam, you start to create your superstars that perform time and time again.
Creating an ad is easy; creating a memorable and native advertisement can be tricky. Following these steps can help turn your ideas into a reality. Plus, if this doesn’t help, check out Dr. Squatch Soap videos or Purple Mattress videos because they are the kings at advertising in this current moment.
