Kate Herzog, Niche Publications Coordinator

Investing in your company with effective advertising is crucial to maintaining your brand awareness, growing your businesses, and informing your customers about your products and services; but what makes your ad effective? Three main things to strive for are, good text, effective layout, and a clear message.

The text of your ad should be enticing: creative headlines, language that makes the potential customer want to act, and a clear place for your contact information and logo.

Effective layout is also very important. Look for good use of white space, balance among the ad’s elements, and consistency in fonts, colors, and shapes. Poor layout makes an ad difficult to comprehend. Use one dominant visual element in your ad for a clean and clear message.

And lastly, but most importantly, what is the message you are trying to convey? Ask yourself what you want the ad to do or what you want the reader to understand? It seems simple, but it’s easy to get wrapped up in layout and miss the ad’s message.

Take your ad to an unbiased third party and ask them to inform you what the message of the ad is. Be critical with the look and message of your advertising and watch the positive results come in.

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