An advertising message is an idea an advertiser wants to communicate to their target audience. Its goal is to convince people to perform a certain action, such as registering, purchasing something, or making a reservation.
Why is an advertising message important?
- It allows you to skyrocket your brand awareness
- It helps keep your customers engaged
- It educates your prospects
- It helps you understand your audience
- It increases your sales
An advertising message is a bridge between your brand and its clients and prospects. Communicating the right idea at the right time and to the right people allows brands to build trustful and long-lasting relationships with their audience. Therefore, developing a killer advertising message can provide businesses with a lot of tangible benefits. Check them out below.
- It allows you to skyrocket your brand awareness. Well-thought-out advertising campaigns go straight to the hearts of your clients. Companies that go beyond selling enjoy better brand awareness and recognition. For example, Canon launched a #selfieless campaign on Christmas Eve, which was symbolic. They encouraged people from all over the world to capture not themselves but their good deeds to share altruistic vibes and inspire.
- It helps keep your customers engaged. Clients can stop buying from you just because you don’t interact with them. Hence, they simply forget about your company. However, targeted and highly relevant promotional offers will definitely strike the right chord with your audience. They will appreciate that you know their problems and offer the best solutions.
- It educates your prospects. Leads are not ready to buy immediately. They may not fully understand the way your service works or how to make the most out of your products. Besides, they can get stuck at any stage of the sales funnel. Via an advertising message, you can offer them solutions to cope with their problems. As a result, you’ll be in the right place at the right time.
- It helps you understand your audience. Analyzing the way your leads and customers interact and respond to your messages will provide valuable insights. You’ll get to know which offers, channels, and tactics work better for your audience.
- It increases your sales. Each benefit listed above results in a sales increase. If you communicate your message to the right people via the channels they prefer, you can boost sales. Advertising during holidays, clearances, and other important occasions will work in your favor.
Now you know the benefits you can get by using advertising messages. It’s time to move on and explore the components of a killer ad.
Components of an Advertising Message
It doesn’t matter whether you choose online or offline advertising. The structure will be the same because the nature of human perception predetermines it.
Let’s break it down into five components.
- A headline. This is the first advertisement element a user notices. It should be eye-catching and informative since it is usually placed at the top of an ad. A headline conveys the main idea of an ad, so marketers need to do their best to create a selling headline. It can be presented as a promise, breaking news, a command, or a question. To make readers read further, it should be short and unambiguous.
- A sub-headline. The advertisers sometimes omit this element, but you can’t underestimate its power. A sub-headline can support and continue your headline. It’s usually placed right under it, so it’s difficult to leave it unnoticed. If your headline is a question, a sub-headline can be the answer. These two elements complement each other perfectly. A sub-headline may be longer than a headline — up to a sentence.
- Copy. An advertising message copy should answer all the possible questions a user may have after reading your headline and sub-headline. This is just the place to showcase your product value. Consider performing a thorough analysis of your target audience to sort out the most important benefits that can help solve your clients’ problems and sell your product.
- Images. This element grabs second place in attracting user attention to an ad after a headline. Images assist you in visualizing your product, demonstrating its benefits, creating associations, and keeping your customers interested.
- Call-to-action. CTA is an action you want users to take after reading your advertising message. It should tell them directly what they should do next to evaluate the benefits of your product. It can say “Buy”, “Visit a website”, “Book a seat”, “Reserve a ticket.”
These are the main components each ad message contains. You can include more elements, but you have to ensure they don’t distract users’ attention from your message. The shorter — the better.
Now, we’ll share some tips that will help you create a killer ad.
How to Create an Advertising Message
Creating a perfect headline and adding a nice image is not enough. If you create an ad for the first time, you should go through more steps to craft a highly relevant and targeted message. Follow them below.
- Analyze your target audience. You can create a great ad in terms of marketing, but it won’t pay off if you target it to the wrong person. Analyzing your audience will provide you with valuable insights. Find out who your target market is, get to know the gender and client’s average age, and learn their social status, education, income level, or place of living. Answering these general questions will make you familiar with your audience and uncover the best promotional channels.
- Identify your customers’ pains. Every client chooses your brand because they believe you’re the best choice to solve their problem. Consider conducting research to identify your customers’ pain points. You can do this with the help of interviews, polls, surveys, etc. Get to know which unique features they need and can’t find among your competitors’ offers. This technique may be the key to your success.
- Select the best advertising channel. Your target audience analysis will tell you about the channels they prefer so that you can invest in them without wasting your budget. You can create ads for social media, paid Google Ads, run retargeting campaigns to reach leads already interested in your product, collaborate with your partners to develop native advertising, and promote your product in YouTube videos. All of these formats are not free. We recommend that you start with email campaigns. SendPulse allows you to send promotional emails to 500 subscribers every month for free. You can educate your audience and showcase your product from the best angles via emails.
- Master each component of an advertising message. Avoid using clickbait headlines since they can be ambiguous and scare away your audience. Brainstorm all your product’s benefits and include the most attractive ones in your ad copy. Design them as a list so that your users can easily perceive them. Make high-quality photos of your product to add them to your message. Craft a clear call to action. It should be the final chord of your ad. Make sure the link works and is easy to click.
- Analyze the results and act on them. Track how users interact with your ads. For example, if you promote your product via email campaigns, a low open rate shows that you’ve failed to create an attractive subject line; low CTR indicates that your message doesn’t resonate with the audience or hasn’t met your subscribers’ expectations. These findings will help you improve your strategy.
Now, let’s take a look at some excellent examples of advertising messages.
Advertising Message Examples
In this section, we’ll share some examples of advertising messages from different online channels to help you get inspired.
Sephora
Sephora ran an ad campaign on Facebook to target the users who visited their site and viewed products but left without buying. They focused on Americans interested in makeup and skincare. The brand collected the products a prospect likes according to their behavior on Sephora’s site. After a user taps a specific product, they are redirected to the corresponding site category.
This way, Sephora had reached leads who had not been ready to purchase and increased their sales volume.
Chain Reaction Cycles
The brand offers its email subscribers to get free tires with several wheelsets. They add customers’ reviews to make people trust them. Subscribers can click “Shop now,” and they will be redirected to the necessary item on their site.
Chelsea FC
If you own a physical store, SMS marketing is just for you. Ask your clients to share their phone numbers to receive messages about hot deals, upcoming sales, and special offers for their birthday. This way, you’ll retain customers, increase their loyalty, and boost sales. Chelsea FC does that right. Check out below.
Congrats, now you know pretty much everything about advertising online. Follow our tips, get inspired by the examples, and make use of SendPulse marketing tools that will help bring your business to the next level.
References
- This article explains what makes an effective advertising message.
- This article provides the 18 best advertising messages of all time.
- This article offers five steps to create a winning marketing message.
Last Updated: 21.03.2023
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