How to create advertising that sells

I make direct response digital ads for B2B companies for a living and companies spend tens of millions of dollars promoting the ads I make because they work so well.<p>The most important part of making a digital ad is what I call the Visual Headline, or the text on the ad image.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pasteboard.co&#x2F;gAxVYKbjH9kc.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pasteboard.co&#x2F;gAxVYKbjH9kc.png</a><p>Basically you just need to test out big positioning text, it makes up 75% of B2B ad performance.

How to sell advertising that sells:<p>Prerequisites:<p>- get out of my face<p>. ...and ears...<p>- stop profiling me<p>- stop following me<p>- just get out of my life, entirely.<p>Done? Good. Now pick up an old &quot;Computer Shopper&quot; magazine and see how it was done: all info, no lifestyle. Make people <i>want</i> to read your advertising copy and they will read it. If they are in the market for the products you&#x27;re selling they will consider you as an option if the price is right and the product seems to fit the bill. Don&#x27;t lie, don&#x27;t exaggerate, just inform.<p>In other words, this will never happen because neither the prerequisites nor the recipe fit the bill when you&#x27;re selling desire and pipe dreams.

People are obsessed with feeling special, feeling informed, feeling unique. How about giving me a product that&#x27;s all those things? Give me what nobody else does. Give me a flagship phone with a headphone jack and a 16:9 screen, give me a laptop with mouse buttons, give me a 3:2 desktop monitor, give me a videogame with one price tag that&#x27;s made to just be a good game.

&gt; Our Mercedes-Benz advertising is positioned to fit nonconformists who scoff at &quot;status symbols&quot; and reject flimflam appeals to snobbery.<p>I guess it depends on the market, but driving a Mercedes to me screams status symbol and snobbery.

&gt; 8. Be suspicious of awards. The pursuit of creative awards seduces creative people from the pursuit of sales.<p>I don&#x27;t know if such awards are common all over the world, but I have always found them puzzling. You should already be happy and feel awarded if you help your client with great sales.<p>The same thing with movie and music awards. You make something and you reward should be the joy of knowing that the people are enjoying your performance; easily measured in many ways both in former days and now. Instead these artists get multiple awards: The recognition in &quot;the market&quot;, the payment, the awards . . .<p>I would rather see awards given to people unselfishly caring for other people; people working unpleasant shifts in the scorching sun or blistering cold to make the society a little better . . . They should have awards!

If you are advertising, don&#x27;t forget your existing customers. For many products (consumer products like cars or food; business products like SAAS or corporate furniture) selling to the people who have already bought your product is at least as valuable as using it to find a new customer.<p>For repeat sales (ketchup) it&#x27;s good to remind people so that when they are at the shop they&#x27;ll remember to buy it again (assuming they liked it). Same works in business: we bought Dell and the CFO was happy so next year I&#x27;ll call Dell and see if we can expand our deal.<p>Also, before social media, it was important that Chrysler specifically advertise to their customers so that they would tell their friends how happy they were with their Chrysler.

Did you notice that most of the claims in this article are stated as facts but not explicitly supported by data? There is good reason for that. Advertisers have strong opinions about advertising but outside of the digital marketing space they have few ways to get good feedbacks. They do market studies but it’s very hard to decisively link sells to advertising. It’s something to keep in mind when sizing your advertisement budget.

1 comment in 2 hours.<p>Guess the title at least did not sell that well (I too did not even read the article).