As people become more immune to advertising, the importance of creating an advertisement that catches the attention of your target audience and encourages them to respond and buy your product or service becomes vital. A bad advertisement vanishes into the background whereas a good one jumps out and grabs attention.

Before creating your advertisement, clarify your objectives. Every advertisement should have an impact on sales from the day it is launched. Forget about the idea of using your advertisements to build awareness of your product or service. Brand building advertisements are an expensive luxury for small to medium-sized businesses. Your advertisements need to sell, sell, sell!

Clarify what you want to sell and to whom.

Decide how you are going to get the business. The use of special offers, promotions and incentives is becoming increasingly important. It gives people a reason to do business with you.

When you target your advertising, you know your audience and what they want to buy, and you know the words with which to connect to them, and which publications or media to use to reach them.

Focus your advertising on people who you know already buy products like yours. They are already converted and want the type of product or service that you offer and are ready to buy.

Clarify how much money do you want to spend, what do you want to get for the expenditure and how are you going to measure the success of the advertising?

Realise you are not selling a product or service but the solution to someone’s problem. Understanding what people want and what motivates them to buy from you is absolutely essential. Most people don’t understand what they are selling. They are selling solutions to people’s problems.

Research your market. Find the people who will be buying what you have to offer. They will give you loads of free advice which can make your product or service better.