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Four top tips on how to create effective marketing material in an ultra-competitive market.
Gone are the days when any advertisement would get you noticed. With the ultra-competitive marketing environment of today, only the fittest marketing materials end up surviving. As such, it’s essential that your business has its marketing under control and its message refined to its essential, sales-ready elements.
Whether you’re designing marketing materials for a trade show or an online banner advertising block, these four tips can help you put together ads that catch eyes, build interest, and create real leads for your business. Whether you’re a small business or a large company, read on to learn how you can improve your marketing materials.
1. Look the part. Keep your marketing materials focused on your goals.
There’s a saying in business: “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” For a company, the saying can be adapted while still maintaining its core message: “target the customers you want, not the customers that you already have.”
One of the most important aspects of creating eye-catching marketing materials is ensuring that you’re targeting the right audience. Make your business look like the type of business you want it to be and you’ll start attracting the right customers.
This can be as simple as adapting your fonts and logo to create the impression of a big, powerful company. If you want your business to grow, create an identity that’s already big and the other steps to growth will rapidly complete themselves.
2. Create something different that lets you stand out everywhere.
In the late 1990s, Apple Computer had a brilliant strategy for attracting attention without spending too much on advertising. While their competitors would run ads touting their technical specifications, Apple would run one-minute ad blocks made up of nothing but inspiring stories, all under their ‘Think Different’ banner.
The idea was to stand out, and for Apple, it worked. The same principle extends to other forms of marketing. At trade shows, use portable exhibition furniture that’s strikingly different from your competitors. In magazines full of full-colour ads, run banners using nothing but text and old-fashioned advertising sales copy.
The key is to stand out everywhere. If you want to generate attention in settings where you’re directly competing against other businesses, focus on making your differences obvious in the style of your marketing materials. By using a style that couldn’t be more different, you’ll stand out and always attract attention.
3. Understand where you’re marketing and adapt your message to suit.
Credit card companies are masters at tailoring their message to suit a wide variety of audiences. For lower-income demographics, they focus on the financial security that credit can provide, emphasizing its value in the short term. For middle-income audiences, they focus on aspirational spending and ‘keeping up with the neighbours.’
Different settings and different audiences might benefit from different marketing materials. If you’re advertising somewhere new, consider adapting your materials for the audience you’re addressing and adjusting your message to better suit their needs.
4. Use several ‘hooks’ to catch the attention of customers.
There’s more to marketing than just snappy headlines. One of the best ways to build marketing materials that generate large amounts of interest is to use several ‘hooks’ to catch the attention of would-be customers and potential clients.
If you’re exhibiting at a trade show, for example, your booth should have all of your product’s major benefits listed on it. Why? Because every person that walks by has a different problem, and listing only your core benefit may not pitch a solution that all of your potential customers could benefit from.
Use several ‘hooks’ and you’ll catch more business. A hook could be anything from a key benefit of your business to a unique selling point. Anything that offers value to your customers is a good hook – use as many as you can in your marketing materials to make your business appeal to the largest possible audience.
*This article was written by Display Wizard, a UK-based exhibition display provider. Visit their website to learn more about creating the ultimate exhibition marketing display.