Having Trouble Marketing to your Customers, maybe you’re giving too much away

Go online anytime of the day and you will see ads popping up in front of you and to the sides trying to get your attention. Many of those ads are placed by software programs that are just looking for open space to place them in but majority of the time the ads are either loud, annoying, or packed with too much information. The common response most people have to those ads are to close them out or mute them if they have made it hard to find the close button which is more of a reason not to listen to their ad. For me, the best solution is to simply turn off the speakers to my computer if the advertiser has made it difficult to close or mute their ad.

The surprising thing though about ads is that sometimes there are those that catch the attention of people because it gives them enough information in a very short period of time, many of which don’t even use words, to tell us what we need to know about the product or service. Those are the ads people want to see because it lets them get back to what they were doing quicker.

The Design of Simple
Apple is known for starting such a revolutionary way of advertising. When Apple ads started coming out after Steve Jobs came back, you could tell who was in charge because he made sure that enough information about his products were conveyed with as little wording as possible, most of the time with none at all. He always felt that if the product itself is not able to speak for it’s own design then he failed his company but now when you look at Apple ads, you see the look and feel of the product but also get a sense of what it could do. Take a look at some of the ads below that Apple created and think about why they worked.

You can see the fun and usefulness of their product but also their design. Why do you need to explain how much space they hold, or how big they actually are, or how long the battery life is when you can display the fun they bring to your life instead. That is more appealing than words on both sides.

Ads that convey usefulness of a product shows the practicality of a device in use with an app. The keyboard app shows customers what they would be able to get with their iPad if they bought one. They might think that if they can play a keyboard on their iPad then they might also be able to record their music and upload it for others to hear, or they might be able to load it into another program to add more instruments to it. All that ad showed was a finger playing a note but the consumer did all the thinking for them.

So how do you design an ad to tell your customers exactly what they need to know without saying much? You can provide just what needs to be conveyed.

1. Use Visuals more than words
Ads used to be covered with copy because companies thought that the more information you provided to customers the better their decision making process. We know this to not be true now because if you overwhelm a person’s though process with things that are irrelevant to their purchase decision then they will move on to the next product. Why do you need to know the exact size of the batteries it takes or the name of the city in which the processor was built? You don’t.

– An ad that is trying to sell a high end calculator might be better off showing a student working through their homework with no problems because they have their calculator in hand with all their work in front of them.

– A seafood restaurant that wants to advertise that it’s fish is so fresh that it could show a gif image of the back of the restaurant with fishermen throwing in fresh fish straight from their hook into the kitchen and then the chefs preparing it and the waiters serving it all within a few seconds. The whole process is entertaining, interesting to watch and learn from, but also informative about just how fresh their seafood actually is. All without saying a single word.

– Apple did an ad where all it showed was a hand holding up one side of an iPad to show how light and thin it was without saying anything on the ad.

2. Make your Ad Entertaining
The seafood ad is an example of using a looping video to create the illusion of a mini movie where it tells the story of how the restaurant is able to claim the title, “freshest seafood around.” The ad also holds people’s attention because it is not screaming anything, it is not trying to get you to read anything, it is just showing you how they work. Reality TV shows do the same thing, they take ordinary situations and add something to them that make people think what they are watching is interesting and useful. The same goes with this ad, a person who watches it learns how seafood restaurants work.

Lego is known for inspiring people to imagine great things and then building them. That is why their products sell so much now. But their ads simplify that whole thought process in what they are trying to accomplish. if you look at this ad by Lego you will see that it takes a few takes to see what the message is and once you get it, it sticks. You, as the customers, did all the work of convincing yourself of why this product is great and useful to buy.

3. Provide Short pieces of information that people can trust
If you have a complicated computer that needs a lot of explaining then you might be better off showing people why other people enjoy using it so much. A quick Vine video or gif image might be the best way of doing that because if you give people a brochure of what makes this computer so great, you already lost them. The trustworthy information comes about from what people are getting out of using a computer that is actually complicated. Consumers can watch the video and add their own thoughts to what they are seeing

The same can be said of print ads and even online content in blogs, news articles, and anything else. If you provide information in short bit size bites then people will end up getting more out of it because you made it easier for them to get what they were looking for.

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Creating simple ads that catch people’s attention is not easy because the natural thing now for people to do when they see an ad is to close it out because it blocks what they are trying to do or is screaming for their attention. Think how an Apple ad would look in all the clutter and see why your attention keeps falling back to it. The next time you are stuck with trying to catch the eye of someone think how simple something would look to make it stand out more and you can test out which one is more effective, the simple ad or the ad with lots of wording and see which one gets more hits.

News Articles

The Secrets to Apple’s Success

26 Simple Ads to Study

Design Your Marketing Around Something Unexpected

Most ads from companies are centered around what their product can do for their customers but many fail to show off what else their products are good at. In his ad, Caterpillar showed their products as part of a game that most people have played. The ad is both engaging and fun to watch but it also show cases the usefulness of what their machines are capable of doing. It also caught people’s attention because they were used in a way that most people are not familiar with seeing construction equipment being used. This explains why the video got so many hits on youtube.

When trying to figure out how to showcase your product or service, look for a surprise that most people are not expecting. In the second video you have a company showcasing their product with another set of their own products are are considered heavy duty and dangerous to be around if not careful. Most phones are very light and break easily but they showed their phone in all kinds of situations around a construction site. They use their about section to also talk about each different machine that was used in the video. You will also notice that when someone asked where they could buy one of their phones, someone from Caterpiller responded to their comment about how to do that and if they needed help where to email them. That is what great customer service on social media is all about, meeting the needs of your customers.

Interested in learning how the internet ad industry works? Becareful, Calculus might be easier to learn

Ads online can be very annoying to watch, so annoying that many companies make it very difficult to find where the close (x) button is. Many infact make it invisible or blend into the background or super tiny to see. The rules start there must be a button available to mute and/or close an ad, but the rules didn’t say anything about how big or small they needed to be or where they had to be located.

The online ad industry is a very difficult industry to study and understand if you are a company, startup, or entrepreneur who would like to understand how ads are placed online. Infact, this industry is so difficult to understand that learning calculus would actually be easier because that information will still be the same next year, the online ad industry won’t.

Large companies find their ads misplaced on websites and when they try to find out why, it’s a game of cat and mouse because their insertion order doesn’t necessarily mean it will be followed if the space available is gone. Then it is sold to another media buyer who will try and find space for it, if none of available again, then it goes down further until it ends up at the bottom of the website or on websites that the company doesn’t want connection to.

Read about the full industry here

Infographic: The Mother of All Online Marketing Infographics

Selfies with your favorite products are noticed in the marketing world

Kraft recently enlisted the help of Ditto labs, a small start up company, to help target who their consumers are exactly by using computers to analyze photos of people with their products. They want to know how people are using them, in what context they are taking photos of their products, and what that means for promotions and marketing.

Whether you are launching a business for the first time or have been doing it for awhile now, you need to know how your customers are using your products, and there is no better way to know that than with the pictures people take with your products. Using technology that law enforcement has been using for years in tracking down illegal photos online, companies, like Ditto Labs, are now using it to find where their products are on the internet. Sites like Tumblr, Flickr, instagram, twitter, and facebook are now being data mined from public information (i.e., photos and videos) in order for companies like Kraft to analyze their results.

Your Photos and videos with your favorite products say more than a thousand words