How to Make Your Ad Stand Out

Marketing techniques, such as creating advertisements, are the backbone of every business. 

With hundreds of entrepreneurs crafting new products and services every day, effective ads let your business stand out from all the competitive noise in your industry. Some of the most significant advantages of an effective ad include:

• Helps you earn profit
• Promotes your product and services to prospective customers
• Widens your audience reach
• Increases brand recognition and awareness
• Helps you gain a competitive advantage

May it be online or offline, making business ads is not as easy as it seems. You have to consider many factors such as ad design and brand voice to make it stand out among millions of other ads out there.

Ensure that your advertisement material can pierce through the eyes and minds of your target market by implementing these ad design strategies.

 1. Pour in Brand Originality

Whether it is scrolling through an Instagram feed or walking in a local mall, people come across hundreds of business ads all the time.

Figure out what kind of unique product, service, or experience you want to bring to your target audience. Show them why they should focus on you alone and not your competitors. Once you find out this specific uniqueness, incorporate it creatively throughout your ad campaigns.

Here are some ways on how to find and show your distinctiveness to your audience.

• Think of a creative, unique selling proposition to use. It encompasses your brand voice, uniqueness, and what you have to offer by just utilizing a one-liner or carefully crafted string of words.
• Include a smart and well-thought-out call to action.
• Incorporate visual metaphors related to your business. It should be comical or clever enough to get your audience’s attention, but not so much that they would not get your meaning.
• Use a powerful headline or an appealing offer that they can ponder on.
• Include a hidden visual relationship with your ad design. This is the usage of two unrelated concepts that, when paired, create a strong message to promote your brand.
• Use iconic people, objects, and ideas in your ads that can represent your brand.

 2. Make It Appealing

Of course, all forms of advertisements should be appealing. However, what we are talking about here is the kind of appeal that will pique the interest of your target group of consumers. 

Identifying your audience is an essential step in all marketing strategies. Your audience’s wants and needs will eventually become your business’s foundation and purpose. You need to know what they want and what appeals to them to be able to market your product.

Dig deep and determine your target demographics, then create an unforgettable ad that they can relate to.

 3. Don’t Tell Them, Show Them

The “show, don’t tell” practice has been a general rule for many forms of art may it be a movie or a commercial, because it actually works.

Your business is not the only one in the market. Millions of others also offer the same product or service, use the same quotes or call to action, and make similar guarantees to consumers. 

The only way to stand out is to use visual representations, ideas, and concepts that allow consumers to experience your product just by looking at your ad. 

 4. Keep It Short and Simple

Ad design is a challenging feat since you need to combine various factors–image, color, size, and font–and hope they blend to create an effective ad.

However, you do not need to exaggerate your ad with splashy designs that overlap with each other and a long explanation of why people should buy from your store.

An average person’s attention span only lasts for about eight to twelve seconds. So if your ad requires a whole minute to be understood, then chances are your audience will not give it the time of their day.

Take note of these tips to craft short, sharp, and straightforward ad copy.

• Keep it simple but make sure to pack it up with quality content.
• Use images and graphics to denote your message instead of filling your ad with paragraphs.
• Avoid fillers. Get straight to the point and present it immediately to your customers.
• Use relatable, one-line puns, and touches of humor to make a lasting impression on your audience. However, it should resonate well with your product or service and brand voice.

Keep ads short, concise, and direct to the point, and let their imagination do the talking for you. Make sure that the audience will only need a glance to understand and remember your ad copy.

 5. Make It Fun and Interactive

Sometimes, you need more than the best headline to cut through the noise. Most consumers have seen it all, so it is hard to actually make them remember you by just giving them a white paper ad copy.

So why not include them in your ad campaign by making it interactive? Many large brands had already used this tactic to grab their viewer’s attention and hold it through interactive content.

In fact, 70% of marketers revealed that an interactive ad design is a useful tool in converting visitors.

Some ways to make your digital ads fun and interactive include:

• Clickable or playable digital copies
• Personalized ads such as quizzes and surveys
• Video advertisements so customers can engage by answering questions.
• Mobile ads like calculators and QR code
• Use augmented or virtual reality.

 6. Elicit an Emotion From the Consumers

The primary job of advertisements is to market a commodity by making a lasting impression on its consumers. Most ads do this by invoking a certain kind of emotion from their viewers. 

With the right combination of visuals and graphics, you can stir the feelings and pull on the emotional strings of your target audience. Some themes that can significantly trigger a consumer include love, friendship, loneliness, achievement, and memories.

An ad’s emotional impact influences a customer’s buying decision more than the ad’s actual content.

Decide what feeling you want to elicit, then align your ad design towards that particular emotion.