The past week’s posts have been about two things, making sure your ads hit the intended target (your best clients or customers) and avoiding the pitfalls commonly associated with poor advertising.
If you don’t read anything else on my blog, this past week alone should save you thousands of dollars in misspent advertising and make you thousands more by pointing you in the right direction. If you have missed some of the action and don’t subscribe to the weekly newsletter recap, then this is what you have missed so far.
Construction Marketing Online – A Primer
10 Ways to Ruin Print Advertising
The Good, Bad & Mostly Ugly Part of Contractor Advertising
Why You Should Fire Some of Your Clients
Using Other People’s Money to Market Your Contracting Company
Today, as promised, I am going to give you the 10 rules for successful contractor advertising. They are:
- Users assume nothing and contact the companies from the ads that give them the most complete and useful info
- Ads that users identify with and can identify to receiving the benefits work the best
- Ads that are easy to understand, clear in content and have lots of open space
- Bullet points and lists are your friend
- Headlines need to be large, benefit-specific and between 8-10 words long
- Give plenty of reasons for people to do business with you
- Listing credentials and affiliations improve the response
- “Value” pulls better than “Cheap” or “Lowest Prices”
- Pictures and graphics that help the consumer relate to the benefits
- Seems obvious, but give people a reason to do business with you
At the end of the day, you want to make sure your advertising communicates the benefit to the user, is informative, easy to read and gives the reader a reason to call. If you can get these key ingredients into your advertising copy, then I assure you your chances of success are much better than those around who don’t!
Photo Credit: Jeremy Levine Design