Anatomy of an Ad

With warmer weather, green grass and blooming flowers, we know summer is quickly approaching. And with summer comes a whole new blitz of summer-oriented ads. With the warmth of summer come outdoor activities, family beach trips and summer vacations so, of course, it’s great for advertisements to capture that sunny spirit of summer. As new ad campaigns are gearing up for the changing season, we’ll dive into the anatomy of a good ad to help your financial institution market and communicate effectively to capture your customers’ interest and prompt them to act.

A Good Ad Connects With Its Audience

Connection with the viewer needs to be accomplished within just a few seconds. Jamie Turner writes in an article for the 60 Second Marketer that the average viewer looks at an ad for only two seconds: 1.5 seconds in observing the visuals with just 0.5 seconds in looking at your copy. His advice? Hook the reader within those two seconds. Research across many advertising platforms show that viewers have a 26 percent higher recall of photographs than of artwork. In this annually awaited season, choose vibrant photographs that capture summer nostalgia and evoke emotions to promote products that appeal to different individuals – everything from photos of a sports car with the top down on a warm day, to a walk on the beach at sunset.

Once a strong photo has been chosen, turn your attention to choosing the right headline. Moz reports, “80% of readers never make it past the headline.” Digital advertisers must remember to capture the attention of the reader. While months or years are spent developing the product, mere weeks or even days are spent creating the communications – whether it is a webpage or marketing collateral materials to support that product.  Sometimes, it’s even ignored that it comes down to the strength of the ad headline to determine whether or not people care to learn more about the product you have invested so much in.  A good headline is short, memorable, and evokes an emotion in the reader. Using clear wording surrounded by “white space” is effective, too, so the reader is not confused by the message nor need to hunt for relevant information. Effective advertising does not fill up every area of an ad; rather it allows room for the message to connect.

This limited time and space may encourage the notion that the ad or commercial must be full to the brim with information. This is misleading, and merely creates a cluttered, schizophrenic ad that becomes lost among similar amateur efforts. It is far more effective to develop a concise, coherent ad that appeals well to its audience.

-Agama Advertising

Speaking of “audience,” it’s important to clarify that the audience is not one mass market but instead is made up of diverse individuals of different demographics, needs, and wishes.  So, one ad headline will not appeal to everyone.  Each individual or category of individuals deserves their own thoughtful headline that appeals to them and evokes emotion. That may seem like a lot of work, but that’s what data-driven marketing is all about.  More work perhaps, but significantly better results and returns on that investment for sure!  More on this later.

A Good Ad Clearly Directs To The Next Step

Even with a memorable image and catchy headline, without detailing the next step the viewer should take, your advertisement will not get the results you want. A call to action is the incentive for the viewer to act immediately. Your ad’s call to action needs to be thoughtfully created to maximize clicks. Unbouce recommends that you call the viewer to action by using practical language and active verbs. By avoiding jargon and industry terms, you are creating a customer-focused strategy that keeps their need at the forefront of the ad. Tell the reader what to do with words like “Act,” “Apply,” “Check,” “Learn”, “Click,” “Contact,” “Discover,” “Save,” or short phrases like “Don’t miss,” “Don’t wait,” “Find out” to engage the reader and create a sense of urgency. This call to action also needs to be visible and not surrounded by clutter. While many organizations feel the need to give details of the product, remember that the ultimate goal of the ad is to convert viewers to act, so less is indeed more.

A good ad is one that is written and designed to emotionally connect with its target audience. Once connected, your ad’s rhetoric strongly persuades its consumer to want the product or service. The individual recognizes a need for it and feels a sense of urgency until the purchase is made.

-Epic Marketing

A Good Ad Is Targeted To Its Audience

While the average bank or credit union offers more than twenty financial products at a minimum, the average consumer holds an average of 7.4 banking products across all their various relationships, excluding investments.  This demonstrates an important fact that many financial institutions miss in their marketing: not all products are a good fit for all customers. An effective ad is targeted to the audience that will find it most relevant. The Small Business Chronicles says, “A big part of developing an effective advertising campaign is knowing exactly who your target audience is. Chances are the product or service you offer will not appeal to everyone, so it is important to identify the segment of the population that is most likely to need what you have to offer.”

DeepTarget’s powerful platform enables the automation of targeted offers by mining your data for the perfect consumer product/service mix and using smart rules to deliver the right message every time. For example, a targeted offer sent to a group of people identified to be appropriate recipients because of their stage in life, might say “Your dream home is just a click away with our home equity line of credit rate of just 3.75%.” Even more impressive, DeepTarget can send personalized offers unique to the recipient in that it can contain their name and an offer that is specific and customized to them, such as “Craig, you have $25,000 available at 2.75% on your home equity line of credit.”

To understand its power and the results that our customers are seeing, you only have to review a few of the testimonials that we have received from our financial institution clients, such as this one:

“We are extremely happy with the way DeepTarget supports our Digital Marketing Strategy!  DeepTarget allows us to engage our members in our online and mobile channels, targeting each generation with relevant products at their best financial time.  We have been able to easily implement our own creative graphics and messaging into DeepTarget’s campaign engine and the analytics show our results have been outstanding!”

-Ashley Baldeon, Marketing Creative Manager, Andrews Federal Credit Union

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Why waste valuable marketing dollars? Instead, plan on a software ROI frequently over 500% this summer! Contact us today at sales@deeptarget.com or 256 217 4055.

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