10 Effective Advertising Techniques and Characteristics

Hi and welcome to Inbound explained! In today’s video, we’re going to review
10 characteristics of effective advertising.
As consumers, we’ve all seen our fair share of ads that wow us, and ads that, well, don’t. So
what makes the difference? In both traditional and digital advertising, there are a few
characteristics that make an ad effective, or not. So, let’s take a look at what those factors are:
1. It’s Promotional 
The definition of advertising is to promote or draw attention to a product or service
in order to encourage sales. This means effective advertising must be promotional.
Good advertising focuses on influencing purchasing habits. A good advertisement is promotional in
nature, though this promotion can be more or less subtle depending on the ad’s objectives.
2. It’s Persuasive Effective ads must convince
consumers that a certain product or service is better than the competition's. Persuasive
advertising assures that a product can solve a consumer’s need or improve their life in some way.
Remember those lessons about ethos, pathos, and logos from school? Effective advertising uses
these tools all the time, like appealing to consumers' emotions, winning their
trust with their authority, or using logical reasons to justify the purchase of a product.
3. It’s Part Of The Company's Overall Marketing Strategy 
The most visible side of advertising is definitely on the creative sides,
like TV spot or social media ads, but behind that creativity, there is also a lot of strategy.
Effective advertisings should be aligned with the global interests of the brand or company.
4. It’s Targeted In the past, advertising relied
on mass media such as radio and television to reach as wide an audience as possible.
Effective advertising in today’s world requires highly targeted and segmented audiences.
Every brand has a buyer persona or ideal customer profile they are trying to attract. The more
focused your advertising is on a particular audience, the more effective it will be.
5. It’s an Investment Advertising campaigns require
an investment of time, resources, and of course, money. Generally,
the channel issuing the advertisements charges a certain amount in exchange for its dissemination.
A good ad campaign will increase the company's profits, should exceed the invested cost. To
understand the relationship between costs, advertisers measure the campaign’s ROI (return
of investment). A positive ROI indicates that the advertising campaign has been a success.
6. It’s Original It’s no secret that advertising
suffers from market saturation. Think about it, we are exposed to hundreds of ads a day in
different formats, and most of the time we don’t even pay attention to them. Therefore, effective
advertising stands out from the competition by using unexpected formats and resources.
You can grab a user's attention by emphasizing the novelty of your product or service,
offering a great deal, or doing something completely out of the box.
7. It’s Creative Whether it be a video that tells a story,
an attention-grabbing image, or a catchy jingle, effective ads use creativity to stand out and make
a brand immediately identifiable or memorable. The best creative ads manage to surprise users,
move them to action, and become instantly memorable, all while remaining faithful to
the principles of the brand or product. 8. It’s Consistent 
Truly great ads stay consistent to the core of the brand and the values associated with it.
Consistency in advertising also allows for greater brand recognition
and memorability. Therefore, a key aspect of advertising is consistency. Ideally,
each consumer within the target audience should receive enough impact to remember the brand
and its message, but not so much that it becomes annoying or saturated.
9. It’s Personalized Personalization is an increasingly
important trend in recent advertising and it’s getting easier than ever. Truly effective ads are
increasingly personalized to the characteristics and needs of a particular user. E-mails with
personalized content or remarketing ads with products from a user’s cart a great examples.
10. It’s Ethical Because of its persuasive power,
advertising should prevent promoting misleading information or sharing unethical campaigns.
While there are several public bodies that regulate the ethical aspect of advertising,
it is also essential that advertisers and agencies take responsibility.
In the end, honest and clean advertising reflects the values of the advertiser,
contributes to improving a brand's image, and is beneficial in the long run.
I hope these 10 characteristics can inspire you in your next advertising campaign! If you have any
questions, feel free to drop us a question in the comments section. If you want to learn more about
marketing or inbound marketing, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ll see you in the next video.