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How important is the layout of a print ad? Well, considering that most small businesses spend the majority of their marketing budget on display ads (aka print ads), the layout is critical. This is especially important because display ads almost never bring the anticipated and much needed results desired by business owners and marketers. There are many “industry secrets” you need to know to get the response you need to make a profit from a display ad.

What does that mean to you? It means if you are going to run an ad in newspapers, magazines, event programs, or anywhere else, you want to know how to maximize your opportunity and investment by designing the ad for maximum response. You also need to know how to place an ad for maximum response.

The following tips will prove VERY valuable to you…

ALWAYS use a dark black thick border around your ad. It will draw the reader’s eye to your ad without the expense of two colors and without paying for larger ads

Whenever possible, on the outside of the thick dark black border, use dashed lines like those typically seen around coupons. At the psychological level, this border implies a value or savings in your display ad.

And speaking of coupons, use a coupon or other direct offer (free special report, free consultation, etc.) in every display ad; this is active, direct marketing - USE IT EVERY TIME!

DON’T LET THE PUBLICATION’S STAFF DESIGN YOUR DISPLAY AD OR WRITE YOUR COPY! Typically they have sales people do this work — and let’s face it, they are sales people, not Brilliant Marketers. Use the ad layout you create in this course.

Commit to running the ad a MINIMUM of seven times - in the same place… and don’t change it up much. That is the most effective way to get the maximum number of new customers and return on your investment. IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO RUN THE DISPLAY AD SEVEN TIMES… DON’T RUN IT AT ALL… use your marketing dollars on other activities.

Although larger ads statistically pull better response rates, if you design your display ad as recommended in this lesson, you can get the higher response rates using the smaller, less expensive ads

Run your ads on the days you are open and/or the days that will target your market; for example, Wednesdays are typically the day food is featured, Monday is sports, and Fridays are entertainment focused

Every ad should contain your benefits and features, a coupon or other direct call to action (yes, I know I am repeating that - but it is important), borders (same), contact information, a map or major crossroads, your URL, headlines, testimonials, picture or graphic (if space allows), and rapport messages

INSIST that you ad is placed in the front section of the newspaper on the right-hand side, on the top half; for the same money this statistically pulls a higher response

Do not use ALL CAPS in your ad; they are hard to read. If you absolutely have - and I mean just have to - use them, do so sparingly

Ads with people in them typically pull a higher readership rate; photographs are statistically more effective than drawings or clipart graphics and photographs of babies pull the absolute highest readership rates

Okay - there you have it… a good number of really valuable tips to immediately improve your response rates when using print (display) ads.

Alex Barrington, author of Brilliant Marketing! specializes in providing micro-businesses and start-ups the most practical, valuable marketing information available. To maximize this opportunity for all, Alex has created The Brilliant Marketing! System; to get a copy of the free ebook by the same title, click into http://www.brilliant-marketing-for-small-business.com/brilliant-marketing-free-download.html

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An effective and compelling way to market your business is through the use of success stories. What exactly is a success story? How does it market my business? How can I get started with my own success stories?

Consider the following:

What exactly is a success story? A success story briefly describes how your business served a client/customer and what results the client/customer achieved. Think of this as a real life example of how your product or service helps customers achieve their goals or solve a problem.

How does it market my business? A compelling success story will include the original client problem or goal, the specific product or service used with the client, and some tangible results that occurred. Prospective customers can better understand what your product or service does and most importantly, see some actual results. This will make it even easier for them to make the “buy” decision.

How can I get started with my own success stories? 3 simple steps will get you started:

1. Write a brief description of your best success story. Include a. Problem or goal b. Solution implemented c. Client testimonial. This can be a few paragraphs at the most.

2. Get permission from the customer to use the success story and testimonial in your promotional materials along with actual company names and contact information. If you don’t have permission, use generic industry categories to describe the company and position names to describe any people that may be involved.

3. Use the success story in the following ways a. Your website b. Your brochure c. Press/News release d. ezine or newsletter e. Article for publication f. Face-to-face exchanges and speeches.

Remember to ask for testimonials with all your clients/customers! Over time you will add new success stories to your portfolio as your business grows and the list of satisfied customers increases. Most satisfied clients are very willing to help in this way. Take a few minutes and add success stories to your marketing toolkit today!

Copyright 2004, Charlotte Farrior

Charlotte Farrior of Coaching Connection (http://www.corporatecoaching101.com) and Founder/Team Member of Solo-E (http://www.Solo-E.com) is a corporate and professional coach. She works with professionals, entrepreneurs, directors, and executives to define and achieve the personal and business goals they set for themselves. She coaches in the areas of goal setting, skill development, priority management and career transitions.

Find more articles like this at http://www.Solo-E.com, the lifestyle-inspired online learning and connection community. Visit now to receive a free copy of our special report, The Four Secrets of Solo Entrepreneur Success, plus a complimentary 30-day membership.

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If your community is like most, when you open the Yellow Pages to your industry’s section, you find the following:

Anywhere from five to 70 pages of ads (depending on the number of companies doing your kind of business)

The front part of the section is filled with full page or even two full page ads

If there is a graphic in the ad, it is either a picture of the business owner or store front or logo

If there is any sort of a “headline” on the ad, it is either the name of the company or a generalized but totally meaningless statement such as “no job too big . . . or too small” (sometimes there’s even a wasteful heading that says something like “need a plumber?” No, I was just looking in the P-L-U-M-B-E-R section because I need a C-H-I-R-O-P-R-A-C-T-O-R.)

There is generally a long list of types of jobs that the company handles such as (in the case of a lawn service) mowing, mulching, fertilizer, leaf removal, trimming, edging, pruning, seeding, snow plowing, hauling

There is one, or at most two, ways of contacting the company for information, usually in the form of a “free estimate” as the only offer being made in the ad Now, looking at those ads, imagine taking the name of the company out of a particular ad and simply pasting it into one of the other ads in the same section of the book. If you switched the names of the companies all around, would it make any difference? In other words, is there any real difference at all between the ads?

If you were the consumer in need of goods or services provided by your company, how could you go about differentiating one business from the next based upon their Yellow Page advertising? Can you begin to see now that there is almost no useful information for consumers in the Yellow Pages? (By the way, you could do this same experiment with most TV or radio advertising as well.) Think about it. Switch the names around. Most businesses have a terribly difficult time differentiating themselves from one another in a very crowded market place.

For the consumer who is doing “research” and is in search of a carpet cleaner, for example, there is almost no useful information currently available in any media typically used by carpet cleaners. Does size of an ad matter? Maybe. But carpet cleaners can continue to beat each other’s brains in buying larger ads, more pages and more color. This is nothing but shouting louder. In marketing, “shouting louder” means spending more money. (How about the most useless thing I’ve seen in years? Lawyers buying two yellow pages, side by side, with exactly the same text and photos on both pages! What - they couldn’t think of anything different to say on the second page?)

There are vast possibilities for you here. People do not pick up the Yellow Pages just to generally thumb through the book. When they go there, they are looking they have a specific need or want that they are trying to get help with. If no one else is giving them any useful information in the Yellow Pages, then your ad, no matter how small or how far back in the section, can make it drop dead easy for the consumer, because virtually no one thinks “outside the box” with their Yellow Page advertising. You can vastly increase the number of inquiries to your company by providing real access to useful information that no one else is giving them.

My law firm has been very successful in developing and implementing a method of advertising in the Yellow Pages that can used by any business. (In fact, I “stole” it from another type of business.) This method not only does not require me or another staff person to respond “live” to the request for information, it also gets free information in the form of books, reports and audio CD’s into the hands of callers long before they have an opportunity to get in to see another attorney for an in person “free” consultation.

Our Yellow Page advertising says nothing about us or our law firm! Instead, we market several consumer books that we have written. These books were amazingly easy to write, cheap to publish and deliver a ton of information that not only educates the consumer but “sells” our firm as the obvious choice for their case.

The object of this style of legal marketing is simply to (1) offer something that looks different and then (2) make it as easy as possible for the consumer to initiate contact with you in a non threatening way that rewards the consumer by delivering comprehensive information materials to them to read or listen to on their own time, in their own house or in their car. We do this through toll free recorded message lines and through a variety of small, one page web sites that we have developed.

This is called “direct response marketing.” Here’s how it works. You attract their attention with an unusual headline (i.e. the book title) then make it easy for them to request information. Then, through the use of tantalizing bullet points (”Why service provided by some lawyers can be the kiss of death to your case”, or, for a computer repair company, “Why a free download from the Internet can be the kiss of death for your PC”) you stop their search and they receive and read our materials. They have not had to call to talk to someone live. They do not feel that they are going to be pressured by an aggressive and persuasive sales person. They understand that in most cases there is no urgent rush in the process of making a buying decision. In fact, if they slow down a bit to get more info, they’ll do a better job of making the right choice. And if, in your information materials, you have clearly communicated to them exactly what type of jobs your expertise and level of experience is best suited, for then you will have essentially provoked the very good set of higher qualified potential clients or customers you want to contact you and to beg you to take their business.

This sets you up as the wise man on the top of the mountain, with a long line of people waiting to get in to see you.

Benjamin Glass (http://www.BenGlassLaw.com) is a personal injury and medical malpractice attorney in Fairfa, Virginia. He is the author of the Ultimate Personal Injury Marketing and Practice Building Toolkit. (http://www.GreatLegalMarketing.com)

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