Production Values and Selling Values Perceived Risk Basic Marketing Tenets and Beliefs Print Ad Creative Strategy Chasing Demographics

Print Ad Creative Strategy

Here’s the best way to lower the CPI and the CPO in print advertising

Use strong and clear headlines to pull people into the copy and remember that cute and clever headlines almost always fail

Subheads must scanable and communicate without the reader having to think

Copy must be loaded with key USPs to give people reason to respond

Emphatic testimonials allow us to say what we can’t say ourselves

Graphics must support the headline and copy and should always be captioned

Serif fonts in body copy and less leading increases readability and allows more text

The more complicated the product, the larger the purchase decision, the more straightforward and linear the message should be

Simple declarative headlines with no puns, play on words, or cuteness are best

Redundancy is not a problem

Copy that explains the headline and subheads and tackles objections directly works best

Graphics and ad format are information dense because if you can’t get them to read you can’t get them to respond

These strategies also work in other media.