What are the essential elements of a good advertisement?
To produce consistently good results, remember the useful acronym ‘AIDA’. This stands for attention, interest, desire and action, the sequence through which you are aiming to lead your reader. • 1. Attention – the first requirement is to get noticed among a crowd of similar advertisements. (Think how hard an ad in Yellow Pages for kitchens or tyres must work to catch the eye.) • 2. Interest – the advertisement must offer something immediately that will engage the reader’s interest. • 3. Desire – the text or pictures must stimulate desire for the product. • 4. Action – your advertisement must encourage people to pick up the phone, fill in a coupon or visit your premises. Small businesses can only justify the cost of advertising if there is an appropriate action at the end of the sequence. In practice, you will normally use four basic elements to produce these reactions. In a printed advertisement, these will usually be an image of some sort, a headline, some body copy and something clea
