Ad Design Tips and Services
We can help
you create:
- Web banner ads
- Text ads
- Video ads
- E-newsletter ads
- Landing Pages
Lake Quincy’s Creative Services
Here are some tips to help you design your banner ads to be as effective as possible.
If you need just a little more help than these tips provide and don’t have the luxury of an in-house designer, we can help.
Our experienced creative staff can help you with writing, designing and developing
new ads.
Contact us for details on our affordable, design solutions.
Tip #1: Nothing sells better than a compelling offer.
Your offer is your “hook.” It’s the part of your ad that tells what’s
so special about this particular advertisement and why the reader/viewer
should act now. Here's a sample offer:
FREE $250 Credit
for new customers!
Make sure the offers in your ads stand out and pack some punch. Offers should be short and enticing. After creating an ad, show
it to some colleagues to get their feedback. The best offers
are ones’ that make your colleagues say, “Wow! What a deal.”
or “I can’t wait to find out more about it.”
You have something compelling to offer everyone who sees your ad or you
wouldn’t be advertising. Make sure that viewers of your ad know
immediately what it is and are as excited about it as you are!
Tip #2: Showcase your brand with consistency.
Recognizability is key in advertising. It’s a good idea to change the
look of your ad on a regular basis, but don't change the look
of your brand. Keep your logo and its colors the same. Consider
keeping your logo and tagline in the same place across all your
different ads, too. Keep your brand consistent and recognizable.
Tip #3: Cool and pretty isn't always better.
As explained in Tip #1, your offer is key to attracting attention.
Keep this in mind when designing your ad and make sure the look
of your ad is created to support your offer, not just to look
cool. The most effective ads designed to get response generally
aren't attractive at all. In fact, they’re intentionally gaudy
in order to get attention, be read and get clicked. Take
a look through the car ads in the newspaper and notice what stands
out to you first to see what we mean — they’re gaudy!
Now, after saying that, we don't mean to imply that your ad shouldn’t
be professionally designed. A professional-looking
design will make an offer easy to read, but many professional
graphic designers are much more concerned in how cool the ad
looks rather than how enticingly it presents the offer.
General Ad design principles:
- Avoid promoting features. Instead, focus your ads on a single, key benefit.
People buy because of how they'll benefit from a feature, not from the feature itself.
Don't rely on the reader of your ad to make the connection.
- Keep banner file size small. The faster they load the better.
- Focus your ad on only one point.
- Avoid blinking text or animation that runs too fast to be read. Fast animation is good
to get attention, but if your offer is part of the animation, make sure it runs slow enough
that it can be read casually. Consider holding each frame at 2 seconds or more.
- Make sure your ad has a compelling offer. Include the word FREE if you can. (e.g. FREE DOWNLOAD)
- Have your ad professionally designed by someone who understands marketing principles.