Lesson 7: Advertising and the Press
Types of Advert
There are many different media which you can use for advertising before you reach the point of needing help from a professional agency. Newspaper and magazine small ads are easy to design. You may also consider buying larger sections of page in such publications; they have advertising departments which will talk you through how to do this.
Adverts starting from a quarter page upwards are guaranteed to be noticed by the majority of readers. Obviously, the larger your advert is, the more important it becomes for you to make effective use of spacing, fonts and colors. Although larger adverts give you more room to talk about your business than small ads do, you should be wary of including too much more written information. Including further contact details is advisable, but these should usually be in quite a small typeface at the bottom of your advert. It's advisable to make your business logo bigger and to use just one or two catchy phrases which readers (especially after repeated exposure to the advert) are likely to remember. We'll discuss writing phrases like this in lesson eight.
Businesses operating in the entertainments industry (eg: bars, restaurants and cinemas) often advertise using flyers. These are small printed sheets usually about six inches by four, in black and white or color, providing a brief description of services available and an address. They can be left in similar venues (with the permission of the staff there) for customers to pick up, or they can be distributed by hand, through letterboxes or directly to people who look likely to be interested. Because flyers are a cheap way of advertising, they are rarely delivered using postal services.
A cousin of the flyer is the business postcard. This has become increasingly popular over the past decade, and is used by many design companies as well as entertainment organizations. It is sometimes used by banks and by food companies aiming to attract the attention of young people. Even the British Army has used such postcards as part of a recruitment drive. Producing your own postcards is more difficult that producing flyers, but there are a number of agencies available who will transfer your designs into postcard format and print them for you quite cheaply. The advantage of postcards is that (unlike most flyers, for reasons to do with paper quality and convenience) they are double sided, so your contact information can be printed clearly where it won't distract from your logo and picture(s). Business postcards are usually left (by arrangement) in cafés and bars where customers can browse through them. As well as attracting young people, they are popular with those interested in the arts.
Full leaflets advertising your business are usually best designed by specialist agencies, or approached only when you have gained experience and confidence using other methods of advertising. However, there are some exceptions. Restaurants offering food to take away often deliver leaflet versions of their menus to nearby residential properties. These may include photographs of the establishments so that customers can more easily find them if they wish to visit in person. Other businesses offering locally based services, such as tanning salons and hairdressers, sometimes make use of simple leaflets. The public do not generally expect such leaflets to be of high quality, so they more easily forgive mistakes and poor print quality; they are not so patient with larger or more remote businesses.
Locally based charities often distribute leaflets which they have designed themselves. Because most people are well disposed toward charities from the outset, these do not need to be a high quality in order to attract positive interest.
To improve the impression which leaflets give, you should ensure that they are printed on glossy paper with a colored logo and/or a photograph on the front page.
Special events and campaigns can be advertised effectively using posters, which can be put up in entertainment venues and some public buildings by arrangement. Posters should be designed like scaled-up versions of part-page newspaper and magazine adverts. Because they're designed to be seen from a distance, you shouldn't use the extra space for extra text which will be impossible to read without closer inspection.
