Types of Advertising Techniques that Work

The main goal of any advertising campaign is to persuade the target customers to buy the products and services of the company. For the success of these campaigns, the advertisers employ a number of creative and intelligent techniques. These techniques are the strategies which the advertisers feel will grab many eye balls. Today, when target customers are bombarded with so many advertisements for a plethora of products and services, it has become very difficult to get their attention. This is where these time-tested advertising techniques come handy. Scroll down to know in detail the different types of advertising techniques that work...

Before moving on to learn about the effective advertising methods, let's have a look at the mediums of advertising available today. Here is a list of these mediums:

• Internet Advertising
• Television
• Radio Advertising
• Print Advertising i.e. newspapers and magazines
• Cinemas
• Billboard Advertising
• Telephones
• Yellow Pages
• Direct Mail Advertising

For a successful advertising campaign, an advertiser should know which of these medias is to be used, when it has to be used and how. Coming back to the advertising methods used in advertisements, those that have been successful in the past is endless and they vary from product to product. Given below are some of the most common techniques that we see today.

Sex Appeal
To sell a luxury item, advertisers often rely on "sex" as a technique of advertising. So, you see lots of advertisements for products like cars or perfumes or hotels, which show semi clad women and men, exuding sex appeal!

Highlighting the Benefits and Quality
A method that almost always works, is to highlight the "benefit" that the product will have on the target customer's life. For example, a water purifier advertisement showing a small baby drinking water from the purifier, puts across the point that the water is so pure that it is even appropriate for a newborn child. This conveys the message that for good health, drink good quality water of the purifier.

Emotional Appeal
This is another persuasive method employed by advertisers. In this, the advertisers work on the emotions of their target customers - fear, empathy, affection, curiosity, etc, and try to sell the product or service. For instance, a security alarm advertisement might show a house getting burgled to play upon the "fears" of the people. This is done to "persuade" them to buy a product.

Celebrity Endorsement
Having a celebrity in an advertisement never fails to grab attention of the target customers. So, whether it's a print advertisement or a television commercial, if a celebrity is endorsing a product and telling others that the product has really benefited him/her, most likely the target customers will be persuaded to at least try it once. However, this adverting technique has lost some of its luster in the years gone by, due to over use!

Repetition
If you look at television commercials or listen to advertisements on the radio, you will find the product name repeated umpteen times. This serves the basic aim of advertising i.e. to increase the sales. Usually what happens is that the target customers get to hear the product name so many times that when they are actually out shopping, that is the first thing that comes to their mind and they end up buying the product.

Besides these, the following promotional advertising methods deserve a mention too:

• The Bandwagon Appeal i.e. exploiting the need of the people to be on the popular side.
• The Association Technique i.e. linking the product with desirable qualities like wealth, success, patriotism, family, etc.
• Use of Humor
• Use of Sarcasm
• Catchy Slogans
• Glittering Generalities i.e. using appealing visual and words
• Comparison with Competitors
• Special Offers or Free Gifts

Advertising today has become an important marketing tool. The aim of any marketing and advertising campaign is to increase the sales and profits of a business. The creative and innovative methods, such as the ones mentioned above, help businesses achieve this goal.