This information is designed to give you insight into rival styles of advertising.  

You’ll establish which one will work better for your business and you’ll find out why. You’ll be given hints and tips on how to make the most appropriate type of advertising work for you and your business.  

For years now, there have been 2 schools of thought about advertising. And it seems the 2 are diametrically opposed.  

One suggests a focus on ‘keeping your name in front of the customers. It suggests using ‘plenty of white space’ to make your ad look uncluttered. Pretty pictures and artistic graphics are good, too; and there must be catchy, clever copy to pique the reader’s curiosity. (Often these ads won’t even include a phone number to reach the company!)  

Almost every print advertisement, mailing piece, radio, or television commercial you see is based on institutional, or image, advertising.  

Institutional advertising seeks to create an image about your product, service, or company in the hope that people will remember you when they’re ready to buy.

As such, these ads typically radiate ‘buy from us because were wonderful.’ Image advertising is almost always a complete waste of your marketing dollars. Why? Because it doesn’t offer the reader tangible benefits and it doesn’t ask for an immediate response.  

Worse still, institutional advertising is expensive in that it virtually requires you to spend over a long period of time before you get any results. Even then, the results are practically impossible to measure.  

At best, these ads produce deferred, long-term brand awareness. The problem is, most small- to medium-sized businesses, perhaps like your own, aren’t Nike or McDonald’s and simply can’t afford to market on brand power alone.  

At worst, and this applies to 95% of all the advertising you look at, institutional advertising is ineffective, a waste of your hard-earned marketing dollars, and it produces limited, if any, immediate results.  

Most institutional advertising tells you how great the company paying for the advertising is, how old and stable they are, and so forth. It focuses on ‘the institution,’ the business itself.  

But these are noncompelling points. Why? It would seem perfectly valid to focus on the company, let people know who you are, wouldn’t it? No. Not in this format. Simply because most customers don’t care about those issues. What they really want to know is what your business can do for them, what benefits you can bring them. They ask, ‘What’s In It—For Me?’  

Institutional advertising just doesn’t convey the answers to those sorts of questions. It fails to give reasons for the reader to favor your business over another. It looks great, but it doesn’t make a strong case for the product or service you sell.  

Further, it usually fails to direct the consumer to a buying decision. Some don’t even include contact details, so even if potential customers liked the ad, they couldn’t do anything about it!  

This second school of thought focuses in particular on generating a ‘direct response’ from your advertising and marketing efforts. That is, getting someone to put their hand up when they read your ad, say, ‘Yes, I’m interested,’ and either ask for more information or buy right there and then.  

These types of ads focus on 6 other essential elements: a headline, a guarantee, offers, ‘What’s In It—For Me?’ body copy, a ‘call to action,’ and layout and design. These 6 elements are designed to do more than just project an image or a name. They educate your potential customers about your business or your products and services in a way that not only ‘looks good’ but also gets sales results.  

Direct response advertising is, then, the exact opposite of institutional advertising. It is designed to evoke an immediate response, action, visit, call, or purchasing decision from the viewer or reader.  

This kind of ad is written from the customer’s point of view.

It’s all about the customer’s needs rather than how great the company is. These direct response ads often look like an ‘advertorial,’ that is, an ad that looks and is written just like an editorial article in a newspaper.  

You see, these days we live in the ‘information age.’ It follows that people crave information. So articles that look like news or provide value-added information like advertorials generate a better response than traditional institutional advertising that looks like an ad.  

People don’t read newspapers for advertisements—they read it for news, don’t they?! Interestingly, the highest rated television shows the world over are also news-related. So, the more your ad looks like news, the better the response for your business.  

Further, people are also better educated and therefore more discerning, so they expect to be given details.  

Direct response advertising tells a complete story. It presents factual and specific reasons why your company, product, or service is superior to all others and supports those claims with guarantees, testimonials, or statistics. It doesn’t rely on mere conjecture (the ‘just saying so’ technique) used in a lot of institutional advertising.  

Direct response advertising is much more effective than institutional advertising simply because consumer don’t care about you or your motivations. All they care about is the benefit of your product or service. How will your product improve their situation and save them time, effort, and money? Why will your product or service improve their life?  

By giving them the answers to these kinds of questions, you’ll dramatically change the results of your advertising, which, in turn, will have a major impact on your bottom line.

This kind of advertising can also provide hints and tips about how to get the most out of the product or service or what to look for. That way, it adds value up front, making you an even more attractive supplier.

Direct response advertising is salesmanship in print or over the air. As salesmanship, it makes a complete case for the company, product, or service. It overcomes sales objections. It answers all major questions and promises performance or results.  

It should give facts about the performance capabilities of your product or service. Tell about your risk-free warranty or money back guarantee. Give reasons why your product is superior to your competitors on a level that the consumer can understand and appreciate.  

After you’ve built your case, tell the consumers precisely what action to take. Tell them how to reach you, find out more, call your business, what to look for, and who to ask for. Tell them what to do when the salesperson calls. Remind them of the risk-free purchasing arrangements and, most importantly, tell them what results they can expect by owning or using your product or service.  

That’s why a direct response ad directs people to action. It compels consumers to visit your establishment, call you, send in money, and so forth. It asks for the sale (the ‘sale’ can be an initial phone call or an outright purchase). Used effectively, direct response advertising can produce tons of super-qualified prospects who appreciate the information you’ve given them to help them make a sound buying decision.  

Better yet, that means direct response advertising, compared to institutional advertising, asks for a response NOW. Thus, even one ad can bring in cash within days or weeks.

Be sure to include a response device, such as a coupon or special hotline phone number. Something so that you can measure your responses.  

By its very nature, direct response advertising brings in a response that can be measured so you can systematically test different ads, compare one against the other, and analytically determine which one works best.  

Because these types of ad produce something you can track, analyze, and count, you can measure the profitability and performance of virtually every direct response ad.  

Advertising can be a very costly way to acquire new clients. You pay for your ad to appear in a magazine or newspaper (or for your direct mail campaign), and only a small fraction of the consumers actually respond. Perhaps an even smaller percentage actually buys.  

In principle, if an ad costs $500 and you get 50 responses, that means each response cost you $10. Unfortunately, you often only get 10 or perhaps even 5 responses, increasing your cost per response to $50 or $100. And if only 2 actually buy from you, each sale cost you $250! And you’d probably consider that expensive.  

Given that, most businesses, large and small, just can’t afford to do ‘arty’ institutional ads that get no sales. You need ads that are going to give you the greatest return on your investment in the space you just purchased to display that ad. Direct response ads are the way to go.  

In almost every case, direct response advertising gives you infinitely more value, dollar for dollar, than institutional advertising. If you are running institutional ads, change them to direct response. Give your prospects information that’s important to them and adds value, instead of focusing inward!  

By merely switching from institutional to direct response advertising, you can improve your productivity many times over. And leverage that investment in your advertising.