Most agencies talk about how to handle a lead, we talk about how to get a lead – That’s Different.

What makes a Good ad?

Is it a great headline or a believable spokesperson? Is it the background of the photo or video? Could it be the “usp” or the “position” or even the message that makes a great ad? Does the ad tell a story? Is the ad compelling? All of these things are important, but in today’s language, it’s all about improving impressions with ads, improving clicks through ads, and improving the landing page with ads. Today, opinions about ads no longer matter. What matters is if the ads improve impressions, click through rates and conversions.

Opinions about ads no longer matter

What matters is if the ads improve impressions, click through rates and conversions. What matters is if the ad converts to leads which convert to sales. What makes a good ad? A good ad works. It increases “click through rates” or increases the number of phone calls or contacts you have with potential customers. A good ad is actually a good salesperson. Treat them well and give them tools to improve.

A salesperson must have charisma or likeability or personality.

A good ad is a good sales person? What are the characteristics of a good salesperson? A good salesperson qualities are based on threes sets of skills. The first is of course knowledge of what they are selling, they can recall all kinds of examples of success stories that involve their product. They have a deep understanding of why they are in front of prospects and what their role involves.

People do not buy products from someone they do not like

A salesperson must have charisma or likeability or personality. Gallup has been tracking likability of our Presidents for years. People do not buy products from someone they do not like. The third quality of a good salesperson is they possess a unique sales technique. They must have a good pitch. A very large school chain requires their sales reps to memorize their sales pitch. They have created the technique that creates the best conversion and deviation from the script is not permitted. They learn how to get right back on track if there is an interruption.

So what is a good ad?

A good ad conveys Knowledge about what they are selling. It is Likable. It follows a Sales Technique.  A good ad does what a salesperson would do in person to convince you to do something.

But today, that’s not good enough

But today, a good ad is not good enough. Because of today’s ultra competitive market, a good ad is temporary. Right now, improvement of the ad is what is important. Here is why. There is competition every day for the attention of the consumer. According to  Starcom MediaVest Group “Factoring in an average of 7.1 hours of sleep Americans are exposed to a marketing message every 15.2 seconds. Or about 20,000 messages a day”. That’s a lot to factor as you create the ads.

The key then is an improvement cycle, We call it  The Knowledge Path. It has to do with creating experiments with our ads, running the ads and then checking to see if the ads performed better than our Benchmark ads.

We do this with our TV ads, our internet search and display ads as well as the landing pages we send our prospects too.