If you want people to read your advertisement, I told the audience at a recent conference held at the Toppled Bollard Café in sunny Northants, you have to offer something novel.
And that applies no matter what you are selling, be it text books or coffee, computers or glue. It doesn’t have to be the glueist glue that there is nor the cheapest computer. The advert just has to convey the notion that what you are selling is better.
Now to do that the main thing is you must write an advertisement that is different, so that your advertisement stands out from any other advertisement the teacher sees.
“So how would you make your glue stand out?” asked an annoying young whippersnapper in the audience with more vim and vigour than I thought the occasion demanded.
“I would advertise the glue as ‘School Glue’, which comes in a recyclable container, and doesn’t harm school clothes,” I replied. “And I’d put the price up so it wasn’t the cheapest on the market.”
The whippersnapper looked shocked. “But if I did that I’d be saying my glue is the same as all the other glue, and I’d lose our one benefit of selling the lowest price glue.”
“Not exactly,” I replied, with, I must admit, a slight smirk. “You would be stressing a benefit of your glue, which most glue sellers don’t. True, some teachers will feel, ‘that’s the same as every other glue’ but many others will think, ‘that sounds good, let’s try that glue’.
“Remember you don’t have to be original or different. You just have to spell out the benefits, and as soon as you do that you differentiate yourself from similar products. Most advertisers do not emphasise benefits. Most focus on features.”
He still looked highly dubious. In fact he had a rating of 8.9 on the Dubiousity Scale, which believe me is high in the extreme. So I made him an offer, which out of fairness I will also make to you.
If you write an advert and are not sure it is right, send it to me, and I’ll offer my thoughts on any way your advert could be modified to further enhance its appeal. Just write “Benefit” in the subject line and attach the advert as a word file and send it to me.
That offer is completely free. Of course, I hope you’ll then want to ask us to send your email to schools out of sheer gratitude, but whether you do or not, the offer stands.
Tony Attwood
Email: Tony@schools.co.uk and write “Benefits offer” in the subject line. To discuss how you can then send your email to teachers across the UK please call Steve on 01604 880 927.