Ad Makeover: Fox Valley Introduction Their Target Customers Veterinarians' Motivation The Stratgegy Finished Ad 1: Emergency Finished Ad 2: Referral Summary Take our ad effectiveness course. Learn what you need to know to get a great response the first time you run. Just $59 • Get more readers seeing your ad • Get more readers reading your ad • Get more readers responding

The first ad, for Fox Valley's 24-hour emergency services, is below along with an explanation. You can click on it for a larger view.



Since we wanted to capture the attention of veternarians most succeptible to emergency services, we included an image of a Fox Valley surgeon at the top of the ad, large enough for vets to notice even with just a quick glance at the ad. Since we were planning to run the ad in a local veternarian publication, we didn't need to get too specific about the ad being about emergency services for animals.

Similarly, we included the words "emergency center" prominently in the headline to get the attiontion of any veterinarian with emergency services on the brain.

The balance of the headline summarize the benefits Fox Valley's target customer cared about most: "How the right emergency center can make things better for your clients, your practise, and your lifestyle."

To put a professional touch on the headline, we reduced both the space between each line of type (leading) as well as the space between the characters. As the article in our Designing Your Ad section on type explains, it can make a major difference in the ad's appearance.

The sub-headline simply expanded on the benefit, urging vets to read on.

Once we get the target veterinarians looking at the ad and convince them to read on with the headline (which, hopefully, is what they care about most when choosing one place rather than another) the balance of the ad gets into enough detail that even the most skeptical vet would believe Fox Valley's claims and pick up the phone.

Will everyone read all that copy? Probably not. This is not to say, however, that copy should be brief. Vets, like most readers, do not immediately become illiterate when reading an ad. In fact, for those considering farming their emergency work out to a place like Fox Valley, this may be the most important item in the publication, and effectively making a case that Fox Valley is the best isn't as easy as a few lines of bulleted (•) points.

As for the ad size, it was determined using the approach described in the article in our Planning Your Ad section entitled Determining Ad Size. Basically, because there were relatively few vets out there that still weren't referring their patients to Fox Valley, we needed to make sure none of them would miss the ad. Ad size, as well as the graphic and headline, is a tool to accomplish this.

But clearly, not everyone can afford a larger ad like this. Luckily, even a poor response--one or two new vets signing up--would make the ad profitable, so Fox Valley not only needed the larger size but could run it as well.

Next: Finished ad: referral services

Conditions of Use     © 2001-2010 Robert McInnis Consulting