HOW TO CREATE AN AD
THAT GRABS
ATTENTION!
It doesn’t matter how well you train clients or how flash your facility is, if no-one knows about
you, you won’t be successful, says Justin Tamsett.
n average you, and therefore also your customers, will see
or hear over 5,000 marketing and advertising messages
per day. This makes it incredibly hard to grab people’s
attention, hold it long enough for them to read your message and
then complete the action you want them to do.
Regardless of the size of your fitness business, be it sole trader
or multi-club operation, you can benefit from learning how to write
a powerful, effective advertising piece that will pique the interest of
your target market.
O
Most fitness businesses fail to market
When you fail to market your business, you will fail. It doesn’t matter
how well you train clients or how flash your facility is, if no-one knows
about you, or it, then you won’t be successful.
Advertising is a component of any marketing campaign. The copy
you use in your advertising piece will be critical to the success of the
campaign, so take the time to create the right tone and message to
appeal to the market that you want to do business with.
Of course, you may not get it 100% spot-on first time, but that’s no
reason to panic – even imperfect copy is better than no copy as long
as you’re getting your key message out there. If you wait for perfect
copy, you’ll never start advertising, so put your message out, test the
response, and refine it for later iterations if need be. Running ads with
completely different focuses may help to determine what works; if a
piece featuring testimonials from happy 12-week challenge clients
generates significantly more calls and emails than an ad highlighting
the plethora of equipment in your facility, then you’ll know where to
direct your creativity for future campaigns.
Once you decide on the medium, which may range from Facebook
advertising to local newspaper ads and letterbox flyers, you’ll know
how much space you have for copy. It’s then time to write the content,
which should follow the AIDA model of marketing, namely Attention,
Interest, Desire and Action.
AIDA has been around since the beginning of the 20th Century
and can provide a useful roadmap to follow when writing the text.
Essentially, it directs you to get the prospects’ attention, gain their
interest, build their desire for your product or service and then get
them to take action by buying what you’re selling.
Let’s start with wthe layout
Research using heat sensors to monitor eye movements when
looking at printed advertising material indicates that the eye will
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