How to create a top performing subs ad

Ask any publisher to show you his latest subscriptions advertisement and in almost every case it will have been produced in-house to appear in his own publication, put together by the marketing and design team. It’s a minor responsibility and therefore a minor piece of work.

As advertising is recognised as a major source of income for those same publishers, why do they not trust the method themselves? Why aren’t they regularly creating powerful advertisements to run in other media?

It’s mostly a case, I’m afraid, of double standards. Those in-house subscription ads publishers produce aren’t really anything to do with marketing. They are seen as a service for the small number of readers who prefer to receive their publication by subscription.

So where is all the successful subscriptions advertising? Here is where this article gets rough, so don’t read on if you suffer from high blood pressure. The answer to the question lies in the background of the people involved in the decision making.

If the publisher has come up through the advertisement department, for example, it’s a fact that he or she will have a limited understanding of the effectiveness of the medium. Yes he has sold many ads, but has rarely run a campaign himself. So he will have little idea of the commercial implications of ‘return on investment’. Like a lawyer, he is simply repeating his brief to (hopefully) decision makers.

If the publisher has come up through the editorial department, then he or she will not only have little understanding of the effectiveness of advertising, but will probably scorn the medium. Yes, she will want to have her publication advertised on billboards and TV, but will fail to see how quickly that kind of money can disappear with no return. After all, sales and marketing people work in another office far away. There is not much contact. And they always seem to be humiliating themselves in the quest for revenue. After all, it’s the editorial content that sells the publication, isn’t it?

The power of advertising

From here on, we look behind that typical playground posturing and get down to the real business of what advertising can actually do. The advertisements we discuss in this article sell subscriptions off the page. The great advantage an advertisement has over other means of promoting your title is that you can use it to reach a wide audience. Unlike direct mail you are not limited to whatever lists are available. An effective advertisement can run and run in whatever media are available, continually building your subscriber base.

An effective subscriptions advertisement can transform the profitability and value of a publication over a few months and can mean the difference between success and failure with a new launch.

However, considerable difficulties lie in the way of success. Selling subscriptions through an off-the-page advertisement is probably the hardest and most unforgiving of all direct marketing tasks.

Quadrupling your financial return

The usual acceptable financial return for a subscription promotion is to get the media cost of the advertisement back. However, achieving this return is difficult with rate card costs so high. Even top advertising agencies find it an impossible task. There are three answers to this.

* Negotiate to reduce rate card costs to around half or less
* Contra deal or swap space with other media
* Create more effective advertisements

Now let’s look at how creating the right proposition or concept to promote a publication can boost response by a factor of four or more.

The four communication points

Strangely enough, 'communication' is not achieved by what you write in an advertisement. The message communicated depends on what the reader understands from your advertisement. These are two very different things.

The message your reader receives is dependent on many factors – emphasis, flow and illustrations, for example, play a big part. While repetition is discouraged in editorial copy, that does not apply to subscription promotions. In fact it’s crucial to revisit the benefits your publication offers in as many ways as possible in the same advertisement. That’s why editorial staff usually cannot create good subscription promotions.

Your advertisement succeeds only if the reader understands and becomes interested in the message he receives. The parts of your message the reader will first see are usually:

* The headline
* The illustration or picture
* Any strong graphic effect eg. a flash or shape
* The coupon

The importance of your headline

Advertisement headlines are different in an important respect from the headline in any other kind of promotion. Advertisement headlines need to be different from internet, letter, brochure, loose insert and direct mail package headlines. This is because your advertisement appears on the pages of a newspaper or magazine and is surrounded by many other strong or ‘clever’ headlines.

You have probably heard people say: "I don’t read loose inserts. I just throw them away." But the same is true of advertisements. Readers just turn over the page. Unlike the stories and 'awareness ads' around it, your advertisement must not only succeed in attracting the reader's attention, but persuade the reader to complete a coupon and put his money in the post - to take action. To succeed, your headline must:

* Arrest the reader's attention
* Be as immediate and direct as possible

Clever headlines rarely work. Anything at all that detracts from the above criteria will reduce response.

That is the main difference between creating a headline for an advertisement and other promotions. It must fight much harder for the reader's attention among many distractions. Unless you win this fight, your prospect will turn the page and you've lost him.

Six ways to create a headline

The job of the headline is to attract the reader's attention. In most cases the headline is directly relevant to the publication being sold. There are different methods of creating a headline. Most will do one of the following:

1. Make a bold claim (then back it up in the copy)
2. Make a strong offer (then qualify it in the copy)
3. Offer the reader an unusual or attractive benefit
4. Dramatically summarise the unique purpose or value of your publication
5. Surprise and interest the reader with new information
6. Provoke or challenge the reader in some way

Guiding your art department

Earlier, we highlighted the entrenched attitudes that exist in advertising and editorial. They exist in all departments. If the people in your art department spend most of their time creating editorial pages, they are unlikely to know a great deal about creating an advertisement. It’s a specialist task. The secret wish of most art directors is to create up-market, slick designs. However, a ‘responsive’ design may look scrappy, but should bring in more business. The wrong design will kill it. Much can be learned from the advertisement shown in this article. The overall design should do one or more of the following:

* Support the proposition
* Confirm the proposition
* Give reassurance to the reader
* Add appeal to the proposition

The design and graphics should give a supportive, similar or relevant message to the benefit carried in the headline and copy - and should communicate the message immediately and much faster than the words can.

There are occasionally exceptions to these rules, but the danger of not following the guidance given here is that your design may divert attention from, rather than add to, your main message. Any diversion will reduce response.

Six effective illustrations

Each of the following illustrations will lift response to an advertisement:

1. A picture of the free gift given for responding before the deadline
2. A photograph to reassure the reader and help identify with the advertisement's message - perhaps combined with a quote
3. A money-back guarantee certificate to reassure and reduce the perceived risk
4. A picture of someone benefiting from the subscription in a way that the reader can relate to
5. A box containing a summary of the benefits
6. A flash or shape containing words relating to the offer - eg. 'Save 20%!', 'Free trial offer', 'Free gift'

Why do most publishers get the coupon wrong?

The coupon should summarise the offer. Many do not. This is important because many readers don't read much of the copy - they merely scan it and jump to the coupon to see what the deal is.

Be careful not to repeat the mistake most publishers make. Don’t offer multiple payment options. This does not, as is widely believed, make ‘ordering easier’. It reduces response by inducing ‘option paralysis’. The quicker it is to order, the higher the response will be. If you are using an untried medium, always run a two-stage offer. That is, don’t ask for payment; offer to send further details. Otherwise, zero response may result and you won’t know why. That’s every marketer’s worst nightmare.

Learning from success

Most publishers understand the value of learning from the example of others. But unfortunately it is hard to get independent verification of the effectiveness of a promotion; you may just know that you like the look of it.

The advertisement shown greatly exceeded its financial target and built around 40,000 subscriptions. In practice, this meant much more than merely increasing profits. It meant the advertisement could be placed in a wider range of media than would have otherwise been possible. The result was a higher number of profitable new subscribers and a substantially increased circulation. With this one promotion, the marketing team boosted both the editorial department’s self-esteem and the advertisement department’s page yield revenue.

That’s some achievement! You probably didn’t realise how important you are to your colleagues’ happiness and well being, did you?