Are you a divider or a uniter? How to scrutinize audience motivations and coordinate creative efforts in order to increase conversions.
Advertising agencies are often divided by two houses – like the Capulets and Montagues or the Hatfields and the McCoys. One half of the house is obsessed with shapes, images and colors, while the other is obsessed with words, thoughts and phrasing.
If you look closer, however, you’ll notice that they’re both two essential parts of a singular house. That house is called communication.
A well-designed web page, for example, combines several strategies in order to communicate more effectively with the target user that comes into the site. By the way, here’s a significant point that should never be lost during this discussion. The target user (or audience) is coming from somewhere before they land on this site. They already have a thought in their head. They landed on the site with an expectation in mind. They want to find something specific, solve a particular problem, or meet with someone who they think they’ve found from:
- A search result
- A referral
- A linking site
- An advertisement (banner ad, Facebook ad, AdWords ad, print ad, etc.)
- Some other presentation (seminar, PowerPoint, YouTube video, etc.)
So this user comes in with a preconception.
Let’s say it’s one of your sites. They may have read your <meta description> tag – the copy you place in your SEO tags to force Google’s description under your SERP return link – and decided that you were worth a look. In this case, they come seeking what you’ve told them they’ll find. If you disappoint on the page that’s linked, you’re a fast click to oblivion.
Once they’ve landed
When this user lands on your page, they’re confronted with several different elements. These include:
- Colors
- Graphics
- Photos
- Words
- Potential actions (buttons, forms, etc.)
All of these things have one combined purpose. They need to communicate with the visitor. Ideally, this communication should have some goal in mind.
On a business web site, this goal is usually one of several options, including:
- Educate (explanations)
- Generate interest (leads)
- Close business (transactions)
The ultimate goal of business is almost always to increase profits by delivering a valuable product or service to the customer.
This may be a little different with a non-profit or .ORG type business, but it’s often quite similar. In the case of a non-profit, the product or service is usually a cause, and the deliverables are some sort of product- or service-based assistance. The leads are related to the fundraising efforts and donors. The transaction is usually a donation or some sort of beneficial partnership.
What does this mean for an ad agency?
Ad agencies can draw focus and mission from these simple realities. In the case of a web site, we’re tasked with making conversions. Typical conversions include urging the user to:
- Understand a concept
- Clearly comprehend product features, advantages and benefits (the art of persuasion)
- Pick up the phone and call for more information
- Place a product into a shopping cart
- Sign up for a newsletter
- Sign up for a webinar (for longer sales cycle products and services)
- Spread the word about a product socially
This also applies to brochures, data sheets, case studies, displays, booth designs, business cards and so forth, of course.
Let’s take a well-designed Web site as an example and see how this plays out.
Part 2 of this post shows you a popular web site and how they integrate visual, copy and action elements to create a compelling lead conversion platform. Stay tuned, we’ll link it up here shortly.
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