The world we are living in is fast-paced, and advertisers have to follow the race to keep up with consumer behavior as well as trends. A study conducted by the Technical University of Denmark shows that the common attention span now seriously decreased in the past few years because of the digital information burden. As a result, more and more consumers are becoming immune to ads.
That’s why more and more tactics are invented by promoters to boost the effectiveness of advertising and most are related to the ad’s psychological attraction including color and cognitive psychology, or body language. When you utilize specific advertising techniques, advertisers can combine multiple components to fulfill the results that are not only easy on the eye but also appealing to target audiences..
Sounds challenging, right? Don’t worry, here comes our The 12 most common advertising techniques post to help you reach the target market and have they respond to your ads best.
12 Most common advertising techniques:
1. Color Psychology
The color psychology advertising technique is usually being misunderstood or get wrong. Because a minorly different tonality of any color could portray and bring the wrong emotion at the end, but not the one that the designer was heading to. However, color psychology is still one of the most popular and productive methods used in advertising. Sometimes, the color of a brand is very essential, which can become its own entity, like the Red of Coca-Cola or Blue from Tiffany.
With color psychology, advertisers can analyze the impact of colors on both in human behavior, decision-making, as well as the ultimate purchase. As the color schemes can have the power to deliver strong messages without using many words, they can set the tone of everything that follows, when every shade has its meaning. For example, a product can be elegant and luxurious with black color. Meanwhile, white’s symbol is minimalism, and yellow means universal and accessible that can contrast look to visuals.
That’s why it is crucial to think about the color palette and consider making an important decision on the color to be used. With creative advertisements, they can simply use interesting color schemes to deliver a message without words. Some simple choices of trying on a bold color for a call-to-action button can hugely enhance the click-through rate.
Take one of the latest California Market Center’s advertising campaigns as an example when no visual element is neglected or left behind. It shows that whether you are picking to work with harmonizing colors or utilize a single tone, too light, or strike shades can prevent potential customers from scrolling. This MAC Cosmetics’ Instagram post is also smart to use earth tones and natural elements to advertise their up to date goods.
2. Composition
This method is similar to the color psychology one above when a balanced composition is focused on forming the visual for advertising. Basically, the composition method is about how all the elements are situated in a visual space.
You can have a wide variety of purposes for composition in your campaign, including pulling the viewer’s eye to one particular point or generating a visual flow from top to bottom. To set up a balanced composition, there are various ways to do so. There are the basic rules called Gestalt principles for a great composition, which composes visual rules like simplicity, synchrony, and association.
The advertisement below’s composition includes the mother on the left while putting the sun shines on her right with the text being set beneath to bring a sense of importance. They also have used composition tactics like the rule of thirds, a focal point and the visual path to transmit their message.
3. Emotional Appeal
Emotional appeal is one of the most productive marketing techniques as feelings always come with audiences, stay right beside your audience’s heart. That’s why the emotional appeal technique now becomes one of the most persuasive approaches in advertising.
To have this advertising technique to work, the brand will have to understand their target audience, including their hopes and dreams, and even the fears and needs. Advertisements are designed to effectively evoke human emotions, like happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise, fear, and anger, to generate appealing experiences for consumers.
Promoters ofter used association and symbolism to motivate potential customers that lead them to take some specific actions. Yes, you will have to consider many kinds of stuff while generating emotional ads. Meanwhile, the most essential aspect is to do the research well so you own clear comprehension of your target audience and their perceptions.
On International Women’s Day, BURIBA. – a Branding & Advertising Agency, launched an Instagram puzzle game to advance diverse beauty standards as well as empower women.
Also, by using storytelling techniques, advertisers can make any of their customers or potential customers have felt like they are in the story. In recent years, Thai TV commercials also have a mark around the world for their emotional appeal that tells an emotional story, and they only display their product at the end of the video.
4. The Bandwagon Effect
The Bandwagon Effect is one of the most convincing modern techniques as the bandwagon effect can affect what your audience need by utilizing emotional cues to make consumers act immediately during their purchasing process. With persuasive writing and a good choice of wording, a brand can convince the customer that everyone already owns the product and that they are falling behind.
This technique is heavily based on the psychological technique named FOMO, which shorts for Fear Of Missing Out. The art of convincing is a popular and creative technique for bandwagon pressuring, which has successful tactics called craftily carved slogans.
One approach is to advertise the fact that you have a series of limited items that your audience has to buy right away. There are the MLM companies and pyramid schemes that utilize this technique on a regular basis when every collaborator will try and persuade a brand new client that they are missing out on the item, and their life will get better, or even that their neighbor is already using it.
But does this technique really work? Amazon is the ultimate testimonial that uses this Bandwagon approach when the platform obviously will go the extra mile to match potential clients who have the same needs, with their listings. Additionally, the online retail giant is still setting limited timeframes for sales and enable people to put their name on waitlists for high demand products. However, if this is overdone, bandwagon pressuring can also have a bad effect on your business.
5. Social Proof
This social proof technique is used mostly for online advertising, even though it is used to print to some degree. Influencer marketing and endorsement is an excellent way to impress the market with social proof. They pretty much undertake the brand’s marketing and suggest the item to their followers in their own words.
There is another kind of social proof, which is customer case studies. These articles were published on the brand’s blog, where they showcase how a real-life person is experiencing their product with success.
Some social badges being added are also a great way to enhance the visual to add social proof to a showcase ad, email newsletter, poster, or flyer. The customer testimonials are also assumed as social proof. You can add these to be included in a website as the testimonials section or can be regenerated into a full-scale video advertisement.
For example, this social media post by Nature Made has set a badge for their social proof strategy.
6. Fact and Statistic
The utilization of facts and statistics is a common technique used in promotion. When they can be persuasive by calling out the logical part of the human brain. This tactic can go well with selling cosmetics or house cleaning items.
The two below example are about how Nivea and Dettol utilize this technique in one of their ads.
7. The Golden Ratio
This is a great method for designers to create balanced visual advertisements. The image below shows the mathematical ratio ran into everywhere in nature and used in design to bring perfect compositions, which are not only effective but also absolutely easy to the eye. Designers can take advantage of this and place elements on a space in a visually attractive way.
You can utilize the Fibonacci numbers as an advertising technique when potential clients are more likely to see ads with an airy approach method, and advertisers use this to direct the placement of the elements in a harmonious way.
Finally, the whole idea of it is about all ads standing on balanced elements, and most importantly, they have a similar focal point. So, you should keep the Golden Ratio in mind while sketching the actual design, which you will absolutely have the impression of potential customers in no time.
8. The Focal Point
Among the tactics of visualization in advertising, there is also the focal point method, which is also a part of the Golden Ration approach. This method is as essential important as the choice of colors or typography while pinpointing a focal point. The ads’ viewer needs to have a distinctive spot to look at the scene and be absorbed by the advertisement’s message through this technique.
To achieve a focal point you can do it in several different ways. You can utilize the rule of thirds and golden as two useful tools to help generate a successful focal point. There are some techniques to settle on a focal point as well, which are:
- Selective Focus: Keep the focal point fuzzy and background absorbed or vice versa.
- Exposure: Control dark and light areas in an image to make the focal point stand out.
- Light Source: Illuminate the focal point in a unique way.
In case there are two focal points, you can apply Gestalt principles to fulfill a good balance. The ads below for Happy Meal’s 40th-anniversary campaign is a great example. They formed a landscape where kids left all of their toys on the floor and a Happy Meal. There was the M shaped line that goes straight into the box to symbolize the way kids jump all day until the point they’re starving, which is a great way to create a focal point for the ad.
9. Body Language
Body language is nonverbal language, which is delivered by a person about how they stand, sit, beam, or move. In your ads, whether that person is a model, an actor, a famous professional, or a regular person with an animated character, you must concentrate on the way they move or stand because the body language of the person or people is very important in both video and static graphics. You can see the confidence, knowledgeability, or even success and multiple other sentiments to be visualized via an individual’s body language.
The steps to reach exact body language in an advertisement begins before it is even designed. The creative directors will have to work with the client to decide the right messaging. Next, the production team must put out a casting call to get the most suitable person who can best transmit the body language that is searching for. While taking the shoot, the actor or model will be given directions and adjustments until the desired effect is fulfilled.
There is a subcategory of the body language technique, which is gaze induction. This means that the person displayed in the ad, maybe a celebrity, will not look directly at the viewer to bring a mysterious feeling. Below you can see a representative example.
Below is the McDonald’s ad that only body language used to get the message across about their 24-hour service; thus, it can make a captivating ad that will make you yawn.
10. Symbolism
There is the symbolism technique similar to the association. Visual marketing techniques now usually utilize symbolism in their message to call on metaphors and similes. The given literary tools being used to compare and allude as well.
For instance, a marketing strategy for a hand cream can use a visual metaphor to compare the scent of their cream to that in spring flowers. The utilization of symbolism can be vague and subtle and even far-fetched. While working with brands that already have high brand loyalty with a huge following of consumers, then confusion is not expected by anybody.
The below example is a print advertisement that utilizes a perfume bottle instead of a heart, and the perfume bottle now symbolizes the heart or something a person might love as a gift on Valentine’s Day.
In the McDonald’s campaign, they utilized their french fries to advertise free WiFi, when everyone can see what the WiFi symbol looks like, and this ad capitalizes on that.
11. Animation and Motion Graphics
Animation and motion graphics are now being used and quickly merging in the advertising content, from digital advertising to outdoor advertising.
The animation concerns visuals that are animated instead of bringing filmed with human characters. It is like the moving version of an illustration when a motion graphic is a bit different when it’s not a storytelling technique, with more of an explanation or visual accent. Both this method used quick advertisements, you usually see it at the beginning of YouTube videos or inside apps with in-app purchases.
These animation and motion graphics techniques have the advantages of catching the attention of the viewer very quickly, which are usually very successful. Below is a great example of animated TV commercials for Oreo cookies, which are so memorable, exciting, and successful.
12. Behind the Scenes
Among the various types of advertising methods, it’s a great way to reach customers by showcasing the inside of how your company works. Thanks to social media, a brand new can bring to its users and followers creative behind-the-scenes images and videos easier than ever. By publishing behind the scenes, you can make your audience feel more connected to your brand with the photos and videos, and your customers will be likely to appreciate the hard work that went behind a campaign.
You can publish your team members’ photos working together in the office or a video tour where everyone is making the goods that customers want. Another great behind-the-scenes idea is when some influentials employees do “takeover” some social media channels. This technique is considered to be a great in-house influencer marketing one. There are some advertising agencies now provide this service and train a few employees on how to do it appropriately.
What is more, consumers often respect the honesty of a behind-the-scenes campaign, while they can relate to what the team does every day just like they do in their jobs. Below is McDonald’s burger’s image, which was a part of a bigger campaign where McDonald’s released a video of the behind-the-scenes footage of their TV commercials.
Wrap up
On the whole, the world of advertising is gradually growing every day with digital expansion; however, these strategies and techniques like color psychology and direct gaze are still going to work effectively in the future. Remember that the visual advertising techniques that you choose will base greatly on the message that you want to deliver.
As long as you keep an eye on your target audience, determining the best techniques to draw their attention would be an achievable goal. So, you should never stop experimenting with multiple approaches, and ensure that you are doing your best to keep potential customers interested in promoting your items.
Hopefully, this The 12 most common advertising techniques used by advertisers that can provide you some useful techniques in your ad creation process? If there is still something on your mind, just feel free to let us know! Thank you!
