Give them a true believable reason. For example, let’s say you have a slow time of year and you want to increase your business during this period. Make a special, limited time offer. Offer to throw in an extra free bonus or a special discount simply because it's your "slow time" and you need to pay your staff anyway.

Don’t you think people will believe it? If you can give a solid reason for a particular action, people will have no doubts about what you say - there is simply very little room for doubt.

Greed

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People are greedy. I'm not talking about food but 'greedy' in a marketing perspective. Everybody feels from "what’s in it for me” syndrome. They really want to know how your product can benefit them. Notice that, "customer's will buy benefits and not products". Confused? You'll see what I mean in a minute.

Analyze following list of benefits written about a digital camera.

* Can store over 200 photos

* Supports every color you can see

* Manual included so you can start even if you have no previous experience

This will certainly open eyes of a person who has an idea of bu'ying a camera one day. This is in complete contrast to following, where 'product' is described.

* Has a memory of 6000k

* Supports 16-bit colors

* 60-page manual included

Customers don't want a memory of 6000k, but they want to store 200 photos. Get it? You must clearly tell customer how will they benefit by bu'ying your produc't. You can then describe prod'uct itself, when they are looking for more information.

To make this point clearer, understand that,

"Customer's will bu'y benefits and 'not' features."

Okay.. Whats difference between features and benefits? Features describe product itself - what it has. Benefits describe advantages a customer gets by bu'ying product. The first list above is a benefits list and second is a features list.

Benefits will drive customers to explore more information about product. This is when you should give them features and describe product itself. To summarize, get customers into looking for more info by telling them benefits and then describe prod'uct. This will assure best results.

I laid out just 3 powerful strategies here. There are many more 'explored' and 'unexplored' tactics, and hope you can discover a few too. Please let me know if you do. I hope this information was helpful to you and wish you good luck and success in your future mark'eting efforts.

Now, what we collect this kind of information for?

The answer is just because without this bagagge we, probably make a wrong AD Banner or a banner that’s out of focus and easily could be improved.

Suppose we are mechanics and we are told to construct a car for a race. If we do not collect adequate information we’ll be sending a Ferrari F1 to compete to Dakar-Paris Rally. (poor Ferrari F1) or to send a 4x4 big tyres turbo engined Ford F-350 to next Interlagos Grand Prix with no chance to win there (but driver will enjoy so much to see how many F1’s goes away by horizont) J

Inquiring your client, visiting client’s site and specifically page to advertise for you’ll find lots of usefull information to step on. Don’t miss them.

You can also consult books and magazine.

Collect information on Company Design (typography, colors, style, etc) Tips given for subject collect applies as well for Company Design Information gathering. But, in this case we focus on design and art items like:

Corporate Image Style Corporate Colors Corporate Site Layout Site tipography (family, color, styles, etc.) Visual Resources used (shapes, lines, etc.etc.) I hope you can understand what I mean: If you’re creating a banner just for a friend...let’s say a teen-ager that loves skating... may be you don’t have a “Corporate Image Style”...but your skatter friend has a site, a personal site that conciously or not was made under some kind of rules (even if it seems to be absolutely randomic, disordered, unpredictable,etc. You’ll find putting it under Lens that there is a wirl case of design rules or layout.

Ask your client for ideas. Now you can collect information directly from your client. May be you wonder why I didn’t include this task in first item (collecting information on subject) or into second (collecting information on Company’s Design. Have a reason !

You can ask your client any time, but if you do that first, it’s problably like you won’t get good information because you:

Didn’t see company site and named pages Do not have much knowledge on subject Understand now why I left this task until this point ? great ! J

BrainStorm for a while After you put down on paper or powerPoint all information formerly taken, is time to sit down around round table with your collaborators (like Arthur and his Knigth) and brain storm your brains !!!

You can find lots of pages explain how to brainstorm (I found 827.000 matches at google for this word) so I have nothing more to say on brainstorm.

Define banner contents & features And now cooking !

After brainStorm process you have an idea of contents AD Banner will have, so hardest part is done ! J

But my own experience indicates that there is a feedback corridor between desing and implementation stages.

Let’s take this same case for example:

After brain storm we clearly decide to make : an animated banner with pictures on school classes containing links to courses program page.

Look for resources Taking definition sentence for banner and it’s contents & features you need to look for resources. I mean :

Phrases or slogans to put in banner Images, pictures or photos Making storybord (only for animated banners) Creating timeline and timing Choosing right size for banner Choosing style, layout and typography to be used Determining banner location on page Some other staff.. Well...I said before that there is a feedback corridor. In this banner project I had to change or saying it better increase definition sentence after search for visual resource (images & and photos) for banner.

I had to find royalties free photos of classrooms, students, teachers, and so on to include. I found some in my own library but it wasn’t enough to make me happy. Then I went to my favorite search engine and tried out some words like class.jpg, school.gif, teacher.jpg,etc,etc.

It’s not necessary to say that I found lots of pics (in this point is good idea to say that you have to be sure pic you’re downloading is freaware. Not registered or limited on use)

What happened ?

Searching pics I discover a pic of ‘South Park Children at school ‘ that triggers again my imagination and said to myself: “the definition sentence is NOW changed to ‘an animated banner with pictures on school classes & cartoon (south park) pics containing links to courses program page’“

As you can see sentence didn’t change soooo much but final result is absolutely different from original idea becouse all work is on South Park basis.

That why I say that you needo to be alert while you are into any stage or task in process for getting any other idea, resource, fact, etc that appears on fly and could be fine for project. Don’t be afraid to dig into changes or modifications needed in project, they will improve final creature !

IMPLEMENTATION & TESTING When you enter this stages Creative Process is likely to be done.

Sometime will occur that you need changes on project but rarely this changes are due to Creative affairs, mostly obey to client defined reasons like “ ok guys, taxes in this state have raised so new price to show in banner is $120 instead of $ 29 that we have at banner” J

This happens. Or I also need to put my banner into a banner ex-change program and it’s so big...to much expensive for program...please reduce it to 1x1 px size” (microscope size oftenly cost about $10 -100 for impressions wich result cheap enogh for anybody --- hahaha – just teasing)

Of course there are lots of other considerations to be resolved but those are beyond creative process and are clearly technical driven decitions (may be in some other letter I write on those specifications)

Lastly, as I promised I give you whole url of page containing banner:

Campaign name: Back to School

Author: ARTANDATA

Type: AD Banner

Size: Button #1 ( H:120px W: 90px )

Client: For Company Use (published)

Publishing period: 15/03/2004 to [not defined]

Go to page

Final words:

Well, if you had been so patient to keep reading until this point I really don’t know how to thank you for that. One thing I can do for you is to give you my own e-mail address so you can inquire (free of charge , of course) on any doubt or question you have on this reading. I’ll promise to reply an answer (this offer is valid while I can response all mail sent . once overloaded I’ll make FAQ’s )