How to Design Newspaper Ads for a Home Decor Business
The newspaper continues to be an effective medium to advertise your business. In a week-long survey, 59 percent of adults used the newspaper as their primary way to find sales and guide their shopping habits, according to the Newspaper Association of America in 2009. Home décor businesses can use newspaper ads to their advantage by following basic design tips with emphasis on a few specific elements.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
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Determine ad size. Home decorating business ads greatly rely upon the use of photos to sell their products or services. Smaller photos have less impact upon readers. The more space taken up by images in an ad, the higher the percentage of readers the ad receives, states Suzanne Raitt, managing director of the Toronto Star, in an article about effective newspaper advertising. Make the ad as large as possible to fit your budget and be noticed.
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Establish color usage. Newspaper ads can be printed in full color, spot color -- typically one color and black -- or just black and white. Full color is the best option for home décor businesses because the photos of furniture, paintings, rugs and other objects are vivid and fully showcase a product's texture or visual appeal. The use of a spot color around black and white photos can draw attention. Ads with color are read 60 percent more often than ads printed in just black and white, reveals Raitt.
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Develop a captivating headline and descriptive text. The basic concept of an ad is typically driven by its prominent headline. Come up with a creative headline that catches the interest of readers skimming through the large text on a page. Something like "Your home never looked so good" appeals to readers interested in having nicely decorated homes. They will likely further inspect your ad. Accompanying smaller text explains more about your business. Include bold prices next to sale products.
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Use photos effectively. Raitt mentions ads with photos or illustrations are looked at more closely 20 to 25 percent of the time than ads without images or with black and white line art. Potential customers want to see actual pictures of what they can buy. An effective design technique for home décor items is to cut out products' backgrounds in Photoshop. This highlights the intricacies and beauty of a piece and produces a more interesting graphic layout with the creation of varying shapes. Multiple photos in an ad should always be different sizes. Home decorator consulting businesses should consider using before-and-after photos to showcase their talent.
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Include essential business details. The ad is pointless if readers cannot easily find your business name or logo. Make it large and noticeable with little around it to deteriorate its legibility. The business location, hours, phone number and website are also essential elements to include. Once you lure the reader in with photos and text, it is incredibly frustrating not being told where to go or how to contact the business. This may seem like an obvious inclusion, but these details do get left out sometimes.
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Tips & Warnings
Keep your ad layout simple. When putting all the elements together, avoid being too busy and having too many competing or overlapping shapes and images.
