Advertising – In Five Seconds

We have all heard of the Five-Second Rule, right? You know -  a piece of candy or food falls to the floor and you know how good it will taste but are torn between following proper food-safety etiquette and just quickly blowing on it and popping in your mouth. After all, it was on the floor for less than five seconds – what could possibly happen to it, right? Let’s take a look at how a five second rule in advertising can revive your small business.

I see small business owners daily whose number one complaint is their advertising is not working. Whether print or digital media, their campaign is getting them lack luster results. When I look at these ads I can tell the reason these ads fail is because they’re not built for today’s environment. What do I mean? Look at how we communicate with each other. How do we exchange ideas? No longer do we rely on carrier pigeons to send information – can you imagine? Today we share information at a mind-numbing pace and consumers of all ages have adapted to this phenomenon – GenYers and Baby Boomers alike.

Have you ever wondered why television adverting was whittled down from a standard 60 second ad to 15 second spots? Not only is it profitable for the station airing the spot but done correctly, a 15 second spot can have a greater impact than the old 60 second ads.

Brevity is the art of persuasion. Nothing is more true, especially when your audience sees your ad while doing 75 on the interstate, sees your ad buried with other business signs or sees your ad for just a few seconds as a rotating banner on a web page.

Five seconds is the maximum amount of time given to make this initial contact with potential clients. You need to grab their undivided attention in these initial moments or they won’t hang around to hear the whole story and then it’s too late.

Let’s explore the Five-Second Rule in the following areas:

A few tips:

-Limit your text to one line (even better – 4 to 5 words max)

-Use a large, rounded or block typeface/font with maximum contrast from the background

-Avoid redundancies – in text and images

Do’s

-Use Humor

-Start with a special offer

-Use catchy music or a jingle

-Use premium paper and printing

-Use non-traditional image sizing

Don’ts

-Avoid using look-alike lettering or imaging

-Avoid repetition: space and time are limited

-Avoid the spam locker – use free spam checkers

-Avoid wordy subject lines – make it brief, make it great

-Avoid too many images – less is more

Don’t forget to run all adverting by a focus group or a even just a few customers – remember their opinion matters and they will feel like they have ownership in assisting you!