Turn Your Advertisement into an Article

"In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves ... self-discipline with all of them came first." By Harry S. Truman: Was the thirty-third president of the U.S.

Sitting at my kitchen table the other morning I decided, as I always do, to read some stories in the newspaper. I like our local newspaper as the writers they have working for them are very good and very thorough in the stories they are trying to translate.

I started reading some articles in their business section. One article I picked out in particular was talking about a handful companies and their stock prices as they are rising and falling based on certain factors and how society may be contributing to them. But what caught my eye was not the article itself but the advertisement located directly to its right on the page. The advertisement clearly stood out from the article, which I am sure was the company’s intent when they ran it.

This advertisement was segmented away from the article by being boxed in with a thick dark border so as readers could tell it was not part of the article itself. Now I have seen advertisements like this before so it was nothing new, but it did remind me of the importance of how to relay what you are selling to the reader in the form of information as opposed to a “buy it now” type of advertisement.

The advertisement I was looking at was in the form of an article. The article told a story and painted a visual picture of what the product was, how it was used and who could benefit most from using it. It gave a variety of statistics, that although I did not personally verify, I am sure they can be validated with a little research.

This means of advertising to your customers appeals on a personal level. It doesn’t matter if you are advertising in the newspaper, a magazine, on TV, radio or on the internet. The most affective forms of advertising today hit potential customers on an emotional level. This particular story does just that.

Imagine if you sold a product. Your product is used to help prevent fires in the home. You begin to write and advertisement in the form of an article that talks about how many homes are lost each year due to fires, how many lives it claims and so on. This makes your product appeal to them before they even know what it does. Now paint a picture to the reader as to how your product can reduce those numbers. Can you see how this form of advertising can be beneficial to you and the customer? Of course you can.