Starting an Aesthetics Business Series: How to Develop an Effective Newspaper Advertisement

Every business needs effective advertising, and the newspaper in your community is probably one of the best ways to publicize the existence of your aesthetics business at a low cost, reaching most of the population.

Whether your city has a daily paper or relies on a weekly publication, the “newspaper of record” in your town is probably a major medium, along with radio and television, but probably costs a lot less per person to reach than broadcast media do.

As an aesthetician you are probably very knowledgeable of your profession, but may not know much about advertising or publishing. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when designing a newspaper ad for your aesthetics business.

First, know your message. Know what you are trying to sell. Too many poorly designed ads try to cover everything about a business in too small a space. Determine one particular primary service you want to point to – chemical peels, facials, waxing, microdermabrasion, it really doesn’t matter. Pick one, and make it the primary focus of this particular ad. You can always run other ads later promoting other services you offer. Too much information will confuse the reader.

Next, use an attention grabbing headline and short chunks of information. Don’t expect the newspaper reader to devote time and energy to reading small type. If you put too much information in the ad and it is not read because the type is too small, or you have large paragraphs that look like big chunks of gray words, then the ad will not be effective. Shorter is better with newspaper ads.

White space – use lots of it. White space in the ad, surrounding the type, draws attention to the printed words. It is human nature for the eye to go to the big open spaces.

Proofread proofread proofread. A misspelled word can be embarrassing. Don’t count on the newspaper staff to do it for you. They make mistakes all the time.

Don’t just run the ad once and expect great results. Advertising requires consistency. Recent studies show that a human being has to read a message three times before it registers in memory. Run your ad three weeks in a row if it is a weekly paper, and run it three times during a week, or three weeks in a row if a daily paper.

Lastly, see what the big companies are doing and copy their ideas. Don’t steal or plagiarize, but do take a look at the newspaper and Yellow Pages ads used by Fortune 500 companies. You’ll notice they use larger ads with small amounts of type, lots of white space and clear messages. They spend fortunes on expensive advertising agencies. Look at the ideas they use and be creative, coming up with your own version.

Keep your ads sharp, attractive, creative and noticeable and you’ll see a nice increase in business.