There are all sorts of common mistakes that relate to creating SFI ads, starting with mass-mailing ads everywhere, but I'm mostly going to focus on ad creation itself for my response:
1) Whether text is embedded in graphics or not, it is important to use avoid spelling and grammar errors unless you want your audience to make assumptions that you either (a) don't know any better or (b) just don't care. I've seen too many ads that confuse "it's" and "its" or "your" and "you're" in ways that make the ad look too stupid to follow, and a badly-written ad will turn people off before they really read.
2) Again, whether working with graphics or text, avoid using more than one font family (that is, a single typeface, regardless of size, bold, or italic). Too many ads use too many fonts, and that results in busy ads that are hard to read.
3) For similar reasons, avoid design schemes with more than a few colors--stick to high-contrast designs that avoid colors that "vibrate" against each other. The easier your message is to absorb, the easier you will be able to get people to open up to your suggestions.
4) With graphics, avoid too much imagery. See (3), above. You want them to accept your message, and if there's too much message, your potential target will be lost.
Finally, as something to consider: your average person will most easily absorb a message from five to nine message units (words or images) in length. Less than that, and you risk being too vague--longer than that, and you risk losing attention. Keep that in mind, and you will make much stronger ads.
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There are all sorts of common mistakes that relate to creating SFI ads, starting with mass-mailing ads everywhere, but I'm mostly going to focus on ad creation itself for my response:
1) Whether text is embedded in graphics or not, it is important to use avoid spelling and grammar errors unless you want your audience to make assumptions that you either (a) don't know any better or (b) just don't care. I've seen too many ads that confuse "it's" and "its" or "your"
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