The Elements of a Great Ad
18 years of experience has given us very good idea of which ads work for the lawyer sponsor and which ones will work against. These are the elements that will make a lawyer's ad soar:
- A professionally taken photo - Tell your photographer to make you look like a movie star. You won't believe it... but it's possible!
- Width of the ad - Do not exceed 650 pixels. Bigger is not always better.
- Strong Design - If you're telling your clients-to-be that you win trials, you want your ad to show at a glance that you win trials! A strong design is worth a thousand words.
- Vary the size of the font - One thing that you want to avoid at all costs is BOREDOM! Have all your font the same size in your ad and the reader's eyes will suddenly become glazed and won't see a thing.
- Vary your ads - Again the boredom factor. If your ad is always the same, readers will overlook it. The entire design doesn't have to change every week; in fact, our 17 year sponsor had the same design for the entire 17 years! A single changing element like a picture or caption will go a long way towards keeping people interested
- Lots of white space - This is possibly the most powerful element in your ad (and often the most overlooked) I once saw a full page ad in the New York Times. It had only one line in the center of the page... size 8 font. 40 000$ worth of space and I have never forgotten it!
