Are you working on branding your company or business online and want to ensure its visibility and reach as soon as possible? An advertorial may be just what you need.
It is the ideal companion to any SEO or SEM strategy, and a perfect option for digital businesses and websites that want to take advantage of the potential of big media to consolidate their brand and drive traffic.
In this post we’ll show you what an advertorial is and how to make a truly successful advertorial that will give your brand the boost it needs to outperform your competitors.
The advertorial, or infomercial, is a form of advertising in which a product, service or business is presented as if it were a news story.
What results is a type of advertising that is not as frontal as conventional advertisements, and which, on the other hand, can leverage the full credibility and reach of the newspaper or news agency in which it is published, which can give a considerable boost to the business you are talking about.
In the case of advertorials, the business that wants to advertise is in charge of creating the content (most of the time) and pays the newspaper or digital media to publish it.
It is a very successful type of advertising, used by small and large brands alike, from Apple to Netflix.
Because advertorials have all the advantages of standard advertising, without most of the disadvantages. After all, this journalistic format, which emphasises the news and indirectly promotes a business, or its products or services, is much more attractive and easier to consume, as it has, first and foremost, a story to tell.
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Writing an advertorial does not have to be difficult, but it is a process to which you should pay as much attention as you can, because its results depend both on its quality and on your ability to connect with your audience.
1. Evaluate the potential of your advertorial and the digital media in which you plan to publish it
Before writing the text and publishing it, it is essential that you assess its potential and how successful it could be in your chosen digital medium.
To do so, try to answer these questions:
What type of digital media do you plan to use for the advertorial? This is one of the most important aspects, the type of media you choose can completely determine the success of your advertorial. Just imagine promoting your online gardening business in a medium focused on finance. It would make little sense.
Does your target audience or buyer persona read that newspaper or digital media? If the answer is no, then you already know that your advertorial will not do too well in the medium you have chosen. The idea, of course, is that you can reach your potential customers, your target audience, not just any type of reader.
Does the editorial style of your chosen medium suit your brand? If you want to ensure that your brand or business leaves a distinguishable impression on potential customers, you will want to give it a space in a digital medium that has a tone and editorial style that makes your business stand out, rather than one that looks out of place.
Does the newspaper or digital media accept this type of text? You must make sure that the digital media you have chosen accepts advertorials, otherwise it will be useless if you have prepared the best content of all, as you will not be able to publish it.
Once you have answered these questions, and you have analysed both the digital medium and its compatibility with the content you intend to publish, it is time to move on to the next step.
2. Research and document yourself on the digital media
Yes, you have already superficially evaluated your chosen digital media, but it is crucial that you do much more research, familiarise yourself with their style, study the way they structure their texts and the tone they give them.
These aspects vary greatly from one medium to another, so you should pay attention to them if you want to write an advertorial that fits the style of the medium you have chosen.
To do this, there is nothing better than to do your research, look at many articles from that media, of different types, and especially from the category in which your advertorial would fall.
Take into account the type of headlines they use, their language and vocabulary, the tone, and the length of their content.
This is essential because the next thing you will do is try to stay true to the structure and tone of their texts.
3. Evaluate the type of audience of the digital media where you will publish your content
Just as important as the type of digital media is the type of audience it has.
If your plan is to sell electronic devices that only appeal to a young audience, you will not want to place an advertorial in a digital media with an audience of mostly senior citizens.
It is therefore a good idea to analyse in depth the readership of the digital media you will choose, sometimes the media itself can share this type of information with you, so you can make a much more informed decision.
4. Structure and write your advertorial so that it fits perfectly with the type of media in which it will be published
Your advertorial should sound like any other text in the digital media you have chosen, it should be structured in a similar way, the tone should be consistent.
The charm of the advertorial is that it doesn’t sound like an advertisement, the focus should be on the story it tells. The promotion of the product, service or business will be indirect and much more subtle.
5. Orient your text to your target audience
The fact that the advertorial keeps the tone and style of the medium where you publish it does not mean that you have to forget about your target audience, your potential customers.
Your text should be targeted to them, it should stir their curiosity, offer answers to their needs, even if only indirectly.
To do this, make sure you start with a headline that grabs their attention, that connects with them; use short sentences and paragraphs to make the text user-friendly, and make sure you pepper your content with interesting facts and information that will keep your readers engaged.
6. Clearly state the objectives of your advertorial
Do you want your readers to buy a product or service, discover your business or subscribe to a particular newsletter?
Define this when you create your content and make sure you write it in a way that drives your readers to make the conversion you want.
7. Facilitate conversion with a CTA
If you want to maximise the chances of your advertorial converting, and turning readers into customers, include a CTA or Call to Action, this will make it clear what you want to achieve and encourage readers to convert.
8. Polish your advertorial, check every detail and add a dash of copywriting where necessary
Remember, your advertorial may look like a news story, but it is first and foremost an advertisement, so it needs to be convincing, and for that you will need two things: impeccable content and some copywriting.
Once you have finished writing the advertorial, wait a few hours and then reread the whole content, you will surely get a couple of details to correct.
You should not only pay attention to grammatical errors, but also to sentences that are too complex, or paragraphs that are too long. Your text should be easy to read and should have a clear objective, replace or discard everything that is too much or hinders the reading.
And finally, make sure you do some copywriting at key points, especially in segments of the content that talk about your brand or business – you don’t want to be overly commercial, but you do want to grab attention and stimulate conversion.
If you can and it fits naturally, apply some copywriting and make what you offer in your CTA irresistible.
Advantages of advertorials
They help to consolidate the authority of your website or online business.
They give credibility to your brand.
They take advantage of the potential of digital media and their large audiences.
They can drive very good traffic to your site.
If successful, they will allow your online business to become profitable much faster.
It gets results faster than SEO, and may not cost as much as an SEM campaign.
Disadvantages of advertorials
They only work for a short time – after all, most major digital media outlets create a lot of content on a daily basis, which means that the publication will be lost quickly.
It is very particular content, so you will have to write it very carefully, especially not to sound too commercial
How much does an advertorial cost?
The price of advertorials will vary greatly from one medium to another.
With large, established newspapers and news agencies, the price is easily in the thousands of euros.
But don’t worry, this is not the norm, and you can usually find digital media with the perfect balance between affordable prices and large enough audiences.
How and where to buy an advertorial?
There are many ways to buy an advertorial, the standard one is to look for newspapers or digital media, contact them, ask about the possibility of booking an advertorial and wait for the answer.
As you can imagine, it is a complicated and tedious process that does not always flow as it should.
At Linkatomic we decided to change that, so we offer you a simple way to hire advertorials, press releases and guest posts in digital media and websites around the world.
It’s as simple as logging into our platform, searching for the newspapers or media you want to promote your business in, and booking the content, for rates as low and affordable as €20.
So, as you may have noticed, harnessing the power of advertorials or infomercials has never been easier. And not only will they do wonders for your business in the short term, but they will also help strengthen your site’s SEO, which ultimately means higher rankings.
That’s why advertorials are one of the perfect additions to any SEO or SEM strategy, as it leverages and strengthens them with all the power of digital media, which doesn’t sound bad at all.
Just make sure that your advertorial is like any other news story, that it fits perfectly with the medium in which it will appear, and that it engages your readers, intriguing them and inviting them to convert.
And you, have you already decided to boost your business with the power of advertorials?
