Advertising is one the most important part of an overall promotional strategy. With the continuing increase in competition in the market today, advertising has become inevitable. But have you ever asked yourself how many of us are unreached by advertising? When you walk the street, to the right and left stretched streets showing hotels, apartment houses, private houses, restaurants and saloons, out of which live people who have or have not come in contact with any form of advertising. On the next block wandered another crowd all apparently without thought of advertising. Nearly all are familiar with newspapers and magazines, but to what degree?

Some take up the newspaper to read the political news and views and nothing more. Some read newspapers to glance at the sports page and nothing more. Some take up the newspaper to read the gossip section and nothing more. And some never even bother to read a newspaper. And some are even so distracted by personal matters that the advertisement they saw in the newspaper does not make any impression on their minds. For this reason, it is important that as a business owner you know how to reach up to your target customers through your advertising materials.

The most important features of an advertisement are ideas, words and arrangement. Ideas come first; they should be correctly expressed and the whole should be properly arranged with type and illustration. So for instance you are going to make a poster. Keep in mind that a good poster conveys a clear message through good visual information and a minimum of text. It should be legible, readable and well organized. Studies show that you only have a few seconds to grab the attention of your reader and most of these readers are going to absorb only the punch line. 

The overall format of a good poster is reflected by the way you integrate the information. For instance, you would never put your first section on the right and ask the reader to proceed to the left because we are not trained to read that way. Space is also important in a poster. Without appropriate space, your reader has no visual pauses to think. If books have a space on the margins and chapters as spaces, posters should likewise have spaces. Posters that are crowded with information are tiring to read and are seldom read in its entirety. So, leave out all irrelevant text and images including borders between related data and text so the reader can understand your ideas easily.   

Remember that the point of view of every person is constantly changing. So if you are to influence your readers through your poster to buy your products or avail of your services you have to make ensure that your poster will do the talking for you.