I received this many years ago and have never seen it improved upon. The basic premise is exactly what the top of the illustration says: The offer must be powerful! Powerful offers make for powerful coupons. Note the 60/40 rule – the offer should be the biggest part of your ad. The rest of the ad should be SIMPLE. Nothing distracting from the offer. Our job, as designers, is to make the offer easy to read. The merchant, or advertiser’s job is to get people in the store, or on the phone, or whatever his or her desired action is. That is done by an enticing offer.

I understand that margins, in this economy, are lower and that merchants don’t like to “give stuff away”. Neither do I, BUT, people need to be motivated to ACT and that will require a good offer. Of course your offer could be “FREE everything in the store” and that would give you a line out the door and flat broke, but there is a balance between that and not having new customers at all. The challenge is to figure out where the sweet spot is. (HINT: 10% off is probably not it.)

I have been in this business since early 2000, and sold advertising myself before that. Let me know if you need any help figuring out an enticing offer.