Effective ad writing tips with real product examples   by jeet

What is advertising?

Is it something of beauty, something of clever slogans, fancy creation, something to judge upon based on creativity and awards?
NO, it's none of the above. Advertising is simple salesmanship.
Let us emphasize that point...
The only purpose of advertising is to sell and sell more of whatever you are selling, isn't it?

Anybody who has been spending money in advertising, be it products or services, knows it's costly to advertise and this is why one must by all means try to bang the biggest bugs with each ad run, offline or online!
The tips mentioned below will serve as your starting point in writing effective ad copies and sometimes just a little twist to them increases the response rate dramatically!
With that said, let's move onwards...

* Focus on them, not you.
Do a google search for anything. Yes, any service, even ad agencies. Go through each website, spot something common. You will notice that all websites have the same writing style, which goes something like this:
"We did this..."
"We worked for some big company..."
"We got this award..."
"We can do this..."

Did anyone tell you how they can help you? No!
Did anyone mention your problem? No!
Will you trust someone who doesn't even care about your problem and instead keeps bragging about themselves? NO!

A lot of advertisers make this mistake of treating themselves as a company and keep bragging about how long they have been in business, who their biggest customers are, how they have spent millions developing this product and the list goes on and on...
Actually those points are important, but remember they are not the product itself. Then why focus on them so strongly that they overshadow the product? Remember, it could be a service you are trying to sell...
Here are examples of the same points, but written focusing on the customer!

"You get quality service from the company which did this..."
"You can be sure of the service level as we worked for (some big company)..."

Do you see how the focus has shifted from bragging about yourself to actually telling the customer about the quality of the work they will get while showing them an example of the project you have done?
See an example of this on a Custom web site designer website.
All the service pages on this website focus on how you can be benefitted, how you can improve your website and not how great they are...
(It's copyrighted material)

Moving on to the next point...

* Mention an U S P.

USP, (Unique Selling Proposition) is one thing that differentiates you from your competition and yet most advertisements tend to miss this... Think of it, if you are selling the exact same thing, with exact same benefits, then why should your potential customer buy from you and not from someone else? You might say that your product does not have a USP, which is not true. Let me prove...

Imagine you are a computer dealer. You offer a free scanner with each computer people buy from you as freebies, while your competition offers a free printer as freebies. Here are the ads you use.

"Buy a computer and get a free scanner."
"Buy a computer and get a free printer."

At first glance, you might say that there's no difference because both of us offer a free product, but look at it again and then read the ad below:

"The only computer dealer to offer a Brand new free scanner with every computer!"

Now people know that you are the only one to offer a brand new scanner, while others offer something which all other dealers also offer...
Do you see how something common can be manipulated to become your Uniqueness? You were already doing it, and now the ad has changed a little to bring in a focus!
How about making the ad a little more exciting? Brings me to the next point...

* Add a deadline.
"Absolutely free, Brand new scanner with every computer! Offer ends 30th this month."

The focus is now on generating immediate sales than building a brand. In the previous ad, we projected the dealer as the only one giving a free scanner which lead to creating a brand recognition, while in the second ad the intention is to generate immediate sales. In this case by adding a deadline! People now know that this dealer is the only one who's offerring a free scanner, but the offer ends 30th and if they want a free scanner, they got to get it now.

One thing to remember when working with deadlines is to, "Never cross the deadline". If you continue the offer after the deadline has passed, there's a high chance that the next time you use this trick, people won't believe...
This brings me to the next point of:

* Build trust first.
Let me give you an example...

You come across a restaurant and the sign says:

"Indian food that tastes great! Can't stop licking fingers!"

You probably would just ignore it...

Now what if your friend says:
"The restaurant at the corner serves Indian food that tastes great! Can't stop licking fingers!"

You know that your friend has a great sense of taste and if he's recommending it, there's got to be something!
It's nothing but trust...
How do you build this trust with your ads?

Professionalism. If it's a website, don't just throw away some free templet in the design. Spend a few bugs and get a new theme developed which matches the colors of your product or helps project a professional image of your business. At least focus on your customers tastes. If your target customers are women, a pinkish color might be more familiar than jet black.
Sometimes you need to have a lot of fancy pictures in your header, while at times just your logo matched carefully with a theme, projects the right image.
See at http://www.businessbazee.com . The blue header starts dark, slowly fades into the background color of the text, and the hand written like font in the header looks very simple , yet professional!

The intention is to remove all doubts in the minds of the customer so he can buy from you. If they have a doubt, they won't. Another thing you can do is...

Article continued at: http://designer.ad4business.com

About the Author

This article written by jeet who's a Web copywriter. His collection of marketing articles can be read here.