4 Critical Elements To A Successful Ad

Over the course of your business life you are probably going to be forced to write many different advertisements from flyers to brochures, print ads to radio spots…possibly even the odd TV commercial.

So doesn’t it make sense for you to make those ads as persuasive as possible…and to continually be tweaking your ads with the aim of improving your conversions year in year out.

“That sounds like a lot of work”…I hear you say.

Depends on how you look at it.

Is it considered work if you spend an extra hour crafting a p0werful ad that doubles the sales your business gets from the ad that week?

It probably is…its just much more profitable work than pretty much any other task you do on a daily basis.

Persuasive Copywriting Increases Your Leverage

Leverage is the ability to get more from an existing task or resource. Ad writing is something that you need to do – so why not do it well. Continually be aiming to increase the response your ads get every time you run them.

In this article I’m going to tell you the four things that should be included as part of every ad you write. This is just the minimum – there are other elements which can be included depending on the size of your ad, where and what you’re promoting etc.

1) A Powerful Headline

While this is generally the shortest part of your ad, it should actually be the area you spend the most time on. Between 70-80% of people will read no further than a headline, so this is where you really need to work hard at capturing their attention.

Think of your headline as an ad for you ad – you are trying to convince people that your ad has some really valuable information that they should read immediately.

2) Irresistible Offer

Every ad should contain an offer to the reader. This is probably the part of the ad that gets left out by most business owners, who are content to write down a simple description of their business, their opening hours, blah blah blah.

Booooooooring.

You need to offer the reader a reason to buy from your business today. What can you offer them that separates your business from the hundreds of other businesses trying to get the attention of the reader?

3) Risk Reversal

Risk reversal is the process of removing all of the risk from the buyer and placing it on yourself. The most common example is the money back guarantee.

This is one of the most powerful elements you can include in an ad but many people are scared to do it because they are worried that customers will take advantage of them.

It has been consistently proven that businesses that offer powerful guarantees, outsell those that don’t.

And contrary to what you think will happen, very few people actually take you up on your guarantee. They just need to know that you stand behind your product, and are so confident in its value that you will refund any unsatisfied customers

4) Call To Action with scarcity built in

People need to be told what to do next in clearly stated terms.

• “Call this number now to receive…”
• “Visit our website now to download your free report…”

And you can make this even more powerful by creating a sense of urgency. Limit the amount of time they have to take you up on your offer. Or limit the number of spots available.

So In Summary

If you were to start writing ads tomorrow that included all four of these components, you would be far ahead of the game and would notice an immediate improvement in conversions from your ads.

I would recommend that if you want to improve your ad writing you start analysing ads in newspapers – and I’m talking all industries here, not just your competitors.

You’ll be surprised at how many ads out there are ineffective once you understand what makes a persuasive ad.

In the next few articles I’ll break down each of these four components and offer you some simple strategies you can you use to improve their effectiveness.

Craig

Learn This Skill & Print Your Own Money

How good are you with words?

Can you write an ad for the newspaper, knowing with confidence that it will drive eager customers through your doors, credit cards out, ready to spend?

How about an ad for the radio or TV – can you knock up a 30 second script that has the phone lines jammed?

For many business owners advertising is considered a necessary evil. You have to do it because the competition is doing it and you won’t get your share of the pie if you don’t run your usual ads.

But what if you started looking at your advertising from a different perspective.

“What if you changed your mindset and starting looking upon advertising as an investment in your business?”

If you knew that you would get a $4 return for every dollar spent on ads, would you be worried if you had to pay $1,000 or $10,000?

Of course you wouldn’t…you’d have that cheque written faster than the winning dog at Dapto.

But one of the main reasons people can’t adopt this mentality is because they’ve never been shown how to write a good ad. Never taught the power that words have to influence the thoughts and emotions of people.

You just aren’t shown as a small business owner how much of a difference powerful advertising can make.

I’m not sure if you know much about the world of copywriting, but a good copywriter can name their price when it comes to crating a direct response piece – and their price normally includes a cut of the profits.

But the good news is – being able to write persuasive copy is an acquired skill not one you’re born with.

These million dollar wordsmiths didn’t wake up one morning with the ability to crank out sales letters that read like a Dan Brown novel.

They worked hard at their craft, and honed their skills through trial and error.

And learning this skill is something that should be high up on the to do list of anyone who is looking to be in business for the long haul…including you.

Think about the next ten years, and how many different advertisements you’re going to run in this time.

Now imagine that you were able to increase the conversions of all of these campaigns by just ten percent a year for those ten years.

That would give you roughly an extra full years worth of income for the same time period.

Now if learning to write good copy seems like a daunting task, check back here regularly. I’m going to break the whole process down for you and give you valuable tips and insights that you can immediately incorporate into your advertising campaigns

I’ll start off with the biggies – the four most important factors that should be included as part of every piece of advertising you do.

And just a quick note – after reading a few of my articles you’ll soon learn that graphics have very little to do with good advertising. Words sell, not pictures.

Graphics should only be used to enhance your advertising message – they should not BE your advertising message.

The sooner you can move away from graphically based ads, and start running ads that sell – the sooner your bottom line will begin to fatten up.

Craig