What's Wrong With My Ad?	Visited: 1218 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Jonathan Gray October 28, 2003

In desperation I rang a friend who had 5 websites raking in thousands a month.

"What am I doing wrong?" I asked him.

"Simple," he said. "Make these adjustments. Then you should start getting BIG sales from your SMALL spaces."

Then he showed me four ways to make DRAMATIC IMPROVEMENTS
to my short ad copy... to attract a much bigger response and improved sales.

1. Emphasise benefits, not features

To clarify. A real estate agent offering a "price analysis of recent beach front sales" is advertising a FEATURE of his website.

But if he writes, "Avoid wasting time having to search, with my price analyser", then he's promoting a BENEFIT.

2. Write to a targeted audience

Let's face it. Your service or product will not appeal to everyone. So word your ad to target your best potential customers.

In the pay-per-click search engines you pay for every click your ad generates.

So if you are targeting Toyota owners in the Dallas area, you will ensure your ad says so. Then you won't waste money on people looking for Toyotas in Seattle.

3. Include a call to action

You must include these two important features in your call to action:

(a) Clearly identify what action is desired. "Buy now" may not be the action you want. Think about what you are trying to do.

Is it to generate leads? Get people to subscribe to your newsletter? Or collect a specific audience from which to convert as many people as possible into sales?

It's important to make your ad copy as DIRECT as possible. Tell your visitors specifically what to do.

If you have a button that is labelled "Sales", you may be confusing your visitors. Leaving them guessing.

"Sales" could mean
* their opportunity to sell your products
* online ordering, or
* products you are offering at a special sale price.

Much better to change that button to "Order online". That clarifies what you want them to do.

Again, you could change "Email" to "Contact us" - which is a clear, specific action.

(b) Give people a REASON WHY they should buy.

For example, you could say, "Click here and claim your eBook of interviews with top tennis Pros who reveal their hottest secrets, guaranteed to improve your game in two weeks."

That will get you results far quicker than "Buy now".

4. Watch your lay-out

Your message must be brief... compelling... and effective!

In HTML format, you can choose bold, italics and color, etc. Or in text, you can show FEATURES by using bullet points and white space - and emphasise BENEFITS by using capitals.

Then, at the end, place the CALL TO ACTION.

This will give you high impact copy.

May I suggest you now go and examine every piece of ad copy you are using - every link, banner, newsletter subscription offer... and classified ad.

If you follow these four rules, you simply can't lose.