What Type of Ad Should You Use?
THERE ARE three ad types: Qualified – Partially Qualified – and Blind.
The qualified ad is specific and includes more detail about the product you are selling. Some products lend themselves to qualified ad content better than others. Hair pieces for men is an example. If your product is particularly “person dependent” use this type. Qualified ads will receive the least response but more of the responses which are received will result in sales.
The partially qualified ad offers a special benefit, such as money or self-improvement. The readers have some idea of what you are offering, but don’t know the specifics. If they are interested and desire your product they will follow your directive and send for more info. If you know where a partially qualified ad response comes from, you may be able to tailor your response to increase the percent of resulting sales.
Blind ads offer only a few details, they are short, and bring in the largest response. However, blind ads produce the lowest percentage of actual orders per response, they are often answered just out of curiosity.
ADDING WORD POWER TO YOUR AD
Some words are more powerful than others. Saying, your ad must “spark your readers’ interest,” is more powerful than saying, your ad must “get the readers’ attention.” Why? because by using “spark,” you can see something igniting within the reader, flaming their interest, and sense they are feeling some excitement.
Yes, getting them to have feelings about your words is what you want to accomplish. It is the feelings that are attached to the words that give them power. Look at the list of words below and see if you can recognise the feelings behind the words, that give them power.
If you are having trouble finding power words to use in your ad, it is probably because you are concentrating to hard on what words you want to use instead of what sorts of feelings you want the reader to feel. Decide on the feelings first and then experiment with the words that best convey them.
Researchers at Yale University say that the twelve most POWERFUL words in the English language are:
1. DISCOVER
2. EASY
3. GUARANTEE
4. HEALTH
5. LOVE
6. MONEY
7. NEW
8. PROVEN
9. RESULTS – SAFETY
10. SAVE
11. YOU
12. FREE
The above list contains the type of attention getting words that you should try to include in your advertising ad title. Scan a bunch of ads (as many as necessary), picking out other such words from the title of the ads that attracted your attention. Do this until you have a list of about 50 words.
Try to pick out the individual words and not the phrases. Phrases will come later. Keep this list at hand when you are designing your ad. Glance at the list occasionally while writing down possible titles for your ad. The title is the most important part of the ad. You may need to spend 90 percent of the time it takes to design your ad, just on the title alone.
Now write down every word that you can possibly think of which describes a particular feature or benefit of your product. What do you always tell the customer about your product? Benefits – benefits -benefits! Features – features- features!
Verbs and adjectives are great. Verbs because they show action and adjectives because they are descriptive. Active and descriptive words tend to have more inertia and cause us to react with feelings.
Now let’s put it all together and create a simple classified car ad.
Want a dependable used car that looks fantastic and drives great? 1994 Holden Commodore – low mileage, automatic transmission, stereo plays CDs. Tinted glass – factory air – great gas mileage – People will stare with envy when you drive by – Call today 1234 5678 ask for John.
Well, this one I did quickly. Maybe you can make it better. Anyway, now review the ad. Does the title grab the reader’s attention. Does the ad offer features or benefits of interest to car buyers? Is some emotional desire created to further stimulate the reader? Does the ad direct the reader’s action?
Now go to it! Create your own awesome advertisement keeping the above thoughts in mind. Review your ad and check to see that all the important ingredients of a good ad are present.
If you’d like to try internet-based advertising, find a classifieds site on the web with plenty of ads in a category related to your product. Get your ad listed first if you can. And wait for the response. “If you are not getting responses, then either change the title of the ad, change the wording, or a dvertise in more locations!
If you want to talk over these Get More Customers options, or the other effective tactics that I have, give me a call 0414 955 743 – advice is totally free of charge.
Cheers,
John