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10 Ways to
Write More Effective Ads
What is
advertising?
Is it something to be regarded as a work of
beauty or art? Is it clever slogans or amusing prose? Is it
workmanship to be judged for an award or recognition?
It’s none of the above.
Advertising is salesmanship multiplied.
Nothing more.
And advertising copy, or copywriting, is
salesmanship in print.
The purpose of a copywriter’s job is to sell.
Period.
The selling is accomplished by persuasion with
the written word, much like a television commercial sells (if
done properly) by persuading with visuals and audio.
As Claude Hopkins wrote in his timeless classic,
Scientific Advertising:
“To properly understand
advertising or to learn even its rudiments one must start with
the right conception. Advertising is salesmanship. Its
principles are the principles of salesmanship. Successes and
failures in both lines are due to like causes. Thus every
advertising question should be answered by the salesman's
standards.
“Let us emphasize that point. The
only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable
or unprofitable according to its actual sales.
“It is not for general effect. It
is not to keep your name before the people. It is not primarily
to aid your other salesmen. Treat it as a salesman. Force it to
justify itself. Compare it with other salesmen. Figure its cost
and result. Accept no excuses which good salesmen do not make.
Then you will not go far wrong.
“The difference is only in degree.
Advertising is multiplied salesmanship. It may appeal to
thousands while the salesman talks to one. It involves a
corresponding cost. Some people spend $10 per word on an average
advertisement. Therefore every ad should be a super-salesman.
“A salesman's
mistake may cost little. An advertiser’s mistake may cost a
thousand times that much. Be more cautious, more exacting,
therefore. A mediocre salesman may affect a small part of your
trade. Mediocre advertising affects all of your trade.”
These points are as true today as they were when
they were written nearly one hundred years ago!
So the goal then becomes:
how can we make our advertising as effective as
possible.
The answer is to test. Test again. And then test
some more.
If ad “A” receives a two percent response rate,
and ad “B” receives three percent, then we can deduce that ad
“B” will continue to outperform ad “A” on a larger scale.
Testing takes time, however, and can be expensive
if not kept in check. Therefore, it’s ideal to start with some
proven tested known ideas and work from there.
For example, if testing has shown for decades or
more that targeted advertising significantly outperforms
untargeted advertising (and it does), then we can start with
that assumption and go from there.
If we know based on test results that crafting an
ad that speaks directly to an individual performs better than
addressing the masses (again, it does), then it makes little
sense to start testing with the assumption that it does not.
This is common sense.
So it stands to reason that knowing some basic
rules or techniques about writing effective copy is in order.
Test results will always trump everything, but it’s better to
have a starting point before you test.
So this starting point is the essence of this
book.
The ten tips expressed here have been generally
time-tested and known to be effective.
But I can’t emphasize enough that when using
these techniques, you should always test them before rolling out
a large (and expensive) campaign.
Sometimes a little tweak here or there is all
that is needed to increase response rates dramatically.
And with that, let’s move onward…
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