How to Write an Advertisement

Anyone in business knows that to attract customers and get results, you have to advertise. An ad is a sales pitch made on different of media: newspaper, magazine, radio, television, Internet, direct mail and billboards to name a few. If a business owner knows how to successfully sell, he or she can learn how to write an ad.

Steps

1.Organize your thoughts. Decide what you're advertising.

• Is it a product, a service, or a place of business?
• Perhaps you have a store where you would like to increase traffic.
• You can advertise your store by increasing exposure with name recognition ads.
• Increase customer traffic is by advertising a popular product at a great price.
• Once you get people in the store, hopefully they will keep coming back.

2.Determine the best medium for getting a sales message to your customers. Each medium has its benefits and downsides. You might even want to try more than one medium to get your message across.

3.Think visually. Today's advertising has a strong visual component.

• If you want to appeal to families, then your visual might be a photo of a happy family.
• Graphics are often the first thing people look at, so organize your ad writing around a visual

4.Create a clear and powerful headline with only a few words. Less is more in ad writing, and the headline is the most important component of your advertising message.

• What do your customers need or think they need?
• What worries do the customers have that you can fix?

5.Describe your selling plan or what makes you different than the competition.

• You might have extended hours that make it more convenient for customers or perhaps the best prices.
• Personal service or quality products are other selling points that should be in your advertising message.

6.Discover the power of testimonials, because good testimonials from satisfied customers tell the world that customers are happy with your products or services. Using testimonials in your ad writing is a no-brainer.

7.Incite your customers to feel something.

• A successful advertising message "speaks" to a customer.
• An ad for greeting cards or a phone plan that makes customers tear up and think of special family and friends is a successful ad.

8.Give customers direction in doing business with you.

• If they need to call a phone number, make that phone number easy to find.
• If they need to come down to your store, give good directions. Better than a street address are directions, i.e. the corner of Hudson and Main Street.
• If you need customers to log onto your web site, provide an easy web site address to remember.

9.Rewrite your advertising message until it's compelling and effective.

• Write an ad with short sentences and few words that is aimed at an eighth grade reading level.
• No one wants to waste time figuring out the deeper meaning of an ad.

10.Make an ad appealing. The best ad writing can be lost in a visually unappealing ad.

• White space isn't a waste of space, it's a way to make your advertising message stand out.
• Some color is good for grabbing attention, but overpowering color, graphics, or too many fonts makes customers look away.