Why 80 Percent of Advertising is Wasted

Think of the last time you were flipping through a magazine and you suddenly decided to stop and read an advertisement.

What made you stop?

It was probably a headline that caught your attention!

It’s been shown time and again that people read a headline 5 times more often than they do the copy of an ad. That means the advertiser has invested about 80% of their advertising budget in the headline. So you can see the headline is the most important part of your advertisement. Yet most advertising is a wasted effort due to the lack of an effective headline, or no headline at all!

The first thing the reader of your ad, letter, or postcard sees is the headline. People make the decision whether to read, or not read, the main message of your advertisement in a bout three seconds.

So your advertisement must have a headline that gets and keeps your reader’s attention. If your message doesn’t do this they won’t read your whole message.

Creating compelling headlines is hard work, but you can do it by following some simple guidelines.

1. Use a couple of well chosen words to create urgency and compel your reader to stop and read you message right away instead of waiting until they get back to it.
2. The reader has to be able to justify taking the time to read the whole message. Therefore, you have to communicate something they think is valuable.
3. Your headline needs to shout out how your offer is unique.
4. Point out something specific to your reader using facts or how-to information.

By using these guidelines you can create headlines that quickly captures reader, gives them reason to continue reading, and offers benefits they want.

Avoid conventional, overused, or boring expressions and never trick your reader into continuing on or you will lose their trust.

Power words for attention getting headlines

Many of the powerful headlines you see use one or more of these words that sell:

You can begin by creating some headlines that clearly convey your commitment, benefits, or “unique selling proposition”. After you have made some draft headlines, look for ways to add power words from the list above AND three or four of the simple guidelines presented earlier.

10 Tips For Effective Advertising

Writing powerful classified ads doesn’t have to be hard, if you invest some time researching effective copywriting.

 10 Tips For Effective Advertising

1. Don’t try to sell expensive products from a classified ad. Incorporate a two step process. As the reader to visit your web site or email an auto responder for more information. Then send the reader more detailed information about your product or service.
2. Examine how the other marketers compose their sales message. It’s a no brainer, just study ads in the materials you are already reading. Or browse some of the free online classified ad sites. There’s not point in copying other ads, just use them as a guide to effective design for your own ads.
3. Advertise in the right place. Yep, it’s a basic idea. Don’t put a cooking ad in the sports equipment section.
4. Advertise in multiple locations that are appropriate for what you are selling. After you find several advertising venues, read their writing guidelines and practice.
5. Advertise in more than one location at a time to attract as many potential buyers as possible.
6. When people read the same ad over and over, every month, they will likely start to ignore your ad. So freshen up you ads by changing the headlines, use new wording, try different lengths of copy, insert some humor, add more details or interesting facts, include a testimonial.
7. Put a key in your ads so you will know which ads are working. Or use different email address or links in place of a key to see which ads pull the most responses.
8. Build your list by keeping a record of every response you get. Then follow up appropriately with information about your product or service.
9. Use the free classified ad sites to test your ad writing skills before committing to a paid ad in a print publication. Study the ads other marketers have placed at the free sites too. Create a free email account and respond to a few of their ads and see how they market their products and services.
10. Study publications and advertisements you receive offline through regular mail to help you better your ad writing skills.

Resources

• My Instant Swipe File
• Sales Copy Master Class
• Copywriting
• Advertising

9 Steps To More Web Traffic

There are numerous techniques you can use to increase traffic to your web site. The most valuable to your visitors is to offer continuous and engaging value such as a blog or some other online discussion, perhaps a forum, that will keep your visitors returning time and again. Following are nine techniques to use. However, there are many other techniques available to you. Check out “Underground Traffic Secrets” to learn how twelve leading experts would generate traffic to earn $1,000 in thirty days if they started over with what they know now.

1 – Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

“Search Engine Optimization”, also known as “SEO”, is very successful for many web sites. In fact, an entire service industry has sprung up where people are being hired to optimize web sites for search engines, and make submissions to directories, all in an effort to make your web site rank better in the search engines. This is something you can do your self by using various on page SEO tips, submitting your site to the various directories, and writing and submitting some articles to places like E-Zine Articles, Hub Pages, and Squido. Of course, if you don’t have the or inclination it may be worth hiring a consultant or freelancer to help you.

2 – Get Listed in Directories and Search Engines

There are numerous directories and search engines that you can list your site on for increased exposures and possibly some link backs. Whiles some charge a modest fee, there are many that are free. The important thing is to enter your listings manually, in person, so you can optimize the listing to be the best possible interface to your site. Although an automated submission system will list your site in hundreds of directories at once, it is not a substitute for doing it in person.

3 – Link Exchange Participation

In a link exchange, you and another webmaster simply agree to exchange links. That is you each put a link to the others website on your page. This works best if the two websites are complimentary of each other. For example, a site that deals with business in general like this site would benefit by exchanging links with a site that focuses on a specific business niche.

4 – Paid Advertising

Paid advertising like Google’s AdWords, or banner ads, are effective ways to bring traffic to your site.

AdWords displays ads that are relevant to the content of the the viewer is reading. The page being read is often found through a search engine. With this program you bid the amount you will pay for a list of keywords used by people performing a search. Your gets displayed and you are charged for each “click” your ad receives. Your daily expenditure is limited by the what you set as a maximum daily limit. Learn the details by reading Google’s AdWords page.

Google is probably the largest contextual text advertiser out there, but there are other, like Yahoo, so you don’t have to use Google AdWords.

5 – Become published on other web sites

The Internet is insanely vast. The blogsphere is also incredibly large. There are at least two ways to get published on other sites.

First, you can leave meaningful comments on blogs. Perhaps reading a blog post makes you think of something that happened to you or someone you know. Put your story in the blog’s comments to add to the conversation. Be sure to have a link back to your own web site.

Second, offer to write articles to be published on another website. Again, include a link to your own site.

6 – Magazine and online reviews

When you are a specialist, or authority, on the subject matter of your site, start asking both print magazines and online sources to review you and your site. They need content too, and may use your site for their content.

7 – Post to forums, blogs, and chat rooms

This is pretty self explanatory. Get involved online in forums, chat rooms, and on blogs. Leave meaningful and on topic comments. Always include a link to your site, either in the comment or as part of your “sig file”.

8 – Have contests and give-a-ways

Similar to a customer rewards program, hold contests.

Maybe have an eBook contest for a hundred dollar prize. The contestants submit their eBooks and $100 goes to the winner and you get the rights to the eBooks that are submitted. Many off line photo contests work this way.

How about a give-a-way. Offer your own eBook (or something else of value) to people who subscribe to you newsletter.

9 – Join a business organization

You local Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, Toast Masters, Rotory Club, and more, are often an overlooked benefit in your community. Membership in any of these organizations let other business people become aware of you and your website. Membership also puts you in a position to learn about new tools and concepts to increase you visibility and your bottom line.

Further Reading

• ”Link Building black Book”
• ”How to use AdWords”
• ”Underground Traffic Secrets”