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Want Your Ads To SELL MORE? Do This...
© 2003 Harmony Major
The minions say that advertising is all about getting the attention of your prospects.
Making them notice your ad.
Separating yourself from the crowd.
"Because if you make them take notice, that's half the battle." WRONG!
A Heavy Metal band and a disco ball smack dab in the middle of a church communion would get your attention, too ... but is it PROPER? Sheesh.
With advertising, as with life, there are just some things you *do not* do. Since we've gotten shakin'-your-"ads"-in-the-middle-of-a-church-pulpit covered as one major no-no, here are the rest (well, some of them, anyway):
1. Sex sells, but I mean ... does it HAVE to?
C'mon.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with sex in itself ... but what place does it REALLY have, smack dab in the middle of Bessie's Business Ezine about marketing online?
Just like it's said that people who curse do so because of a lack of intelligent vocab, people who use sex as attention grabbers for completely unrelated offers do so because of a lack of intelligent copywriting skills.
Next!
2. "My husband is cheating, and I can't get it up!"
No, wait. That doesn't make sense. Here:
"YES! I'd like to make my mortgage payment *disappear* into thin air, and snack prescription meds 'til I drop!"
Wait. One more try:
Am I "sick and tired of spam?"
Yeah. Yours. *click!* Deleted.
My point with all this?
UNTARGETED MARKETING MESSAGES *RULE*! (Not.)
That little montage of unsolicited mail from my inbox was a pretty extreme example, yes ... but it just goes to show you how downright clueless some people are about how to properly target their audience.
The spam from the woman asking me if I was tired of spam was just priceless.
But not nearly as much fun as the ones that school me on the importance of increasing the size of my manhood to pleasure my wife.
("Umm, at last survey I WAS the wife, bozo." Grr...)
3. George ... DID you or DIDN'T you chop down that dang cherry tree??
I just got finished reading an article that told me that lying to subscribers was okay. (No, I'm serious. It really did. Yeah, I know ... I couldn't believe it either.)
Well, okay. To be fair, the author didn't say that flat out.
But it's what we DON'T say, or how we say what we say, that gets us caught up. Isn't it?
The author, teaching us how to govern ourselves when publishing our ezines, said this (try to follow me now):
It's okay to tell your readers you're not publishing your regularly scheduled issue because you've got your feet up on some dude's backside on a beach in the tropics.
Why? They're reasonable people! They do understand that you take vacations.
But it's NOT okay to tell readers you're not publishing because you've been super-busy, or because you're simply behind schedule, and are working to correct it.
Why not? Because, well ... it'd just make 'em feel like they're not that important to ya.
(Oh. That makes perfect sense.)
My point in the above?
Dishonesty in ads (and articles) is just not cool. There's no such thing as a "stretched" truth. There's no in between.
Either it's true, or it isn't.
»-«
And So... The point of this little number was to show you that pork 'n beans are a sorry substitute for lemon meringue pie, any way you slice it.
No wait, that wasn't the point. The point was:
Just because you CAN say something in an ad doesn't mean you SHOULD. Successful advertising is about more than just getting your prospects' attention.
It's about how they REACT to the way you *attract* that attention, and about what you DO with it once you've got it.
So there.
Article by ... well, Harmony Major, of course. ;-) Join her ezine, Straight from the Horse's Mouth, to learn exactly how to make your monthly e-biz income more predictable, how to avoid wasteful spending, and to discover ways to drive more traffic and PAYING customers to your website or affiliate site. It's free! Click here.
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