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Do Your Ads Suck?

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Published: 12Mar2006
Word count: 812
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Do you know how to tell if an ad has any chance of working before you run it?

Any good ad has four components and how well you do each of them will determine how your ad it will work. Ask yourself these questions:

1. DOES IT HAVE AN EFFECTIVE HEADLINE? An effective headline is one that grabs your prospect’s attention and forces him to read further. As copywriters say, the job of a headline is to get the reader to read the next sentence. If you pay for your advertising with your own money, the headline of this article, "Do Your Ads Suck?" or a headline like "How to tell if an ad will work before you run it" should get your attention.

Headlines like a company name, a meaningless platitude, or no headline at all will not grab the reader’s attention. You may think your company name makes a cool headline, but your reader wants to know WIFM (what’s in it for me?). They don’t care about your company at all, only about what you can do for them.

2. DOES YOUR SUB-HEAD OR FIRST SENTENCE PROMISE THEY WILL LEARN SOMETHING OF VALUE IF THEY KEEP READING YOUR AD? If not, you'll lose them right away. Why should I read your ad if all it’s talking about is you, your company, how long you’ve been in business, or how successful you were last year. I don’t care. Like I said before, "what’s in it for me?" If you don’t tell me right away, I’m gone.

An example of doing it right is the first sentence of this article. If it's YOUR money paying for your advertising, the headline "Do Your Ads Suck?" should get your attention. If however, the next sentence started off talking about my company and how good we are, you’re gone. On the other hand, asking the question: "Do you know how to tell if an ad has any chance of working before you run it?" promises that if you keep reading you will find out.

3. DOES YOUR AD HELP YOUR READER DECIDE HOW TO BUY WHATEVER IT IS YOU SELL? Or Is it full of platitudes like "best price", "best service", "in business since 1910", "family owned business", and so on. Platitudes are statements that mean nothing because everyone says them all the time. You see this in the Yellow Pages all the time. All the ads look the same and say the same things.

Though this article is not an ad, look at the structure. I tell you that there are 4 components of a good ad and then I explain what they are and how to tell if your ad is doing them right. This is helpful information if you are paying good money to run ads and care how they work.

4. DO YOU HAVE AN OFFER? What I mean is: do you have an offer in your ad for further information, a special deal, or some other reason to cause the reader to want to take action right now? Most ads don’t have any offer at all, and some have the weakest offer of all - a phone number. That excites me. If I want to know about your service, the last thing I want to do is call and get hit on by a salesperson. I just want some information so I can tell if I’m even interested in what you sell.

A good ad captures both the people who are ready to buy now and also those who are interested but not ready to buy today. You put those prospects into your "drip" system and contact them over time with helpful information until they are ready to buy. If you have helped them along the way to learn what they need to know, odds are that when they are ready to buy they will pick you.

A 15 SECOND AD EVALUATION One quick way to know in a few seconds if an ad is any good is to ask this one question: "If I put my competitors name in my ad, would everything else in the ad still be accurate?" If so, that means your ad is giving your prospect NO reason whatsoever to buy from you except that you exist.

It’s pretty clear if the ad is accurate for you or your competitor, then you are the same, neither one any better than the other, and the only criteria your customer has left to use to decide is price.

So, if your ad meets all 4 criteria and also passes the 15 second test, congratulations, it’s better than 99% of all the advertising out there and as long as there are people who want to buy what you are selling, it should work.

Joe McVoy is a consultant who has started up & built 4 national businesses. He founded 2 companies selling to Wal-Mart, Target and other retailers, a mail order company and an Internet information marketing business. He helps clients with marketing, direct marketing, on-line marketing and has a free newsletter at: http://www.profitablemarketingsystems.com

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