To start I need to tell you that advertising is not the best way to effectively market your business, there are many better ways to market. Advertising may be the most popular method, but far too many people stop there. Since advertising is often the most expensive marketing option it's not surprising that many businesses get bogged down over marketing. Wouldn't it be great if there were other, more cost effective ways to market your business?



Well there are, like Direct Mail, Internet, Telephone, Email (with permission), etc, and I'll get to them later, for now, if you are advertising already, here are some important do's and don'ts.

First make a decision to stop any current advertising that isn't working for you. I have to say that first because, although it may seem obvious, many businesses keep on advertising in the same places year after year, whether they know its working for them or not!

Next work out a way to measure whether your advertising is working for you. Far too many businesses use up their advertising budget every year, without testing to see what is working for them. This doesn't make sense! If an advert is working then fine, you want to keep running it and maybe even expand that particular advert further and spend more on it, but if an advert isn't working you need to stop running it now, and instead allocate the money you would have used on it to other marketing methods, which have a much higher chance of success.

Then you should choose adverts that are designed to bring in a response. That is ?direct response advertising?. There is a lot of talk in marketing circles about ?brand? advertising, but unless your company is a household name, brand advertising will have very little chance of working for you. Those large companies which use this method have spent thousands if not millions establishing their brand. If you are a small business then brand advertising will be a waste of your money.

This means that the purpose of your adverts should be to obtain a response. The bonus of this is that response advertising is easier to measure to see if its working for you.

So how do you put together a direct response advert?

Here is the proven formula for success: -

The most important part of the whole advert is the headline. If you don't have an actual headline then it's the first few words of the advert itself. It MUST capture the reader's attention.

Tip if you have been using the name of your company here, stop, you should use this important space to lead with an exciting statement about your product or service.

The main body of your advert should speak to the reader personally and tell them about the benefits they will get from your product or service.

Don't forget to include a call to action. This is where you tell the reader what they should do to follow through and get in touch with you or place an order etc. When you book an advert you should insist that it is placed on the right hand page, which is where people's eyes are drawn first, so statistically more people will actually see, and have a chance to read and respond to, your advert.

Don't book a long advertising run, or a large advert, until you have tested the advert first, and then only re-book if its working for you.

So, don't waste your money on ineffective advertising, you could get much better results for less money using a mixture of other marketing methods. And meanwhile, only use adverts that have proved profitable for you.