Reason Why Some ads Don’t  work

 

 

 

Reason Why Some ads Don’t  work

I don’t get much response to my ezine ads! How can I improve my ad response rates? These are comments I hear frequently from associates who advertise regularly online. After taking a look at their ads, here is the advice I often offer them on improving their ads:

 

First of all, the ad must be BELIEVABLE.

Fully 80% of the ads that I review lack credibility. Yes – people want to believe that they can earn a fortune – in a month – with absolutely no work. However, things don’t work that way! If it were THAT easy, everybody would be doing it.

 

 

 

After all, we like to share secrets with our family and friends.

Anyone discovering a way to earn money THAT easy would have shared it with their friends .. who would have shared it with their friends….. and they    would have shared it with their friends. Soon everyone  would know about it and be making a fortune.

 

This great money maker I would not need to be advertised

since it would be spreading so fast by word-of-mouth. Your potential customers are very intelligent. They can spot a hyped-up exaggeration when they see one. Don’t use them – make your ads believable.

 

Starting with the most important part of your ad 

the headline. It must be believable and it must grab their attention. How do you get their attention? You tell them how you are going to solve a problem for them, or how you are

 

 

 

going to prevent them from having a problem in the first place.

There are many “hot words” that have been proven to grab a persons attention better than others. You need to use these in your headlines too. Examples of these words include:

 

“Free”  “You”  “Discover”  “New”

 

The KEY to writing an effective ad is telling the customer “what’s in it for him.” Spell out specific
benefits in both your headlines and in the body of your ad. Talk directly to your customer in your ad, telling him what you are going to do for him. Don’t list product features – list benefits!

 

Many ads don’t even tell the customer WHAT they are selling.

Instead they hype how much money can be made with the “ground floor opportunity” or “proven program.” Others yell about how many will already be placed in your “downline.” Why would anyone respond to such an ad?

 

Many online people are sooo fed up with trying different hyped up opportunities.

If yours is different, at least tell the customer *how* it’s different and *what* it is.  More importantly, tell the customer “what your product or service is going to do for him.”

 

 

 

 

After you have a good headline and good body copy,

you need a call to action. You need to tell the customer what action you want him to take. Do you want him to: visit a   website; request more details; download a trial copy; get   a sample chapter; vote? Tell the customer what he should do next.

 

Your ad may have him marginally interested

but   he often will not take action unless you tell him to. Give the customer several ways of taking advantage of your great offer if appropriate. For example, you may   want to give both a website url and an email address.

 

Consider what you want him to do AND the medium you are using.

For example, if your ad is in an ezine that is sent out via email, you may not want to force you prospect to open a browser and visit a website. Maybe he doesn’t want to open his browser at that time, and maybe an autoresponder message would better serve your purpose.

 

If your ad will be posted on a webpage,

maybe you don’t want to force your prospect to open his email program to respond to your offer. The preferred method of having the customer contact you depends upon a lot of circumstances including what you are ultimately trying to accomplish with you ad. While on the topic of methods of contact, a lot of ads turn the customer off with the email address or website urls used.

 

If your ad offers a free email address for contact

(such as Hotmail) or a website hosted at a free site (such as Free yellow) a major percentage of qualified prospects will not respond to your offer. They will reason that if you are not serious enough professional enough – to invest a little in your business, you probably are not stable enough to risk doing business 

 

If you don’t have your own domain name

at least use the email address provided by your ISP. People who have been online for a while associate many of the free email addresses with fly-by-night operators. Regardless of how fair this assessment is, you will loose many potential orders if you don’t acknowledge this point.

 

Having your own domain name makes sense for the same reason.

Many people who have been online for awhile associate websites on free hosts with fly-by-night operators, or those not really serious about their business. They reason that if you will not invest a few dollars in your own domain name, how serious and credible are you?

 

Domain names are dirt cheap!

Professional web hosting comes in a range of prices -depending largely upon the amount of customer support and website capabilities you want. If you want readily available customer support, then the web host needs to charge enough to have technicians standing by. If you can wait a day or two to have someone respond to your email when your website is down,

 

then the web host doesn’t need to have technicians standing by and they can charge less.

If you want to run cgi scripts, have a shopping cart, have a database or other such features, you will be using more of your web host’s server resources. He needs to charge more to afford greater capability.

Proof positive that having your own domain name,

professionally hosted, dramatically increases your chances of online success is readily available. Simply log online and visit a few successful online businesses. They will ALL have their OWN professional-sounding domain. If YOU don’t do this, your ads referring people to your website will NOT pull.

 

A final element of creating successful ads is testing

You must test EVERY ad that you use. Experiment by changing different elements of your ad. Change the headline or a few words in the ad body. Record the response rate that you get.

 

Now change the url or capitalization and note the results you get.

Just changing one element in an ad can result in 100 times the response rate. Then, when you find an ad that works, stick with it until it stops working. Continue to test other ads for the same product or service, but don’t stop running the one that’s working!

 

You never know what ad is going to strike just the right chord for your prospects.

At the same time, what worked today may not work tomorrow. There are certain   advertising concepts that never seem to change but many do.

 

 

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