One must live & work with the end in view...ALWAYS!
During the past times, there wasn't much dialogue in this movie. It was mostly a series of vivid images that flowed from one to another. Each one evoking very strong feelings within its' audience of one.
The movie changed from time to time...but the opening scene usually faded in, with the "star" out on his back deck under the trees, pecking on an old typewriter. Huge green oak trees shaded the deck & the view from the deck stretched across a wide green valley to a mountain range on the far horizon.
As the hero worked at his typewriter, the wind would quietly serve up the sounds of clear water bubbling down the stream just down the hill Sometimes the movie would show the hero with his wife & kids, having a picnic...or fishing...or roaming out west in a motor home, taking in the scenery.
Whatever the scenes being played...the underlying feelings were that the star had finally gotten it together & was making a comfortable living, doing what he loved doing.
At all times in all situations keep & cherish a vision of the end result one desire to attain. In other words one must get a movie one that keeps he is going when things aren't going the way he wants them to go.
One must become a student of the Science.
If one wants to learn how to create a killer ad...then he must make ad writing as obsession. The earth-moving equipment he designed was one of the critical technologies that made it possible to build the national highway system. I've read that he slept with a notepad by his bed, and would often sit bolt upright and scribble on it in his sleep. He said that many of his breakthrough ideas came to him in his dreams.
In example; many of the great music composers of the past, wrote that they felt their music came to them from another source in great detail & almost intact. & that they felt more like a stenographer than a composer. Genius flows out of passion. And people who receive these "revelations" are people who were obsessed with what they're doing.
Making real money in this business comes from tapping in to his own personal power source of inspiration & disciplining himself to stick with the creativity process through thick & thin till it produces his desired result the good ending to the movie that he is determined.
A Killer-Ad is called "Incubator"
Here are the actual steps one should follow in developing his own "Killer Ads."
A. Form the "R & D" habit.
There's a great education out there, just for the taking. If one is serious about learning to create great ads, then that free education can be had just by regularly surfing the online classifieds and ezines.
Keep an "Ad Ideas" notebook, or keep a notepad file open on his desktop named "R & D" (Rob and Develop!) .Now spend regular time surfing the ad forums & when he run across an interesting ad, or a good idea, then copy & paste it into this file. This is a great way to learn the difference between good & bad ads.
The Concept.
Start with an idea or concept this is the "slant", or the general theme of the ad. As an example...the "Dumb Little Ad" idea came to me from reading all the ads being posted in the opt-in list community at one list.
One of the keys to creating an ad that works, is to find some way to make it different from the rest of the ads around it.
Develop
Once one feels he has a good idea for an ad take the time to write it down in his "R & D" file & then mull the concept over until the idea starts to materialize into words & phrases. Focus on identifying every benefit that his product could possibly provide his customers. In one way to do it is identify & list all the features of the product & then rewrite those features as benefits.
Refine
When he has listed all conceivable benefit his product offers & try to identify the two or three that he sees as the ones that would have the most appeal. Once He has identified the main benefits of his product, start to work on different versions of the ad, each one featuring a different benefit.
The "Test Site" concept...
A "Test Site" is some hi-traffic online ad forum where one can post & re-post an ad...over & over. Once he has set it up, he can change his ad any time he wishes as often as he wishes. This feature is CRITICAL to the "Test Site" concept.
He posts his first draft of the ad & he waits. Once the feedback comes in, he either scraps the ad (If it bombs.). Or he tweaks the ad (If it pulls some responses.).
Then he re-posts the tweaked ad & carefully tracks that response. He goes thru this process again & again till he has the ad polished & perfected. And hopefully, pulling really well.
Tweaking the ad... Sometimes, just changing a word or two will dramatically increase the way it pulls. He has changed one word in a headline, from small case to upper case & tripled the pull. Sometimes, just replacing a period with an exclamation mark will dramatically change the pull of the ad.
He must be aware of the impact these seemingly trivial changes can have on the way an ad pulls.
Once the ad is perfected & getting a really good response he roll out with it, by posting it all over the net. Another critical component his "Tracking" system. Sometimes an ad will pull ok but not great. If the ad is pulling at all, then it's basic concept is probably sound. Maybe if he tweaks the wording just a little, it will do better.
He tweaks it a little & he carefully tracks the results. He might change the headline & leave the body of the ad as it is.
As he goes through the process, be sure & change only one detail at a time. If he changes the headline & the body of the ad.
Every time he changes the ad, be sure & rename it & then test the new version of the ad by re-posting it to his "Test site".
The components of the ad.
1.The Headline.
This is the make or break issue. It's 80% of person’s challenge & will be responsible for 80% of his profits. For which it merits 80% of his creativity.
His headline should focus on the single most attractive benefit his product offers. He can has a great product & a truly great sales letter, extolling all the benefits to be had from owning his product. But none of this means diddley if no one knows about his offer & no one is going to read his sales letter if he doesn’t have a killer headline.
His sales letter is the AD for his product. His classified is the AD for his sales letter & his headline is the AD for his ad. In most online classified forums he has space in the subject line for 5-8 words maximum. The success of his whole marketing campaign hinges on the choice & formatting of those 5-8 words.
2. The Body.
Where he is placing his ad he'll have 3 to five lines for the body & the call to action. So he has to walk a fine line between using too many words & gutting the pull of the ad, because he used too few.
The first step in writing the body of the ad is to write out every possible benefit his product offers & then identify the top 3 or 4.Once he has this done. Then distill these benefits into one sentence each. Then, take a red pencil & strike through every unnecessary word.
3. The Call to Action.
This is the part of his ad where he invites the prospect to get involved. It contains his contact information & should tell the prospect exactly what to do next & exactly why he should do it.
This part of his ad is critical & usually gets the least amount of his time & attention.
Ironically, in the ad forums where he is limited by the number of words or lines he can use...(such as ezines, he has the ability to configure his contact information as hyper-text... So that the prospect can just click on his link & either retrieve his auto boot or go to his WebPages.
On the other hand... There are the more structured ad forums such as AOL, Yahoo & Excite, where he isn't as limited to the number of words or lines he can use. But he is limited in his ability to configure active links in his call to action.
In some forums he can use html tags to create a link. He should test every forum to see if this is possible. His pull will jump dramatically when he is able to use active links in his call to action. In the situations where he just can't get an active link to work, then use more words to explain to his prospect exactly to access his information.
4. The TIMING of the ad.
There's a bad time, a good time & a great time for everything. In offline marketing most of the pros take the summer off & vacation in the Bahamas. While they're lying on the beach, they're mentally working on the fall campaign. Because in the summer, a huge portion of the population is out of it either mentally or they're literally out of town. The heat makes him drowsy.
Offline summer is a bad time for trying to make money with classified ads. But the fall quarter is a great time to be in the business. Everyone is back in gear mentally & physically. And they're ready to do business.
He must factor timing into all his marketing efforts. In general summer is worst winter & spring is OK, but fall is best.
The days of the week affect the pull If he is to chart the pull of his ads on a daily basis, he'd see that Monday is OK...Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday are best. Friday & Saturday are lousy. And Sunday is good.
So in order to do a really accurate test of his ads, he should let each test run at least 7 days. Always be aware of how the timing of your ad effects it's pull.
5. The Location of the Ad.
The Location of the ad drastically affects the hits & the number of actual sales.
In a news flash It's better to have his ad be number 1 in a list of 100 ads... than to be number 20...or number 30. In some forums, (Yahoo is an example), he can re-submit the ads at regular intervals. The newly submitted ads wind up in the top of the list. So he re-submits his ad as often as the system he is advertising in, allows.
It's critical that he learns the each of the ad forums, in which he advertises, works & learns to use their peculiarities to his advantages. If he masters the foibles of each forum, then he has the edge over all those who haven't!
Each ad forum has a personality & once he has been in the business awhile he'll begin to see the patterns. The free ad forums will produce more hits & fewer sales. Certain ezines will produce a very high percentage of sales in relation to number of hits. In general, the free ads are a great deal of work...for little return & for some reason; the paid ads are usually where the serious buyers are.
There are 5 components that make up a classified ad.
- The Headline
- The Body
- The Call to Action.
- The Timing.
- The Location.
Each is critical & MUST be carefully considered.
In order to master all the components, he is going to have to make a commitment. But if he'll make that commitment then over time he can develop a profession that will allow. |
