How to Write Advertising Copy

How to write advertising copy? By focusing on your prospects instead of yourself. That’s going to be the focus of today’s article.

Many advertisers want to scream aloud about how great themselves, their business, and their offers are. And they use their advertising as the platform to do so. But they forget one tiny detail: your market doesn’t care about you or your business. They care about themselves and how they can fulfill their needs and wants. And that’s what your advertising efforts should zero in on.

Drawing from my experience as a direct response copywriter, I’m going to present you four ways that will help you present consumer-friendly advertising:

getting your prospect’s attention at once,
keeping your prospect’s interests,
delivering a clear brand message and
turning your prospects into customers

Mastering these four copywriting skills will help you understand what makes excellent advertising… and doesn’t.

So, let’s get to it and learn how to write advertising copywriting.

Get Your Market’s Attention Right Away

The first – and most important – job of an advertisement is to get the market’s attention immediately. That responsibility falls squarely on your headline.

That’s why many copywriters spend more than half of the time of a project figuring out the headline they will use. Because in advertising, if the headline doesn’t work… then the rest of the copy is worthless.

To grab your prospect’s attention, your headline can go one of four routes:

you can make a significant promise to the prospect,
paint a quick picture of what the prospect will get from your offer,
state that fact or
ask the prospect a critical question.

Whatever approach you choose, make sure to mention something relevant to the prospect and deliver a resolution throughout the rest of the copy.

The “4 U’s” Formula

But how do you know whether a headline is any good? My favorite way to determine a headline’s effectiveness is using the “4 U’s” formula – which I learned from Bob Bly’s Copywriter Handbook.

Developed by copywriting legend Mark Ford (FKA Michael Masterson), The 4 U’s Formula helps you find a headline’s strength by measuring its urgency, uniqueness, ultra-specification, and usefulness levels. Those factors are what draw a wandering prospect straight to your advertisement.

Take the headline of this article, for instance. On a scale of one to four, four being the highest rating, here’s how “How to Write Advertising Copywriting” stacks up:

One for Urgency – there’s no sense of timelessness in the headline.
Three for Uniqueness – many articles teach you how to write copy, but not advertising copy.
Three for Ultra-Specific – I could’ve been less specific by using “How to Write Copy” or even “How to Write.” I could’ve also been more specific by using “How to Write Effective Advertising Copywriting.”
Three for Usefulness – the headline does have a promise; but I could’ve added a benefit to make more appealing.

“How to Write Advertising Copywriting and Start Selling Your Products Right Away” could be an alternative headline for this article, as it scores a four on each of the U’s.

You can use the Four U’s formula for any headline you’ll put out there. It will help you deliver more effective SEO titles, subject lines, envelope teasers, subheads, and bullet points.

Spark Your Audience’s Interest

Now that you’ve gotten the prospect’s attention, you’ve got to continue, which is what the next couple of paragraphs will do.

Your “lead paragraphs” should spark the interest of the prospect. Get them hooked on your copy, if you will. You will lose a sale if you get the prospect excited with your headline but bring it down with your lead paragraphs.

Your lead paragraphs should deliver on your promise immediately while introducing your “Big Idea” to the prospect. It might sound like a tall order, but it is not.

Drawing from the knowledge I’ve gathered from the best copywriters in the world and my experience as a direct-response copywriter, I’ve put together seven ways you can spark your prospect’s interest with your lead paragraphs.

Seven Ways to Spark Interest

Make your promise and offer immediately — don’t waste anyone’s time; get straight to the point.
Invite your prospect – make the reader feel appreciated before you present your offer.
State the problem and your solution – show empathy for the prospect.
Reveal a secret or unravel a system – give the prospect a dose of TRUTH.
A testimonial – use a real-life story to let the prospect know this is real.
Tell a story – make it entertaining for the reader without losing sight of what you want to achieve.
Pontificate – predict what the future holds for a prospect on a specific situation.

Those lead paragraphs will give your advertisement the “juice” it needs to keep your prospects’ attention.

You can use leads 1-3 to promote offers with already known value (gifts, subscriptions) and free items. You can use leads 4-7 to promote offers in which you’ll need to create a perceived value – like a newsletter or consulting services.

Now that prospects are hooked on your ad, it’s time to drop the hammer. And this is where you deliver your brand message.

Deliver a Concise Brand Message

Now that the audience is interested in your promotion, it’s time to expand on what you can do for them. This is now when you deliver your brand message. But you must be careful when speaking about your business.

Most marketers fail to deliver an excellent brand message because they want to talk about everything instead of focusing on what truly matters to the prospect.

Your brand message should (concisely) explain…

who you are,
what you can do,
why what you do is essential, and
how you make it happen.

Everything else is just fluff – which you should get rid of. But what exactly should you present as your brand message?

The Four Elements of an Excellent Brand Message

To present a clear and concise brand message to your target audience, you must add these four elements to your body copy:

what you’re about – present the main reason prospects should do business with you
the result – illustrate to the prospect what the final goal is and how they will get there
a prominent level of trust – show them that you’re not some Yahoo off the streets; you’ve got cred!
History of success – a record that highlights your ability to deliver positive results

Adding those four elements to your brand message strengthens and balances your advertisement. They let your prospects know that you’re legit and that they should do business with you.

In other words, at the risk of sounding redundant, your brand message should focus on quickly building trust with the prospect so that you can present your offer and (successfully) get them to take immediate action.

Persuade Your Prospects into Taking Immediate Action

OK… so now that your headline got your prospects’ attention… your lead paragraphs sparked interest in your brand message… and your brand message made the prospects fall in love with your offer… it’s time to do what we’re here to do—get the prospect to become a customer.

Now, before we go on, I want to make a point clear: I do not want you to use this method to defraud people into buying products they want or need. You should use this copywriting method to present qualified prospects with an offer they consider worth their time. I do not support scamming in any shape, form, or manner.

Now that that’s out of the way…

If you fail at getting the prospect to act, all the above was for naught. Because – contrary to what some might make you believe – businesses do not survive on attention, likes, or buzz. It survives on new and repeat sales. And that is the ultimate purpose of your advertising.

Yet, how do you succeed at something many people consider “extremely hard”?

Well, if you’ve got them to this point, your prospects have true interest in buying from you. They are just waiting for you to guide them through the buying process. It’s up to you not to drop the ball on the task.

How to Produce an Effective Call to Action

Here are four quick tips that will help you turn prospects into customers:

Reaffirm your offer – make sure the prospect knows what they get for doing business with you
Be specific – let the prospect know exactly what they need to do to get what you’re offering
Add a guarantee – assure the prospect they have a choice in case your offer doesn’t satisfy them
Spice the offer up – if there was a benefit that you couldn’t add as part of your body copy, then you can make it part of the close as a P.S.

Use those four tips, and you’ll produce easy-to-follow calls to action. Most importantly, your CTAs will be highly appealing to your prospects, increasing your chances of getting their business.

Oh wait… I just thought of an extra tip for your calls to action:

Add some urgency – put a deadline on the offer so the prospect acts on it as soon as possible.