People Are Usually Surprised when they first approach us about writing ads for their products or services. They’re shocked when they hear they can’t get an ad written for less than $1,500, and the average price is typically around $2,500. For a single ad – just one. The reason is, there’s a lot of legwork and research that has to happen before the ad can be written. There are a lot of things you’ve got to understand and take into consideration before you can churn out even a simple advertisement.

Then, you’ve got to create a master strategy for advertising, marketing, and selling your product that takes into account your selling advantages, or Inside Reality, and the customer’s needs. You can’t just make stuff up on the spur of the moment that’s based on nothing more than your best guess of what’s going to work. You’ve got to be more sophisticated than that. What’s the Boy Scout motto? Be prepared. Same thing in advertising. Know your strategy, know what your customers want, innovate your business, know the best way to say things, and then write the ads.

Here Is A Quick Laundry List – of stuff to be sorted out and deciphered before you start writing. This is not a list of techniques, but base-level grounding materials that precede any ad writing. For example, you need to determine your advertisement’s objective:

– Is it trying to get orders?
– Inquiries?
– Generate Leads?
– Promote Brand Awareness?

Then you’ve got to figure out who your target market is and what they need to see and hear from you to make a compelling sales argument.

– What format will they most readily accept your information?
– Would they watch a video brochure, or do they just need a postcard?
– What kinds of things influence their buying decisions?
– Have they been burned by someone in your industry before?
– Is what you’re selling not important enough for them to put a lot of thought into it?
– Or is it a major purchase that requires them seeing something really impressive?
– Or is it somewhere in between?

You’ve got to know all this before you start writing the advertisement or it’s inevitable that you’ll be saying the wrong things to the wrong people. And your Inside Reality will not mirror your Outside Perception.

The Good News Is It’s Not THAT Difficult, but people will sometimes say, “Look, I get all that stuff about creating a whole marketing plan, but I really, really need a flyer right now. Can you just put that together real fast, and then worry about the rest of the marketing plan later? And the answer is – yes, but we can’t guarantee it’ll work! This exact thing happened with a guy who had a replacement window business. Since we’ve done a lot of work in the construction and home improvement business, we already knew quite a bit about how to put together his entire marketing plan. This was before we did any of the preliminary legwork.

He was presented with an entire marketing plan, a strategy called the Code of Ethics and Competency. This strategy is excellent for good, honest companies who happen to be in industries that have problems with shady operators. The kind of shady operators who have reputations for being less than forthright with consumers, like window companies for instance. So, he was advised to integrate the strategy into his telemarketing, advertising, yard signs, tradeshow booths, sales presentations, and into every single aspect of his marketing. We’re talking about a full-blown powerhouse marketing strategy that would absolutely beat every one of his competitors. And his comment was, “Yeah, but right now I just need a flyer that my guys can stick on people’s doors. Can you do that?

The Short Answer Is No! Why? Because you just can’t shortcut the system, slap a couple of techniques together, and hope you’ll get stellar results. You’ve got to take the time to create a master game plan and build a case that convinces your prospects that it’s worth their time and money to even consider doing business with you. And every ad you place should have a specific, predetermined purpose, and should pull it’s own weight.