Five Tips For a Short, Quick and Effective Copy

“Look here!” “Try now!” “Free!”

Would a long sentence like this really grab your attention at first glance if I were trying to sell you something? Probably not, if you are like most people, you skim advertisements; you do not read them word for word. The first three phrases of this article will be more effective in an ad rather than explaining the fine print to a customer. People do not want to spend time reading paragraphs on paragraphs about why your product is the best. You have to draw them in and tell them the important stuff before they leave you to go on to the next ad or the next page. In addition, with flyer printing, this is even more important because someone may just glance at your flyer as they are walking by it on the street.

So how do you draw in those that quickly scan while walking by? Here are five tips for catching those quick skimmers:

1. Catch their eye with an image. Color attracts people. People attract people. If you have a strong picture on your flyer or any other kind of ad, that will draw people in and invite them to read your copy. You cannot just throw a beautiful model’s face on your ad and then try to sell something like computers. Your image has to correlate to your copy.

A good tactic is to show people using your product with a smile on their faces. People subconsciously react to smiling faces. Smiling faces are more friendly. If you have a tough-looking photo, use strong fonts and words to get that idea of toughness across even more. If you have a cute photo of a baby, using childlike font will create a better connection that a bold strong font.

2. Prioritize your messages. Most people will only remember one thing about your product or service, so make sure you are most important message is the biggest and the most important component in your ad. People tend to pay attention to the top two-thirds of a page, so be sure to place your most important message there.

Employ headlines and make them functional (meaning that a reader could glean information from the headlines only without reading the rest of the copy). If you are emailing a message, make sure that no one has to scroll down to see your main message and use headlines to bring out your important message.

3. Don’t clutter your ad. Do not be afraid of white space. Do not overwhelm your readers by having too much to look at and read that they end up not reading anything at all. Do not fight the editing process. Less really does mean more when it comes to advertising.

Get other people’s opinions on multiple drafts of your ad. Show them versions with the amount of text you want to include, and then edit that text and show people that edited version. Go with whichever one they will take the time to read, which will probably be the edited version.

4. Include a call to action. Place a call to action, such as “Visit our Web site” or “Call now” at least two times in your ad. Place one at the beginning and one near the end. Be clear about what you want customers to do and always place the information they need to complete that action close by. If you want them to visit your Web site, you better darn well have the Web site address either right after the call to action, or somewhere close to it in the graphic.

5. Tell them what your product can do for them, not just, what it does. People want to know how your product will benefit them; they will not care about the cool features of your product if it does not pertain to them. How will your product or service make their lives easier, happier or healthier? Give them short phrases or keywords such as in the previous sentence: easier, happier, and healthier. These words and other benefit-inducing words will draw people in to your ad.