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Perfect ads are compelling stories about your business that people can relate to on an

emotional basis. Frequency of the story determines how quickly it moves from short term to long term memory. Relevance determines whether it is moved from outside conscience awareness processing to attentive processing.

Write the answers to these questions, be as detailed as possible, then have someone who is not in your business read your answers and highlight the things that they find very

interesting. If they have more questions as a result of reading, write their questions down along with your answers.

• Tell me your story, how did you get started in this business and why this business?

• What are you passionate about in the business?

• What does this business do for you personally?

• Why have you chosen the products that you have?

• What would people be shocked to know if they knew this about your business?

• What do your competitors try and copy of yours?

• What do you do for your customers that consistently, pleasantly surprises them?

• What problems are you solving for your customers?

• What frustrations do prospects usually have when they are shopping for your product or service?

• How do you add value to your products or services that your competition doesn’t or can’t.

• How do you know?

• When was the last time you shopped your competition?

• Tell us about your background, why are you an expert in your business?

• If you are not an expert in your business, what would you have to do to become an expert?

• If you could only tell a prospect three things about your business and they’d make a buying decision based on those three things, what would they be and how would they be different than what your competitors will say about themselves?

• What do people have to hear every time before they’ll buy from you?

• What are the three most common questions you get when people are trying to decide to buy?

• Who is your number one competitor and why?

• What is it that you know about your product or service that you wish people could just understand and why is that important?

By doing very detailed discovery with yourself and your employees you get one level of information. Now you’ll do the same thing with a select group of clients, those people who are buying from you consistently, your good clients. In addition to the appropriate questions we just discussed we’ll also ask them these questions:

• You are a great customer of ours and we want to attract more people like you, what makes us your first choice for X (insert your product or service here)?

• What do we do better than anyone else in our category?

• Why is that important to you?

• Could you imagine doing business anywhere else? If yes, tell me about that. If no, tell me why.

• What do we do consistently that surprises you?

• What is unique about you that makes us a good fit for you?

• What could we do to make your experience here the best and most memorable experience you’ve ever had in this situation?

Now you’ve added another layer of information from which you’ll create your best ad ever, but we’ll go one step deeper just to be sure we’ve gotten all the information we need. We’ll go to a good customer who has quit using you or buying from you. And to those people we’ll ask these questions:

• What made you switch away from us?

• What could we have done to serve you better?

• What is unique about you that we were not serving that made you switch away?

• Is there anything that could ever make you come back and be a client again?

• Was there anything we did that you wish your new supplier would do?

• How long did it take to make the decision to change from us to a new supplier?

• Is there anything that isn’t happening with your new provider that they could do that would make you happier?

• What would make you switch away from this supplier to someone other than us?

With that layer of complexity and answers to those questions, you’ll end up with a tremendous pool of information from which you can pull some very surprising and powerful ideas,

information and stories that will be the basis for your uniqueness and for your ads, the kind of ads that people will want to pay attention to. As a bonus, you’ll also find a lot of information that you can use to improve your service.

So what are the qualities of a great ad (or direct mail)?

• All great ads have a headline no matter what the medium. The purpose of a headline is to interrupt, grab attention and sell you on the very next sentence or idea, it must be something that hooks you and pulls you in.

• It interrupts the general malaise that overtakes us when we experience ads on television, radio or in newspapers and magazines. The headline grabs us by the ears and speaks directly to us about what is important to us or it grabs us by the eyeballs and forces us to read the headline which compels us to read the next sentence. • Great ads focus on me, not on you. What is in this for me?

• Great ads speak to the listener, viewer or reader, they create a one on one

conversation that tells a story, answers questions and compels us to learn more or take action.

• Great ads include documented evidence of success, reliability, experience etc., and don’t rely on unsubstantiated fluff statements like “ours is better than the

competition.” If you want them to believe you, prove it.

• Exceptional ads give clients a real reason to believe what you are saying is true • Great ads use third party endorsements or testimonials. No one wants to be the first

one to dip their toe in your water, they want to know someone pulled back a golden slipper and not a stump when they tried it.

• Great ads use words that allow us to create dynamic, beautiful actions and pictures in our mind that include us in the picture.

• Great ads tell us what to do next.

• Perfect ads set up the criteria by which every competitor will be judged but create a standard that only YOU can meet.

• Great ads make use of words, images and phrases that put me in the picture, that demonstrate something I can understand that has happened or that I’m afraid will happen to me if I don’t use this product or service. Verbs move mountains in the mind.

• Great ads have a hook, something that ties all this together and ties it to your mind so that you know what you are hearing or seeing and who it is. This is where branding begins to occur over a long period of time.

• Great ads have a single focus that is driven home over and over again through any medium where the prospect may experience it and is not changed until a new campaign is started.

• Great ads always remember that their purpose is to sell something to one person at a time and that their key element is to sell.

• Great ads are clear, succinct and free of jargon or trendy words that many people may not understand.

• Great ads set you apart from your competition. When you can put their name or logo in place of yours and say there is no way they can say this about themselves, then you’ve got an ad that has a real chance of being successful.

• Great ads focus on one thing, if you have ten things to say you say it in ten separate ads.

It is imperative that you spend time focused on writing, rewriting, and researching your ads to get them perfect. But writing and rewriting is not enough, you must be able to determine their effectiveness in creating new customers and new revenue. If they are not doing either, then you must discard them and try again. If the bar isn’t moving higher your ads are not working. Testing and measuring are the keys to effectiveness.

I want to leave you with a few last tips for creating good ads:

• Great ads have a rhythm, like a song or a poem, they have a beat, a feel that compels you and takes you on the ride with them that encourages you to continue and keep the pace. I find that when I’m writing ads many times it helps to listen to music as it reminds me of pace and rhythm. In visual medium the words create the rhythm for the visuals and the visuals are harmonized with the message to create a powerful outcome. I encourage you to look at a lot of ads to begin to find that rhythm and feel and see how you can

incorporate it when you create your own ads. If you’ve never written before I’d like to suggest a couple of books that will really help you get started:

o Oglivy On Advertising – David Oglivy

o The Art Of Writing Advertising – Dennis Higgins o Lessons from a lifetime of writing – David Morrell

• Great ads can be created inexpensively and expensive ads are not always better but unless you are a professional graphic artist or production person, get some professional help to have your ads look and sound their very best.

• The only awards you need to worry about your ads winning is the six inch Ben Franklin award, the one that fits nicely in your wallet or bank account.

• If you are not coming up with the answers that you need or ads that work make the investment to hire someone who can create the kind of ads that will work, you’ll easily recoup any amount of money you invest in ad development through ads that pull better and bring in more paying customers than ever before.