Stop Being Clever With Your Advertising

One of the most common mistakes businesses make when they first start writing advertising copy is trying to impress people with their ability to write humorous or “clever” copy, rather than simply getting the sales message across.

People fall into this trap because it’s what they've learned from what they've seen, heard or read. It's what we've all been exposed to through years of advertising copy in magazines, newspapers, television commercials and radio campaigns.

That’s because all around the world advertising agencies spend thousands of dollars trying to produce award winning advertisements.

These “clever” advertisements are not designed to make sales for their clients but to impress judges presiding over major awards. The judges themselves have no interest in how successful a campaign has been. They simply look for the best play on words, the biggest or funniest advertisements to the extent that they miss the point to the whole exercise: Making Sales.

Advertising is about one thing and one thing only; getting people to buy your product or services- and “clever” advertising simply doesn't make people buy.

Think about how many ads you read, see or hear in the course of an average day. You probably won't be surprised to hear that most people are exposed to over 1,500 advertisements every day.

Of those 1500, how many do you stop and take notice of? How many can you actually recall seeing?

In many cases people would be lucky to remember ten.

It's hardly surprising we can recall only a handful because if we were to stop and pay attention to every ad we were exposed to, we'd spend the entire day reading advertisements.

When you write “clever” advertisements, people don't have the time to stop and think about what the ads trying to say. If your ad doesn't get the sales message across fast, it will fail to achieve its true purpose, generating leads that turn into sales.

So forget about being “clever” and remember the principles of “Target, Offer and Copy” when writing your ads.

Be sure you are targeting the right market, that your offer speaks to that target market and your copy educates them. By following “Target, Offer and Copy”, you can avoid writing “clever” ads and start to produce the types of ads that bring you the customers you need.