Writing a good ad is hard. With a handful of words, you have to figure out how to motivate someone to pick up the phone or write a check. Yet writing effective ads is one of the most important skills you can have when it comes to marketing your studio.

If you want to be better at writing ads, it helps to learn from well written ads. And some of the most effective ads have these things in common:

• Know your audience.  Imagine the perfect client. Think of what is important to them. Do they want “cool” or “elegant” or “easy”? Now write the ad just for them.

• Get an emotion. Headlines like “how to look beautiful in a photograph” and “Is your baby this cute?” play on emotions like insecurity or curiosity. Good ads elicit emotions as a way to engage the reader. On the other hand, if you are marketing to both seniors and brides, no headline will have the same emotional appeal to both. Split your mailing list, and write a different ad for each.

• Focus on a single idea.  You only have a readers attention for a few seconds, so don’t overwhelm them with information. Stick to one key message. Use bullet points if possible.

• A good headline.  For this article, the headline is the title. A factual title like “How to Write Ads” sounds like “work.” My title “The Secret to Writing Better Ads” focuses on the “insider information” you’ll learn instead.

• Offer benefits – not features. There’s an old adage: “people don’t buy 1/4″ drill bits, they buy 1/4″ holes.” Good ads take advantage of this. For example, instead of talking about print mounting, talk about “protecting your investment.”

• It’s not about you.  A good ad never focuses on your skills or biography as a photographer.  Instead, it focuses on the reader. Instead of saying “We have photographed 100′s of brides,” say “Your wedding album will make you the envy of all your friends.”

Here’s a tip: whenever you see a great ad, put it in a folder in your desk. Then when you have to write an ad and can’t think of what to say, glance through the folder. Great examples of ads will help to get you started.

Tags: marketing

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2012 at 11:41 pm and is filed under marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.