How to Write Killer Ad Copy

Ad Copy, referring to the spoken words or printed text on an advertisement. I see businesses constantly giving us ad copy and we have no idea after reading it what they want from the consumer or what they are providing their customer. So, how do you go about creating killer ad copy?

Before you develop ad copy, you must answer the following questions:

• Clarify the objective of your advertisement: What is it your ad should do for you? Generate inquiries, make a direct sale, etc.

• Small description of your product/service: What is your product all about? What are its uses and features? What it does? How it works? Finish it off in a concise, small paragraph.

• Define the target audience?: Who is advertisement addressed to? What expectations or hopes does the audience have? What objections may they have about your product/service?

• Set the price: How much should your product/service be priced at?
  

• Include special offers: The key to instant attention, especially in today's economy, is to include an incentive, special offer, money back guarantees, limited time offers, etc.

• What are the benefits? How does it help your audience? What's in it for them? Why should they buy it?
  

• Who are your competitors? Compare advantages, prices, terms of your competitors

• What is the best media to use? Define the best medium to reach your customers. If your demographic (target audience) is seniors, a PregnancyMagazine would not be on your list.
  

Now you understand what you want to do, the question becomes "How do I say it?" That is what the ad copy is all about. To the point! Now its time to develop the ad copy:

1. Set your goal, NOW!! : Now is the time to define the message of your ad. The message has to hit your customers and get them to react or else it’s all a waste. Everything you do to create ad copy should support the goal in some way or the other.
   
   
2. Start with something similar: Understand your product/ service and industry. Go through competitive advertisements that are similar to your product/service. DO NOT COPY. Do you like their ad? If you don't like it chances are your customers won't either. Be honest though. Do you not like it because it is your competitor? Are you confused by their message?
   
   
3. Observe well: You don’t have to smack the side of your head to get your brain to generate ideas. Look around at other advertisements, observe what is around, even non competitive companies.
   
   
4. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid): Yes, it applies here too. No one wants to read an encyclopedia full of long, heavy sentences. They are not interested in how awesome you think your company is. They are thinking about themselves, period. So, how can you help them? Also, although you are appealing to a specific mass, address your target audience individually.
   
   
5. Give them the best: Remember you only have seconds to push your customers to a position that they are able to take a decision without any hesitation. The better the deal, the stronger will be their response.
   
   
6. Grab more than attention: Don't just try to grab their attention. Capture their emotion. Consumers use emotion more than logic. How does this help me? What's in it for me?
   

Practicing these little tips will help you create killer ad copy. So start thinking and observing... It takes time to perfect but the key here is it takes time. Ad copy should not be just on a whim.

Flash Websites Getting Crawled?

After years of wishing, whining and wailing by web developers, Google announced today that it can index "textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash 'gadgets' such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between." according to the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.

In a move that has been long over do and in the wish list for flash based website owners since the 90's, Adobe Systems is teaming up with both Google and Yahoo to make Flash more searchable. Flash developers have been wishing for ways to make their content searchable for close to a decade. Adobe acknowledges this in its announcement, saying that although search engines are able to index static text and links within Flash SWF files, "RIA (Rich Internet Applications) and dynamic Web content have been generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states—a problem also inherent in other RIA technologies."

Director of Client Distribution and Business Development in Adobe's Platform Business Unit,
Eric Wittman, said the company is providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Yahoo and Google to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently non-discoverable by search engines.

The new relationship will provide more relevant search rankings of the millions of dynamic content that run on Adobe Flash Player. In addition, interactive web developers will not need to do anything to make future content searchable, said Justin Everett-Church, Senior Product Manager for Adobe Flash Player. They can be confident that their Flash-based content can now be found by users around the globe, Everett-Church said.

"We've wanted to make an announcement of this impact for several years now," Wittman said. "There are millions of things built in Flash and there have been concerns because of search engine compatibility. We have a piece of technology to remedy this and we’re working with Google and Yahoo. Google has integrated it and Yahoo will in a period of time."

Mark Bold, CEO of Jive3 Media Group that develops RIA and Phoenix Arizona based Interactive Advertising and Marketing studio commented; "We're very excited about this new push for indexing Flash. This allows clients such as ours to harness the power of Flash and be confident that their site no longer just looks cool and engages their visitors, but they can be assured that, more importantly, users can now find their content when searching Yahoo and Google, the two leading search engine companies."

With this announcement, Google can now additionally follow URLs embedded within Flash files to add to the crawling pipeline. This new indexing technology does not include FLV files (video files that are found on sites like YouTube) because those are generated as videos and don't contain any text elements like SWF files do.

What about images in Flash? Google (and eventually Yahoo) won't be able to index everything embedded within a Flash file—at least not yet. Anything that is image related, including the text that is embedded into these images, will be invisible for the time being.

For some reason Microsoft's Live search engine is noticeably missing. Either Microsoft is choosing to sit this one out or perhaps the Microsoft Silverlight platform, a competitor to Adobe Flash, makes Adobe a bit upset, and now its revenge!