adwriting

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Ad Writing And Tracking: Tips n Tricks

By Shahnaz Rauf

A lot has already been written about writing attention grabbing, interest generating advertisements. However as editor of a ‘free ad’ newsletter, I regularly receive tons of ‘no pull’ ads. Due to the critical nature of this issue, I will walk you through the ad writing and tracking short cuts once more:

Ad Writing:

1.Write an Attention grabbing headline: This should use a psychological trigger to intrigue or pique curiosity. Some of the most effective forms are:

-Informative:

Discover The Ten ways to...

Amazing Breakthrough: Latest report...

Excellent Golden Business Opportunity, Join Free

-Question:

Do You Know...?

How To...?

-Warning:

Don’t read this ad if...

Scam Alert!..

-Call to attention:

Calling All Writers..

Attention Mothers...

2.Ad description: Write 3 or 4 lines loaded with power words and giving a vivid very specific description of BENEFITS not Features. For example compare the two ads:

-40 advertising spaces available in xyz mall. High traffic location, competitive pricing. For more info contact...

-Do you want your hit counter to go crazy? Do you want to explode your sales? Excellent ad location. Hurry limited spaces. Contact..

Which ad will you click? - You get my point?

3. Contact information: This should be the link/ e-mail address for the relevant information. Again I find a lot of un-clickable links. The HTML code for links is:

-For site address (URL)

http://www.yourdomainname.com (www.yourdomainname.com is your site address)

-For e-mail links

mailto:yourname@yourdomainname.com (yourname@yourdomainname.com is your e-mail/ autoresponder address).

4. Wrapping to 60/65 characters per line: This is a real head ache not only for ad writers but also for ezine article writers and editors as well.

The hard and most common way is to write using your word processor, then copy and paste to your e-mail and press enter after every 60/65 characters including spaces.

A smart technique is to automate your word wrapping right on line using the free e-mail formating utility at: http://www.jbmckee.com/formatit/

Alternative Tip For Front Page Users: Insert your word file into front page, convert text to table, merge cells, set table width to 464 and border size to zero. Save. Copy the entire table (not text) and paste in to your e-mail. This gives you 60 characters per line. [I suggest you use your hotmail account to send it to a Yahoo account and then copy and send it back. This will remove any HTML].

Ad Tracking:

Once you have written your ad you need to test and track it’s performance. Ad tracking is an absolute necessity if you want to maximize results with minimum budget. You need to know where your responses are coming from and which ads are ‘pulling’ more. To get the maximum returns on your investment, you need to concentrate on the most responsive mediums. A few easily implemented tactics are:

1.E-mail links with subject lines: For each ad you use a different subject line. Say if your e-mail address is abc@xyz.com and you are advertising in ezine1, your link will be

mailto:abc@xyz.com?subject=ezine1

2.Mirror Pages: If your URL name is www.xyz.com and your home page is index.html, you upload several copies of your home page and save them as index1, index2, etc. Put a site meter on each of the mirror pages, use different ads/ezines for each page. Here your link will take the form:

http://www.xyz.com/index1.html

3.Autoresponders: For each Ad you use an email link with an autoresponder. Use an autoresponse sales message. For instance if you are tracking ad1 and ad2 you use two autoresponders and your links will be of the form:

mailto:ad1@yourdomain.com and

mailto:ad2@yourdomain.com

This method gives you a very accurate picture.

4.If you don’t want to do any of the above, you can use the free tracking services at http://www.linkcounter.com .

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This article may be distributed freely, in e-zines, e-books, as a free down load or as part of a free bonus offer. It may be freely published in its entirety exactly as it appears above. No alterations or changes to the article are allowed, and the resource box must remain with the article just as it appears.

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