The ad has all the elements you would expect any space ad to have. And to understand this first axiom, I would ask my students to define the purpose of each element in an advertisement. The following is what we finally decided:
1. Headline: To get your attention and draw you to the subheadline. 2. Subheadline: To give you more information and further explain the attention-getting headline. 3. Photo or Drawing: To get your attention and to illustrate the product more fully. 4. Caption: To describe the photo or drawing. An important element and one that is often read. 5. Copy: To convey the main selling message for your product or service. 6. Paragraph Headings: To break up the copy into chunks, thereby making the copy look less imposing. 7. Logo: To display the name of the company selling the product. 8. Price: To let the reader know what the product or service costs. The price could be in large type or could be buried in the copy. 9. Response Device: To give the reader a way to respond to the ad, by using the coupon, toll-free number or ordering information, usually near the end of the ad. 10. Overall Layout: To provide the overall appearance for the ad, by using effective graphic design for the other elements. Axiom #2 All the elements in an advertisement are primarily designed to do one thing and one thing only: get you to read the first sentence of the copy. At this point, there was usually a confused look on the faces of my students. They thought that each of these elements had its own reason for existence. But I was saying, “No, they are there strictly for the sole purpose of get ting you to read the first sentence.” I know what you’re thinking. “What about the headline? Isn’t it supposed to be 16 words long and what about . . .” Stop. Just accept my word at this point that each element (of an ad or copy) has a single purpose and that is to get you to read the first sentence. If somebody asked you for the main purpose of the logo in an advertisement, you could answer, “to establish the corporate integrity of the company selling the product,” or you could answer, “to provide a degree of continuity.” But the real answer is to get you to read the copy. Really. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs by Joseph Sugarman If 80 percent of success is, as Woody Allen once said, just showing up, then 80 percent of building and maintaining relationships is just staying in touch.
I call it “pinging.” It’s a quick, casual greeting, and it can be done in any number of creative ways. Once you develop your own style, you’ll find it easier to stay in touch with more people than you ever dreamed of in less time than you ever imagined. Becoming front and center in someone’s mental Rolodex is contingent on one invaluable little concept: repetition • People you’re contacting to create a new relationship need to see or hear your name in at least three modes of communication—by, say, an e-mail, a phone call, and a face-to-face encounter—before there is substantive recognition. • Once you have gained some early recognition, you need to nurture a developing relationship with a phone call or e-mail at least once a month. • If you want to transform a contact into a friend, you need a minimum of two face-to-face meetings out of the office. • Maintaining a secondary relationship requires two to three pings a year. I also send e-mail constantly. Using a BlackBerry, I’ve found I can do the majority of my pinging while in trains, planes, and automobiles. I remember—or at least my PDA remembers—personal events like birthdays and anniversaries, and I make a special point of reaching out to people during these times. When it comes to relationship maintenance, you have to be on your game 24/7, 365 days a year. One way I’ve found to make maintaining my network of contacts, colleagues, and friends easier is to create a rating system for the network that corresponds to how often I reach out. First, I divide my network into five general categories: Under “Personal,” I include my good friends and social acquaintances. Because I’m generally in contact with these people organically, I don’t include them on a contact list. The relationship is established, and when we talk, it’s as if we’d been in touch every day. “Customers” and “Prospects” are self-explanatory. “Important Business Associates” is reserved for people I’m actively involved with professionally. I’m either doing business with them currently or hoping to do business with them. This is the mission-critical category. Under “Aspirational Contacts,” I list people I’d like to get to know, or I’ve met briefly (which is anyone from your boss’s boss to a worthy celebrity) and would like to establish a better relationship with. Create a segmentation that works for you and your objectives. This is a good habit and one that deserves repeating. All successful people are planners. They think on paper. Failing to plan, as they say, is planning to fail. And a plan is a list of activities and names.R I ping via e-mail. I’ve developed the habit of saving every e-mail I send and receive. I put each e-mail, when I receive it, in one of my categories, and Outlook records whether I’ve returned the e-mail or not. Then I just open up those files and respond, pinging away. I make a habit of reviewing my master list at the end of the week and cross-checking it with the activities and travel plans I have for the following week. In this way, I stay up-to-date and have my trusty lists at my side all week long. My personal favorite pinging occasion remains birthdays, the neglected stepchild of life’s celebrated moments. As you get older, the people around you start forgetting your big day (mostly because they think they want to forget their own). Mom might not call a day late, but your brother or sister will. Your friends will figure, “Why remind the poor guy he’s getting up there in age?” Before long, that residual disappointment turns into resentment, and the resentment turns into apathy. Or at least the appearance of apathy. “Nah, birthdays aren’t my thing,” I hear people say all the time. You persuasively tell your family, “Don’t do anything big, but if you do something, make it small.” Well, I don’t believe it. I’m onto your game, friend. You care, and so does everybody else. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz “And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.”
― Abraham Lincoln So what are you doing this weekend? Are you planning on learning anything? Are you creating anything? Are you ready to start the business you always wanted, are you doing the things that will get you there? Why not? What is more important than building something new? Will what you did still be with you, still matter one week from now, one year from now? Those are the things that make your life better. This weekend read a chapter of a book. Start your business idea. Make a cold call. Make it happen. Start getting on line, get social. Social sells, social matters, making money involves other people, so making money is social. Use social media, use the phone, meet people on the street, meet people networking, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, crawl, run, walk, and cold call, but meet people. You need people to make money, and you make money by solving their problems. To solve their problems you have to know their problems. To know their problems, you have to know them. Make a cold call, meet some one new. Yes, new. Go ahead, now is good, I can wait. Bobby Flay say, “Take risks and you’ll get the payoffs. Learn from your mistakes until you succeed. It’s that simple.” D As Dominic Basulto put it in a Washington Post essay, “There is a unique, underground venture capital economy happening right now in America that is, in many ways, off the radar screens of economists. When we tally up the economic indicators, the conventional wisdom seems to be that economic growth in this country has stalled. Yet, that same conventional wisdom ignores the economic activity on DIY sites like Kickstarter.”
Consider the advantages ....by going the Kickstarter route...., rather than to a bank or traditional investor: 1. He raised the money without having to pay interest or give up a portion of the company. 2. The process of raising the money also served as free market testing. If he hadn’t been able to hit his target, he probably also wouldn’t have been able to sell the tank. Raising money directly from your future customers improves the chances that you’ll be successful once the product hits the market. 3. The public fund-raising effort got attention from everything from popular blogs to NBC television, serving as free marketing. Grassroots funding leads to word-of-mouth support. Crowdfunding is venture capital for the Maker Movement. Just as the tools of production have been democratized, creating a new class of producers, so have the tools of capital-raising, creating a new class of investors. Not investors in a company but in a product or, to be precise, in the idea of a product. The act of “making in public,” which is what Kickstarter project leaders do, turns product development into marketing. The creator posts an idea, then updates frequently on the progress to completion. Backers comment and the creator responds, evolving the product in response to feedback. Most of Kickstarter’s magic mojo is simply that they made a game out of raising money. Here are the rules to that game: 1. Set a deadline. Let people know there is a limited time to this campaign. 2. Set a minimum funding goal. “If we don’t reach this number, the project won’t have enough funding to happen.” 3. Enforce the deadline and the funding goal. The campaign STOPS at the deadline, and if you didn’t meet the goal, the project doesn’t happen. (This is where Kickstarter is most valuable: they play bad cop about the rules of the game, while you get to play good cop and try to get people excited.) 4. Set up tiered levels of giving, and promise people different thank-you gifts for each level. 5. Let the fund-raisers keep full ownership of their projects. (It’s not investment; it’s sponsorship. It’s pre-selling. It’s generosity.) This is not without risk, of course. There is no guarantee that the entrepreneur will actually make the product or that it will be a success. Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson Real power comes from being indispensable.
Indispensability comes from being a switchboard, parceling out as much information, contacts, and goodwill to as many people—in as many different worlds—as possible It’s a sort of career karma. How much you give to the people you come into contact with determines how much you’ll receive in return. In other words, if you want to make friends and get things done, you have to put yourself out to do things for other people—things that require time, energy, and consideration. Successfully connecting with others is never about simply getting what you want. It’s about getting what you want and making sure that people who are important to you get what they want first. Often, that means fixing up people who would otherwise never have an opportunity to meet. The best sort of connecting occurs when you can bring together two people from entirely different worlds. The strength of your network derives as much from the diversity of your relationships as it does from their quality or quantity. “People who have contacts in separate groups have a competitive advantage because we live in a system of bureaucracies, and bureaucracies create walls,” says Burt. “Individual managers with entrepreneurial networks move information faster, are highly mobile relative to bureaucracy, and create solutions better adapted to the needs of the organization.” Performing social arbitrage when your financial and relational resources are thin is actually not too big a hurdle. The solution is knowledge, one of the most valuable currencies in social arbitrage. Knowledge is free—it can be found in books, in articles, on the Internet, pretty much everywhere, and it’s precious to everyone. The ability to distribute knowledge in a network is a fairly easy skill to learn. So easy, in fact, you should get started today. Identify some of the leading thinkers and writers in your industry. Do these figures have any new books on the market? Look at what’s hot on the nonfiction New York Times bestseller list. Or for business bestsellers, check out the Wall Street Journal’s list in the Personal Journal section on Friday. Buy the book, read it, and take some notes summarizing the Big Idea, a few of its interesting studies or anecdotes, and why it’s relevant to the people you’re thinking about passing your knowledge on to. You’ve just created your own Big Idea of the Month Cliffs Notes (or whatever snazzy title you choose). Now pick a few people, some whom you know well and some you don’t, and e-mail them your work. All you have to say is “Here are some cool ideas I think you’d like to be on top of.” To paraphrase Dale Carnegie: You can be more successful in two months by becoming really interested in other people’s success than you can in two years trying to get other people interested in your own success. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz Realize how important it is to know your product and know your customer. It is this specific knowledge that will make a dramatic difference in your ability to communicate your thoughts in copy.
The bottom line for all these approaches is that copywriting is primarily the mental process of first getting your thoughts organized in your mind and then eventually transferring them onto paper. There is no best method—just what works for you. But the best place to start, without question, is to start. That’s right. Pick up a piece of paper and a pen, and start. Do enough of it over a long enough period of time and I guarantee you, you’ll improve each year. Write articles for a local newspaper. I started writing for my high school paper. It gave me experience and confidence. Write letters, write postcards—just plain write every opportunity you can. Another fact to realize about writing copy is that the first draft of an ad is often terrible and the real skill in copywriting is taking that rough draft and polishing it. You might add words, delete entire sentences, change the order of sentences or even paragraphs. It’s all part of the copywriting process. I often pointed out to my students that if everybody in the class were given the assignment of writing a draft of an ad for a product, the first draft of my ad would quite likely be terrible compared to everybody else’s. It is what I do with the copy after my first draft that really makes the difference. In that first draft the goal is to put something—anything— on paper, the emotional outpouring of everything you are trying to convey about your product or service. Don’t worry about how it reads. Just get it down onto something you can work with like a computer screen or a piece of paper and then go from there. Copywriting is a mental process the successful execution of which reflects the sum total of all your experiences, your specific knowledge and your ability to mentally process that information and transfer it onto a sheet of paper for the purpose of selling a product or service. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs by Joseph Sugarman The best copywriters in the world are those who are curious about life, read a great deal, have many hobbies, like to travel, have a variety of interests, often master many skills, get bored and then look for other skills to master. They hunger for experience and knowledge and find other people interesting. They are very good listeners.
The thirst for knowledge, a tremendous curiosity about life, a wealth of experiences and not being afraid to work are the top credentials for being a good copywriter. Probably one of the most important keys in copywriting and conceptualizing is the ability to relate totally divergent concepts to create a new concept. You need to become an expert on a product, service or anything you write about to really be effective. Becoming an expert means learning enough about a product to obtain enough specific knowledge so you can communicate the real nature of what you are trying to sell. Say to yourself, “I am an expert or have learned enough to be able to effectively communicate this product to the consumer.” That’s what we mean by “specific knowledge.” In addition to knowing your product or service, you’ve really got to know your customer. You’ve got to be an expert on who your customer is by gathering specific information on whom you are selling to. You have a great deal of studying to do to make sure you understand who your customer is and what motivates him or her. In short, the product has a nature of its own and it’s up to you to discover what the nature of that product is in the mind of the consumer. Realize how important it is to know your product and know your customer. It is this specific knowledge that will make a dramatic difference in your ability to communicate your thoughts in copy. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs by Joseph Sugarman The world has too many options, and way too too much information.
The fastest way to learn is decide what not to do, find a project that needs to be done, something you have to do and learn that way. It gives a structure, some framework, and a goal. If you think about the movies made in the past, the 40' and 50's, and how the film rating system made the writer have get creative to overcome the requirements of the MPAA. It is not the constraints that make you creative, it is reacting against and overcoming those constraints that matter. Limit your options to what actually get you to your goal and know that how you think dictates what you are, so remember that attitude is more important than intelligence. Do these 5 things ( thanks to the Magic of Thinking Big) 1. Take Action becuase any action cures fear - isolate your fear (why and what, think it out and then take action 2. Try to only put positive thoughts into memory 3. Be Balanced - put people and situations in perspective, think it out, get some distance 4. Do what you know or what you feel is right, it gives you power 5. Be confident by acting confident so do the following; be a front seater make eye contact walk 25% faster speak up smile big D You really can do anything that you can think of doing, you truly can.
Gandhi said, "Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability." As a manager of people and processes, I talk to people for a living and it never ceases to amaze me how often we all limit ourselves by how we think. The world can often be tough on us, but too often we are harder on ourselves. We tell ourselves that we can't do something or how hard things are for us to change, but we don't try to actually do what we what. People do amazing things everyday, all over the world, because they know they can. You just have to try. Go make a sales call, put that idea on kickstarter, write that book. People do it every day. D |
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Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” |