As I promised in a recent article, here are the final 9 points to remember if you’re planning to create a newspaper advert, a handbill, or an offer on your website or in social media that will work its backside off for you.
- Don’t use all upper case for headlines. Follow the rules of grammar and capitalise beginning of sentences and proper nouns although capitalising the start of each word in the headline seems to be effective.
- Headlines don’t have to be short and there’s no truth in the rumour that long headlines (at least those up to 17 words or so) don’t work. Both “Sore Feet?” and “A Fantastic Idea Helps You Make Friends With Your Feet Again” are good headlines and you can only determine which is better by testing and measuring the results.
- The body copy should be easy to read and, in my opinion, the font should be no less than 10pt (I prefer 12pt) although remember, if the headline grabs them, they’ll read on and battle small print and dreadful reproduction to gain the answer to their prayers.
- The headline font size should be 2 to 3 times the size of the body copy font.
- Make sure it’s easily understandable (we used to say it should have a low fog index meaning it was pitched to be understood by people of school year level 8 – 10) but briefly it means short sentences, minimum usage of three or more syllable words, paragraphs of 2-4 sentences and no industry jargon.
- Get a 14-16 y.o. to read it and tell you what it’s about… if they don’t understand it neither will your average prospect.
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- Your name, address and logo should be at the bottom of the advertisement (you can put it upside down in Hindustani and they will still find it if they want what you’ve got).
- And, above all, the prospect must see a big fat WIIFM for them (the more WIIFM’s, that’s reasons they need it, the more problems it solves for them the better!).
Peruse these 26 tips whenever you’re getting ready to write persuasively, such as in adverts, emails, letters, and social media selling pieces. The results of following them will make you glad you did!
To save you the effort of having to cut and paste this article and the previous 2 to get it all together, just email Felicity and she’ll do it for you and send you the complete article! Add “fog index” in the body of the email if you’d like more on that.
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