Is there really one way of doubling the effectiveness of your advertising?

With all the technological changes that his us each day, it is sometimes easy to lose track of some fundamental points.

Such as the fact about headlines. Headlines are the most read thing in a direct advertisement, be it an email, a postal mail shot or a web page.

Headlines need to be engaging and interesting – forcing the reader to read on. Generalisations such as “50% off special offer!” don’t work because they are general. It is like saying, “For all your telecoms requirements”. It doesn’t draw us in.

Closed questions don’t work either. Such as “Would you like to bring in more sales each week?”

What works are interesting questions (“What is the most polluting car on Britain’s roads” or “Is there really one way of doubling the effectiveness of your advertising?”

When writing an email, the headline doesn’t have to be the same as the subject line (there is a need for subject lines to be short, because of the way many people have their email systems set up). But both need to be interesting.

Headline writing is an art – when I write a piece I usually spend as much time on the headline as I do on the rest of the piece. So don’t rush it.

If you would like to have a review done of any of your advertising, send me over a copy as an attachment to an email and I will call you back with my thoughts.

If you want to try someone else writing your adverts for you, then that’s fine – that is what we do as part of the Velocity service or on a one-off basis. Call 01536 399 000.

And if you want to think further about writing sales letter, emails, web pages, blogs and the like there is an article “How to double response rates” on http://www.hamilton-house.com/free%20reports/How%20to%20double%20response%20rates.pdf