The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and

Feeling a bit Lost?

sells itself
Peter F. Drucker
The objective is to identify and break down the process of writing ad copy for your web presence and or other advertising campaigns. We are going to break the process down into 3 steps

Step 1 Create your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
Step 2 Optimize your Content
Step 3 Convert to Ad Copy

When creating content for your web pages, or other advertising media you are not only writing content but you are also refining your brand and communicating it to your customer. The Content on your web site is actually written as Ad Copy (this is the type of writing specific to the advertising industry). The basic principle behind writing ad copy is to attract your customer’s attention and then persuade them to take action.

The foundation to writing ad copy is to first know your customer (Market Research) and second know your service (USP) Ad copy follows a structure that incorporates a headline to attract attention, text content that clarifies the facts and claims of the headline. Then a lead up to a natural call to action, in other words what do you precisely want your reader to do? Buy something sign up for an e-mail, etc. We are bombarded of with headlines and data on a daily basis from all types of media. Ultimately we have a lot of competition.

Step 1; Write your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
The Unique Selling Proposition (also Unique Selling Point) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to explain a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. Today the term is used in other fields or just casually to refer to any aspect of an object that differentiates it from similar objects.
Today, a number of businesses and corporations currently use USPs as a basis for their marketing campaigns.
In Reality in Advertising (Reeves 1961, pp. 46–48) Reeves laments that the U.S.P. is widely misunderstood and gives a precise definition in three parts:
1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique—either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product.
“If the product does not meet some existing desire or need of the consumer, the advertising will ultimately fail”

Rosser Reeves

Your USP is broken down into 3 parts
• Feature (what are you solving for the customer, Identify their pain)
• Benefits of your product or service
• Solutions you offer for their problem or desire.

Step 2; Use your business USP for the home page and then optimize the content with the most relevant Keywords for the individual page.
•
Each page needs to have some text based content (between 200- 400 words) describing what you offer on that page.
• Make sure you utilize the keywords for that page.
• Use your BEST keywords (Title tags) in the opening, first few sentences including the headline using H1, H2, H3 this not only helps with the search engines but also grabs the attention of the customer searching for those words.
• The search engines look from top to bottom, left to right, therefore if you can bring them in at the top left (introduction) of each page, you will get better placement with the search engines.
• Make EACH keyword anchored text if the to the page that deals with that product, even if you’re linking to the same page you’re on.
• Incorporate the best keywords at a saturation rate of 3-7% for each keyword on that page (I usually shoot for 5% keyword density for each keyword phrase).

You can check keyword density at http://www.rankquest.com/tools/Keyword-Density-Analyzer.php . Then repeat the process using your business USP as a guide for all of your subpages.

Step 3; Convert the content to Ad copy using the AIDA model of writing ad copy.

The acronym AIDA is a handy tool for ensuring that your copy, or other writing, grabs attention. The acronym stands for:
• Attention (or Attract)
• Interest
• Desire
• Action.
These are the four steps you need to take your audience through if you want them to buy your product or visit your website and we need to do it in approximately 30 seconds.
1. Attention/Attract
In our media-filled world, you need to be quick and direct to grab people’s attention. Use powerful words, headlines or a picture that will catch the reader’s eye and make them stop and read what you have to say next. Remember you are fighting the backspace button as your biggest enemy.
2. Interest
Building interest is one of the most challenging stages: You’ve got the attention of a chunk of your target audience, but can you engage with them enough so that they’ll want to spend their precious time understanding your message in more detail? This means helping them to pick out the messages that are relevant to them quickly. So use bullets and subheadings, and break up the text to make your points stand out.
3. Desire
Interest and desire parts of AIDA go hand-in-hand: As you’re building the reader’s interest, you also need to help them understand how what you’re offering can help them in a real way. The main way of doing this is by appealing to their personal needs and wants. How? By communicating your business benefits and solutions that you offer

4. Action
Finally, be very clear about what action you want your readers to take; for example, the stock standard, “buy now”, “download now” “sign up now” etc. rather than just leaving people to work out what to do for themselves. We need to get them to where they want to go with in a few pages or our message is for not.

Review;
1. The 3 steps to writing ad copy begin with identifying who are in the marketplace. If you do not know your unique position, or who you are in the marketplace how can you communicate it?
2. The next step is then to take your USP and then optimize it. This process will then enable you to adjust your content specifically for each category page.
3. Then convert to Ad Copy, this means to ad optimized headlines and calls to action for each page.
4. Incorporate plenty of white space bullet pointed content and easy to skim and scan benefits for the reader to see quickly, painlessly, effortlessly.
Recommended Books
Content Rich “Writing Your Way to Wealth on The Internet” By Jon Wuebber
Words that Sell By Richard Bayan

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