How to Write Effective Advertising Copy

Advanced Techniques for eBay & Amazon Capsules: Advanced techniques of using the HubPages Amazon and eBay capsules make page layout easier, improve visual appeal and increase sales revenue. Learn to improve your product sales pages, procedural hubs and any other hubs that contain ad capsules.

Best E-commerce Shopping Cart Solution: PrestaShop: Every online e-commerce website needs a shopping cart—review of PrestaShop.

How to Nurture and Develop Corporate Publicity Sources: Follow-up is key to nurturing news sources and making them aware of the significance of the work they are doing. The overall purpose of follow-up is to display our publicity version of a news item, both for accountability and in order to open the channel for attracting further news items.

How to Copy Edit in a Foreign Language: What is required to copy edit? What should a foreign language proofreader look for? If an author knows more about the language than about the mechanics of document preparation, a skilled copy editor can help the writer without knowing the language!

Ad-vert-ise v. to persuade others to take a specific action.

The word advertise contains two Latin roots. Vertere means ‘to turn around or change’. Ad is a prefix meaning ‘towards’.

Thirty years ago, writers wrote ad copy while graphics artists did layout. Those lines have become increasingly blurred as one person or department tries to do both. I offer reminders here for both the mechanics of writing and graphic layout, since everyone is weaker in one than the other.

Effective advertising copy is one of the most challenging kinds of writing. It needs to attract the reader at the beginning, hold attention throughout, and instill conviction by the end. No amount of wordsmithing will rescue a faulty concept.

• Envision a specific individual as you begin to write. Edit later to be more inclusive if necessary.
• Hook your reader’s attention with the first line.
• Make a claim and substantiate it with fact.
• Conclude with a pithy, memorable and actionable objective—just one.

A publicity manager is often hired for certain graphics layout software requirements. It is harder to qualify writing skills, though. The result is bad ad copy on very nice layouts. Keep the following writing skills in mind.

• Keep paragraphs short. Divide longer ones.
• Keep sentences short and simple.
• Minimize dependent clauses. Make them independent.
• Rewrite to eliminate any possible ambiguity in grammar or phrasing.
• Use as few coordinating conjunctions as possible.
• Cut or replace empty words. Use colorful vocabulary instead.
• Remove doublets. Slash redundancy. Use synonyms to add meaning while cutting word count.
• Write in the active voice. Passives have no place.
• Be sparing with the following punctuation [! , :] and parentheses. Study the proper use of em-dashes. Avoid semicolons.

As word processors become more capable, copy writers increasingly do graphic layout themselves. It is essential to target the medium.

• Use bulleted or numbered lists instead of strings separated by commas.

• Add subheadings to break up longer ad copy.

• Use white space generously. This is a natural byproduct of bullets, subheadings and short paragraphs.

• Use blocks of color for sidebars. HubPages, for example, allows silver and blue for certain capsule types that can “float” to the right.