Hi Barbara,
Instead of giving you a classified ad example, how about we just talk a little about how to write classified ads and what to do in order to make them work? Sound good?
OK. Have you heard of the acronym formula for writing good ads? A.I.D.A. which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Let's take a look at each of these in turn.
Attention - This is basically the title or headline of the ad. Because, naturally nobody will read the ad itself if it doesn't grab their attention. But how do we do that? By speaking
directly to the people you want to target. "
Best Home Based Business!" of course is not going to grab anyone's attention and is not directly speaking to anyone. If you browse through classified ad sites you will see a ton of these. Now, keep in mind I'm not saying this absolutely WON'T grab anyone's attention. But they will be few and far between IF they happen to see yours before another person's ad.
So, instead of that let's think about who will be looking for your ad. (Lots of people are, we just need to grab their attention.) What are they looking for? Are they suffering in some kind of way? Are they looking for something better? What drives and motivates them? Once you come up with an answer, you can then write a title that will grab them.
Some examples might be, "
Tired Of Being On Unemployment?", "
Need An Extra Paycheck Every Month?", "
Make An Extra Paycheck Every Month", "
Tired Of Your J.O.B. And Looking For A Plan B?" or even "
Interested In Starting A Home Based Business?" What these headlines are doing is singling out certain people and grabbing their attention. Most of these are actually looking for a yes answer from the person browsing the ads. If the person looking through the ad site is on unemployment the first question will almost definitely get a yes answer from them. Also, they are focusing on one type of person such as people on unemployment, people needing extra money, people that are tired of working for someone else and people already interested in a home based business.
Interest - This one can apply to both the headline and the body of the ad. "
Tired Of Being On Unemployment? Imagine being able to make more than you did at your full time job, yet only work part time!" Again, we are still talking directly to the person we are targeting. Many people make the mistake of talking about the company. Now, I know GDI is great, but NOBODY is on a classified ad looking for information on GDI. In fact, nobody really cares about the company itself, not at first. What they care about is themselves, their own problems, their own desires and their own needs.
Desire - This one can be done in quite a few ways. Don't give them ANY information but make them want it. For instance, "
Tired Of Being On Unemployment? Imagine being able to make more than you did at your full time job, yet only work part time! You're closer than you might think. Right now you could fire unemployment and live financially free for the rest of your life." Again, we are still talking directly to ONE person and we are getting them to imagine some things.
Because, over 85% of people do not think logically. It's proven that most people think with their hearts. Most people's actions are driven by emotions, by desire and by what they feel. If you can make them feel good about an idea, or make them imagine what it would be like you are speaking to most people. Right now we are not trying to feed them information. They will get that through the movies and website we will next lead them to. Right now the goal is to make them want to take a look.
Action - This is close to the most important part of the ad. Many people want to be told what to do, and the rest just won't know what to do unless you direct them. It's the same as when you speak to a person that filled out the form on your GDI page. The letter that GDI sends you says don't be afraid to ask them to take the 7 day trial starting today. You need to give them direction. So, we might end up with something like this: "
Tired Of Being On Unemployment? Imagine being able to make more than you did at your full time job, yet only work part time! You're closer than you might think. Right now you could fire unemployment and live financially free for the rest of your life. Click HERE To Watch A Short Presentation And Discover How You Can Start For Free!" Or you could have a person call you (these would be great people to have because you know they are not afraid to take action and will most likely be great downline members). Whatever you do, you must TELL them exactly what they need to do next.
So, our end product looks something like this:
Tired Of Being On Unemployment?Imagine being able to make more than you did at your full time job, yet only work part time!
You're closer than you might think...
Right now you could fire unemployment and live financially free for the rest of your life.
Click HERE To Watch A Short Presentation And Discover How You Can Start For Free!That last line would be a link. If you can't make a link on the site you could use your website such as "Discover How By Visiting [YOURGDIWEBSITE] Today!"
Alright, now on to a few "tricks". There are certain words that have been shown to create responses and elicit emotions from people. Words like Discover, Guaranteed, Free, Brand New, She... There are many such words. One book I would highly recommend taking a look at is Hypnotic Writing by Joe Vitale (get the latest version). It costs less than $10 at most places and will give you a large list of words like this.
If you can, quotes are a great thing to use. People are drawn to quotes. It's a psychological thing. We rarely doubt something that's in quotes. Also, you can put in a P.S. statement or a By The Way statement. It's shown that when people read letters, that's the first thing they read.
And finally, one more and perhaps the most important thing. MOST of the classified ads you write will not work. Period. But that's OK. You're going to learn from these ads, you'll see which ones do the best and you will be able to adjust. But if you put out at least one ad per day on multiple classified ad sites you will get results.
There is a quote by Michael Jordan that I absolutely love. It goes, "
I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career... I've lost almost 300 games... 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed... I've failed over and over again in my life... And that is why I succeed." The same thing applies to classified ads, videos, articles, flyers...you name it. The winning shots make the missed ones well worth it!
I hope this helps (though I know it was not exactly what you were looking for).
Best wishes,
Vincent Parker
By the way, in the above we talked about the income opportunity. But, the same thing applies to writing about the product too. Just remember to speak to one person and talk about them only (they don't care about you, me or GDI....at least not yet
)
