OK, You’ve heard me say it before, so let me begin this feature with the regular health warning: Most Advertising Does Not Work! Beware all those people trying to sell you ad space in dodgy publications. They’re some of the best trained sales people in the world. They know every trick in the book so please be careful!

Having said that, when Advertising does work, it’s a dream because it can bring you a never-ending stream of new customers, for very little effort.

In this feature, I am going to show you the steps I would take to transform the effectiveness of any ad campaign. If your ads are not working, this is what you need to do. If they are working, this will massively improve your response rate. If you’re not currently advertising but planning a test, these steps will give you a powerful head start.

I’m serious. What you are paying for your Ads is as important as the content in determining whether they’re going to work.

Call your ad rep. Tell them the ads are not working and you need to pull them. Say you could justify giving it one more shot but you need to reduce the cost by 50%. Let them understand you’re willing to go elsewhere.

What will happen? You may get a 50% reduction. You should certainly get a 20-30% reduction. Worst case scenario they’re going to knock 10 or 15% off the cost. All from one quick phone call.

WARNING: As part of this agreement do not agree to running a smaller ad or having it in a worse part of the publication. In fact, as you’re about to find out, we want the ad running in a better part of the publication.

As part of the same phone call, tell the sales rep that your Marketing Consultant (that’s me!) has told you that if your ad can’t appear in the top right hand corner of a right hand page in one of the first six pages of the publication, you’re going to have to pull the ad.

They’ll tell you that they can’t guarantee anything etc etc and here’s what you say:

“I understand that and my hands are tied. My Marketing Consultant is in charge of my ads now and he’s insisting I pull the ads if you can’t do this for me. So could I ask something else?”

SALES REP: “Sure”

YOU: “Could you just go check with your colleagues to see what flexibility there is with this….because it would be a shame to end our relationship. If you could just go and check for me, and get back to me, I would really appreciate it.”

This gives the rep a chance to get out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves and pass the buck to the sales manager who will almost certainly want to take whatever cash you’re offering.

Now you may not get precisely what we’re asking for, but will you get a better position that you had before? Almost certainly.

We want to be in the first few pages because these get the most readers. We want to be top right hand side of the page, because more people see the ad when it’s there.

But the most important of our ‘demands’ – and one that you should insist on, is that we want to be on a right hand page. Why? When you flick through a newspaper or magazine, your eyes are naturally drawn to the right hand page. So many more people will see your ad if it’s on a right hand page.

The only exception to all of this, is if you want to be in a certain part of a publication, eg sports, beauty etc – or if you’re advertising in a language or culture that have different reading patterns.

So if your Ad is currently appearing on a left hand page, just switching it to the right hand side will significantly increase the number of people who read it.

What have we accomplished in these first two steps? We’ve got more people seeing your ad and we’re paying even less for more people to see it! Now we just need to make sure you have a great ad.

You can improve the response rate to an ad by 50%, 100% or more, just by changing your headline.

The headline is the first thing people see in an ad. It’s usually the wording at the top of the ad.

Why is the headline so important? Because it’s the deciding factor in whether people bother reading the rest of your ad.

Think about when you’re scanning through a magazine or newspaper. Your brain is trained to pick out the stories and subjects that are of most interest to you. It does this primarily by scanning the headlines of the stories. Well, the principle also applies to advertisements.

When writing a headline, you need to follow the same principles as the journalists writing the stories or features appearing in the publication.

Your headline needs to be interesting or shocking or intriguing or whatever it takes to get people to read the rest of your ad.

If you’re not sure about a headline, here are five types of headlines that work wonderfully and that you are free to use in your ads. Obviously you will want to alter the parts in brackets for your particular product/service:

Don’t (Buy a House) until you’ve read this Shocking Report


Seven Secrets of (Accountancy) that the Experts don’t want you to Know


The Secrets of (pretty much anything written here will get peoples’ attention)


A Superb New Kitchen to Transform your Home for £65 per Month!
(If you sell a product with an easy payment plan, including the payment plan in the headline can massively increase your response)


“I came to Chris Cardell’s Seminar and my business grew by 200% in 18 Months”
(Using a testimonial in your headline can also set you apart from the rest)

But don’t just be limited by these. Be creative, use your imagination. Brainstorm with colleagues or friends. 

Probably the worst thing you can have as your headline is your company name or logo. Who cares! Write a compelling headline for your ad and it will make a huge difference.

The copy in your ad should be a simple communication between you and the person reading it, ensuring that you clearly communicate the BENEFITS of what you are offering.

GOLDEN TIP 1 Use the word ‘You’ as often as you can in the ad. It forces you to make it a personal communication to the person reading it.

GOLDEN TIP 2 Include a list of five bullet points in the ad listing five benefits of your product/service. This proven formula works again and again. We love bullet points!

GOLDEN TIP 3 Make sure that you clearly tell people what to do at the end of your ad. People need direction, eg 

“Call us immediately to order your XYZ on (phone number) or visit us online now at www…….”

You would be surprised at how many people write really good ads and then let themselves down at the end by not including a strong call to action.

SPECIAL NOTE: The copy in your ads is a subject we will return to again because it is so important. I will also produce some Ad templates that you can use in my special ‘Steal My Copy’ Feature.

This can give you a very powerful advantage.

There are basically two types of ads. The first is designed to produce a sale. This is the most common form of advertising.

The second is designed to get people who are interested in your product to get in touch with you. This is called ‘Lead Generation.’

Suppose you are an accountant. A traditional ad would talk about the services you offer in the hope that people become a client. If you put an ad in the local paper, 2 or 3 people might contact you.

But what if you put an ad in the paper that DID NOT sell your services but instead encouraged people to contact you. For example, you could offer them a Free Report ‘Seven Top Tips for Reducing your Tax Bill by Hundreds or Thousands of pounds.’

People could phone for their free report or perhaps download it from your website.

This ad may produce 10,20, 50 or more responses. While it may not produce an immediate client, it produces many more ‘qualified leads’ than the first ad. You can then begin communicating to these leads through phone, email or letter and you should expect to be able to convert a good proportion to becoming clients.

In an increasingly crowded advertising environment, many businesses are finding this type of lead generation advertising far more effective than traditional ads.

If you sell higher priced products or services, you can be more adventurous in what you are offering. You’ve probably seen the Disney Ads where they offer you a free DVD or Video about their holiday resorts. This is classic ‘Lead Generation’ advertising. If it works for Mickey, maybe it will work for you!

An Advertorial style ad is just an advertisement that looks like a normal news story or feature that the publication would run. 

You’ve probably seen them. They look like a normal story, but they have the words ‘Advertising Feature’ (or something similar) at the top.

The advantage of these ads is that more people tend to read them because they look interesting. The style (which is the same as a normal news story) also means you can have a compelling headline – and it also means the content needs to be interesting because you are writing it in the style of a news story or feature. 

This is still a fresh, exciting form of advertising and I highly recommend that you test it. It’s worth speaking to the publication in advance because some have different policies on these types of ad.

Here’s an example of an ‘Advertorial’ advertisement that I wrote for one of my clients:

GRIST INTERNATIONAL

If your ad is aiming for a direct sale, including a guarantee can, on its own, turn a loss-making ad into a profitable one.

When you ask people to buy from you based purely on an advertisement, you’re asking them to take on all of the risk. If they don’t know you, they’re risking money and time, as well as possible disappointment if the product is not all that you say it is. 

If you are willing to guarantee what you are offering, the risk is massively reduced – and your response rate is likely to rise significantly.

Your guarantee can take many different forms. It can be a 30-day guarantee, a lifetime guarantee or if you really want to boost response rates, let people try your product/service for free for a period of time and then pay. 

If you offer a guarantee you will of course get a few people who ask for their money back. The thought of this often puts business owners off – but it really shouldn’t. The number of returns is normally easily outweighed by the increase in sales that your guarantee will bring.

As with all Marketing, don’t just sit there trying to decide whether a guarantee is a good idea. And don’t just take my word for it. TEST IT! Run an ad without the guarantee – and the same ad with a strong guarantee…and then measure the results. There’s a reason that so many large advertisers use strong guarantees - They work!

Go out and study the highly successful Direct Response advertisers. These are the companies that you see year on year running ads that are designed to produce an immediate response. These companies have spent millions testing and fine tuning their advertising to find out what works. You could definitely benefit from using some of their principles (although not their precise wording!) as you plan your own successful Advertising strategy.