Let's look at how you should structure your advertisement so it effectively SELLS!

Here is a simple little formula that you can use right now to blow your responses off the charts. This will give you a quick visual of what I am talking about.

Factors you MUST incorporate into your advertising if you want to improve its RESULTS.

You need to consider each of these areas when putting together your advertisement or sales letter:

• Leading line

This attracts your targeted clients and generates interest for your main heading.

Headline

This is the most powerful part of your advertisement. Spend a good deal of your time getting the headline SPOT ON.

Sub headlines

Many people will skim through an advertisement or sales letter. Sub headlines grab the reader's interest and keep them reading. If you have an ad in a newspaper that is folded in half on the newsstands it's a good idea to put a powerful sub headline just beneath the crease to grab your readers' attention.

The first paragraph

This is the area where you either lose your reader's interest or hold it. Hundreds of thousands of pages have been flipped over - unread -simply because of poorly thought out opening paragraphs.

Testimonials

When you say it people will doubt it... but when your customers say it, it becomes believable. If you have any doubt about the power of testimonials, spend an evening watching a few late night infomercials. In many cases, advertisers have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars producing and televising these ads, which are chock full of testimonials. Testimonials give your business credibility, they prove your claims and generate TRUST - which is what sales is all about.

Benefits

You need to show your prospective clients how their life will be improved by using your product or service. The most important thing I need to point out here is that features are NOT benefits.

You want to explain the benefits. For example:

• It will save you time.

• It will go faster.

• It will allow you to store more of your important documents.

Talk in benefits to your customers if you want more sales.

Offer

Make your offer a powerful one. Let your prospects know why they should pick up the phone and call you now, and exactly what they will receive for doing so. Notice that I use the word 'offer', and not 'offers.' That's because you'll find that making one offer in an ad or sales letter, will generally get twice as many orders as if you offered a choice of two or more.

Guarantee

The less risk there is in making a purchasing decision the more buyers you are likely to get. Adding a guarantee is a powerful way to generate more inquiries.

Bonuses

You can never have too many bonuses if they relate and add value to your prospective customers. The key here is sourcing products that are perceived to be of a high-value, at minimal extra cost to you.

Closing the sale

Advertising is salesmanship in print. And just like sales, if you fail to close the sale in your advertisements you won't get the orders. So tell your customers precisely what immediate action they need to take, right now, in order to get your product.

Urgency

Create a sense of urgency in your ads and sales letters. Why? You see, as human beings we have a tendency to put off making decisions about anything we possibly can. So you need to create a reason to take action now. A limited offer or bonuses which expire after a certain period of time are good examples.

Price and payment methods

If you are trying to sell something directly within your sales letter or advertisement (sometimes you will not be trying to sell, but simply generate leads by offering something for free and then following up) then you need to give a price, together with payment information. The key here is to make it so easy for customers to pay that everyone can order.

P.S.

It's funny you know, when reading a letter, statistics have proven that many people will skip through an entire letter and then read the Post Script at the end of it. So what does this tell you? Make your P.S. as powerful as you possibly can. Restate bonuses, guarantees, offers and your greatest benefits. This can hook potential customers into reading the rest of your copy.