Ad Writing And Tracking: Tips n Tricks

A lot has already been written about writing attention
grabbing, interest generating advertisements. However
as editor of a `free ad` newsletter, I regularly
receive tons of `no pull` ads. Due to the critical
nature of this issue, I will walk you through the ad
writing and tracking short cuts once more:

Ad Writing:

1.Write an Attention grabbing headline: This should use
a psychological trigger to intrigue or pique curiosity.
Some of the most effective forms are:

-Informative:

Discover The Ten ways to...

Amazing Breakthrough: Latest report...

Excellent Golden Business Opportunity, Join Free

-Question:

Do You Know...?

How To...?

-Warning:

Don`t read this ad if...

Scam Alert!..

-Call to attention:

Calling All Writers..

Attention Mothers...

2.Ad description: Write 3 or 4 lines loaded with power
words and giving a vivid very specific description of
BENEFITS Not Features. For example compare the two ads:

-40 advertising spaces available in xyz mall. High
traffic location, competitive pricing. For more info
contact...

-Do you want your hit counter to go crazy? Do you want
to explode your sales? Excellent ad location. Hurry
limited spaces. Contact..

Which ad will you click? - You get my point?

3. Contact information: This should be the link/ e-mail
address for the relevant information. Again I find a
lot of un-clickable links. The HTML code for links is:

-For site address (URL)

http://www.yourdomainname.com
(www.yourdomainname.com is your site address)

-For e-mail links

mailto:yourname@yourdomainname.com
(yourname@yourdomainname.com is your e-mail/
autoresponder address).

4.Wrapping to 60/65 characters per line: This is a real
head ache not only for ad writers but also for ezine
article writers and editors as well.

The hard and most common way is to write using your
word processor, then copy and paste to your e-mail and
press enter after every 60/65 characters including
spaces.

A smart technique is to automate your word wrapping
right on line using the free e-mail formating utility
at: http://www.jbmckee.com/formatit/

Alternative Tip For Front Page Users: Insert your word
file into front page, convert text to table, merge
cells, set table width to 464 and border size to zero.
Save. Copy the entire table (not text) and paste in to
your e-mail. This gives you 60 characters per line. [I
suggest you use your hotmail account to send it to a
Yahoo account and then copy and send it back. This
will remove any HTML].

Ad Tracking:

Once you have written your ad you need to test and
track it`s performance. Ad tracking is an absolute
necessity if you want to maximize results with minimum
budget. You need to know where your responses are
coming from and which ads are `pulling` more. To get
the maximum returns on your investment, you need to
concentrate on the most responsive mediums. A few
easily implemented tactics are:

1.E-mail links with subject lines: For each ad you use
a different subject line. Say if your e-mail address is
abc@xyz.com and you are advertising in ezine1, your
link will be

mailto:abc@xyz.com?subject=ezine1

2.Mirror Pages: If your URL name is www.xyz.com and
your home page is index.html, you upload several
copies of your home page and save them as index1,
index2, etc. Put a site meter on each of the mirror
pages, use different ads/ezines for each page. Here
your link will take the form:

http://www.xyz.com/index1.html

3.Autoresponders: For each Ad you use an email link
with an autoresponder. Use an autoresponse sales
message. For instance if you are tracking ad1 and ad2
you use two autoresponders and your links will be of
the form:

mailto:ad1@yourdomain.com and

mailto:ad2@yourdomain.com

This method gives you a very accurate picture.

4.If you don`t want to do any of the above, you can
use the free tracking services at
http://www.linkcounter.com .