Writing Compelling Ezine Ads for Maximum Response

Advertising, whether online or offline, is only effective if it can get the required response from its target audience. Otherwise, it would turn out to be a waste of time, money and effort.

Ezine advertising is considered one of the most effective ways of online advertising. However, you must have a well written ad to get the required response from ezine advertising. If you go through the following process, your ezine ads are bound to become more compelling and get more response.

1) Identify Your Target Audience

First of all, you need to determine the audience you want to target with your ad. Unless you have a clear idea of whom you are writing for, you can never come up with effective ad copy. Everyone in the world might be able to buy your product, but there are only some people who have an actual need for it. These are the people whom you should be targeting.

It would help if you realize that your target audience depends on the product you are selling. For example:

Keep the profile of your typical customer in mind when writing the ad. Write as if you are addressing that single person. This would help in giving your ad a personal tone and would increase its effectiveness. The reader should feel as if this ad was written specifically for him/her. This would make them pay attention to your ad.

2) Arouse Their Interest

Once your target audience has been identified, you need to come up with an offer that would interest them. For this purpose, you must understand exactly what their needs are, or identify the problems for which they want solutions.

Sometimes you would know instinctively what your customers want. At other times, you might have to carry out a bit of research. Asking your current customers is always helpful. In fact, at times they would tell you what they want without asking. All you have to do is listen and listen carefully. Business owners, who understand their customers’ needs well, can never fail.

Let’s take the above examples again and look at the needs of the target audiences we identified:

Now that you know what their needs are, you need to communicate clearly through your ad, how your offering can fulfill their needs and solve their problems.

3) Focus on Benefits

People don’t buy products; they buy benefits that those products are offering. Successful ad copy always focuses on benefits. It is necessary to stress on benefits for the purpose of making them desire your product. They should believe that your product would fulfill their needs or solve their problems. Tell them how your offering can benefit them and do so clearly.

The benefits of your offering are derived from the features of your products. Let us look at some examples to clarify this:

Feature Benefit

Once you have identified the most compelling benefit of your product, center your ad around that benefit and make your product sound desirable. The headline of your ad would either mention the identified problem or be a combination of both the identified problem and the product benefit. If you are able to come up with the right headline, you would definitely capture their interest. Only then would the reader be compelled to act and would want to own your product. For example:

The second line of the ad should explain the claim made in the headline. For example:

4) Ask for Response

The purpose of all types of advertising is to elicit response from the target audience. Ezine ads are no different. Typically, the purpose of ezine ads should be to make people want more information or contact the seller.

While you are writing the ad, keep the required response of the reader in your mind. After you have written it, read and re-read to ensure that it would achieve the required response.

To motivate your target audience to respond immediately, you can make special offers that are time sensitive. Good examples of special offers for ezine ads can be:

Depending on your product and your target audience, you can come up with all sorts of creative ideas for special offers that would compel the readers of your ezine ad to take action.

Moreover, you must clearly ask them and motivate them to take action. Don’t assume that they would do it themselves. Without a call for action, your ad is incomplete; and at times could be entirely useless. For example:

It is also important to include some form of contact information in the ezine ad, so that your prospects can get in touch, or get more information. You must mention the URL of your website and your email address . You may also include your phone number. If you don’t have a website, you should set up an autoresponder message with details of your offering and mention the autoresponder address in the ad.

5) Format the Ad

While writing an ezine ad may sound similar to any other type of copywriting, there is one major difference. Ezine ads have some specific formatting requirements. If these requirements are not followed, your ezine ad would lose its effectiveness. Following are the formatting considerations that should be kept in mind.

(More tips on text only formatting)

These are the five steps that would enable you to develop an ezine ad, which compels your target audience to take action. Follow each step carefully, and you will reap the rewards.