Friday, January 30, 2009

How To Write Ads

By John Anghelache

Gary Halbert was both a great copywriter and a great teacher of the art. He had a knack for making the process of creating great ads simple.

Gary was all about leveraging resources to make life easy. For instance, imagine you decide to write a book about getting healthy and fit.

What should you do?

Should you study weight loss science? Should you spend years doing clinical trials? Should you roam the world looking for the perfect diet plan or diet pill? Well not really. Because there is a much easier way to access the most cutting edge weight loss science, clinical trials and new diet breakthroughs. Without doing all the work yourself. Curious? Then listen to this.

Rather than doing things the old school way, Gary might tell you to go out and get the best sellers on health and fitness. Take all these books and start reading them. As you do so, write down notes in a notebook. Make sure to extract all the really juicy stuff readers would be hot read about.

Armed with this research you write your version of a health and fitness book. Only this book has all the great info from the other books you read. The exclusive details that bring value to your book. The end product is a book filled with the very best information on health and fitness.

That's the way to do it.

Gary also taught that you should do the same thing when writing ads. Especially if you're in a hurry and need to bang out an ad... website letter... or whatever fast.

The formal name for this strategy is... swiping ads. And it really does make it easier. Back in 1996, Gary taught a little bit about swiping during a seminar in Florida. The main focus of the seminar was on swiping great ads for your own promotions.

Look, if you don't want to become a top notch copywriter and don't have time to learn all the formulas, etc. then swiping is the way to go. All you have do is learn how to do it right.

Learn to swipe and life gets easier when preparing ads...

** Writer's block will no longer exist. You'll know where to start and ad. You'll no longer be figuring out what to say. Because the swipe ads give you all that information.

** Ad writing will be much faster. All you do is model your ad after the swipe. Therefore, the guessing element is taken out of the equation. It's like using a proven template to write your ads.

** The ads you write could be three times more responsive. Think about it. You are essentially modeling success. When you do that success is on your side.

So the idea is to build a swipe file and use it when creating ads.

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