By T.E. Cunningham

Business owners who don’t have a dedicated marketing staff often struggle when it comes to developing their marketing and advertising copy.  As a business owner, you are the expert in your field.  However, you may not be well versed in marketing and advertising, yet required to write your own ad copy or script due to budget concerns. Even if you do have assistance in copywriting from the media entity that you are utilizing, you often don’t know if the ad is well written or effective. Sadly, sometimes the media entity doesn’t know either!

Writing good advertising copy is both an art in terms of creativity within the message and a bit of a science or formula in that there are things to “check off” the list to make sure you have an effective message. However, it is not all that complicated.

While you could spend days, months, even years researching great campaigns and trying to perfect your messaging, the following are some quick tips to reference in communicating your message across all mediums.

Communicating Your Marketing Message

Remember the things about your product or service that must be communicated:

• Communicate a clear message of what your product or service is—what are you selling?
• Why your product?   What is your point of difference from “the other guys”?   Spend quality time determining things that are unique or hard for your competition to replicate, whether that be a certain kind of warranty, unique product line, 24-hour service, etc.
• Location, website, phone number- don’t make it hard for them to figure out how to take action!
• Logo/ID/Branding Statement – be consistent across all your marketing materials

And always remember who you are talking to- your potential customer. How will buying your product or service improve their situation?

Next, test the creative. Run the concept by friends, family or co-workers that are in your targeted demographic. Get their honest and initial reaction.   You are too close to it sometimes to honestly evaluate.   Remember, anything you do that strikes an emotion chord with the recipient is typically great. But if you go for funny, emotional, terrifying, and such, and miss—well, that is usually when a potential customer looks at the person sitting next to them and says, “That’s awful.”

And if you feel like a fish out of water, contract with a marketing expert on a freelance basis. This could save you time and money in the long run, and saves you from making a commitment to hire and train an employee. Hey, I think I know one!

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