Most small businesses do not have a high powered advertising agency to produce award-winning radio commercials for them. Most award-winning radio commercials win for the wrong reasons anyway.

Copywriting Secrets Of India's Mystics
Copyright - 2004 Dave Alston
Author of 'Revealed: The Hidden Truth About Web Design'
http://www.aceofwebs.com

Hi everyone,

Been ruminating on this one for a little while now but it's probably one of the most profound discoveries of my life. It all began with a little book about music and it's had such a deep influence on my copywriting and small business, indeed my whole outlook on life, I'd like to share it with you all now.

Four ad copy traps that ensnare even experienced copywriters
- John Kuraoka

Writing an ad is a perilous business. To be effective, an advertising copywriter must use as a matter of course the right words, the right tone – the artistic tools of writing, if you will – all the while working toward a measurable commercial end: a sale.

Do you make these mistakes in advertising?
- John Kuraoka

“Everyone makes mistakes.” Yes, but the fact remains that victory – in sport, in war, in sales, or in market share – generally goes to those who make the fewest mistakes. Here are six of the most-common mistakes in advertising.

1. Failing to advertise. Do this, and you walk away from a vast amount of potential sales, squandering your existing business. Advertising is the engine of growth-oriented commerce – start it up.

“So you be wanting a word with Long John, you say, about copywriting and such. Well, then, nobody more welcome than yourself, I say. Sit you down and hear the news. I tell you, I’m not a boasting man, and you see yourself how easily I keep company; but when I was a copywriter, lambs wasn’t the word for my old crew. I seen a thing or two, I have, and know the course I lay. If you would on’y lay your course alongside o’ John, you would ride in carriages, you would.

“How to write as gentlemen o’ fortune should, you ask? Ah, you always was brisk for business. Why, have these rules to heart, as I, and you’ll write ads fit to sink with gold.

“Here be the four p’ints – like cardinal p’ints on the compasscard, they are – of what you might call a plan of an ad:

I hear a lot of talk about "advertising strategy" in my work as an advertising copywriter and freelance creative director. Unfortunately, that’s all most of it is: talk.

There’s an old military maxim: "amateurs discuss strategy; experts discuss logistics." In other words, the best strategy in the world won’t bring victory if you can’t get your forces into place at the right time and sustain them once there.

That’s the challenge of strategic planning, be it military or marketing. The most-effective advertising strategy is that which is practical and sustainable, in order to be implemented and sustained in the marketplace. Otherwise, it’s not a strategy; it’s a fantasy.