Want a fast way to get customers? Do you want people to really pay attention to your ads and read them all the way through? Here is a tried and true ploy that has earned its tried and true status because it works.
Put an ad in your local newspaper with a headline like this: “There’s a Spelling Error In This Ad – If You Find It, We Will Give You $__.” The dollar amount can be anything, but this ad will work best if it is proportionate to the cost of your products or services.
Within the first paragraph you will tell readers that the dollar amount will be given in the form of a gift certificate to anyone who finds and circles the error and brings the ad into your place of business.
Don’t make the gift a coupon or a discount. Your customers will feel cheated if they get anything less than a real gift certificate that can be used to buy any of your products or services.
Then write a really compelling ad, but place the single error late in your copy. You want people to read all or most of your ad, so make sure they must read at least enough to really understand your offer.
Combine this promotion with a really enticing offer with a very strong benefit. Don’t combine it with a discount, however. You will already be giving away a gift certificate so you don’t want this ad to cost more than the face amount of the certificate.
This tactic forces readers to do something they don’t ordinarily do – read your entire ad carefully. Take advantage of this by making a truly exciting offer. You want readers to be glad they read the ad and feel they are getting more out of this promotion than merely the face amount of the gift certificate.
Increase the effectiveness of this campaign by capturing their contact information for future mailings. Not only do you want to get traffic through your door, you want to build a database of customers to send out your future offers.
And by the way, don’t make the spelling error too hard to find. Your goal is for everyone to be able to spot the mistake. They just have to read 90% or more of your copy in order to find it.
Obviously you can’t run this same campaign every week, but you can run it once a year. And each time, you will see tremendous results.
What makes this ad work is the motive of getting something for nothing. It not only appeals to a little greed, but it also makes the whole thing a game in which you have challenged readers to match wits with you and find your error.
COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.
Download your free copy of 99 Ideas For Writing Irresistible Web Content, written by Charles Brown, a Dallas, Texas based freelance copywriter who writes web copy, advertisements, white papers and direct mail. Subscribe to his “Freelance Copywriter Secrets” at http://dynamiccopywriting.blogspot.com or contact him at 817.715.3852 or **charbrow@gmail.com**.
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