1) Test your adverts

In all advertising and mail order, biggest key of long-term success is testing everything. Test your adverts. Test your sales letters. Test your products. Test publications. Test everything.

Learn to key all of your order forms and phone numbers to make sure you know which adverts and publication is doing what. Don’t ever leave anything to chance. Test everything. Great advertisers and mail order millionaires are people who have tested everything and have found what works. Your testing period will NEVER end!

2) Strong Headlines

The number two key to success is your headlines. You must understand that wording of your headline is more than 70% of effectiveness of your advertising. That means it is EXTREMELY VITAL what your headline says. In mail order, it has been my experience that negative headlines often out pull positive headlines. For example, one of most popular and effective headlines in network marketing has been " Have you fallen for an easy money scam. If so read on”.

Negative headlines force your prospect to identify with them saying, "That sounds like me. The main purpose of headline is to GRAB their attention, so your headline must be attention grabbing and potential customer focused. What are their needs? What are their desires? What are their fears? Pay attention. HEADLINES WILL MAKE OR BREAK YOUR ADVERTISING CAREER!

3) Short Words, Short Sentences, Short Paragraphs

Forget what your grammar teacher taught you in high school. When writing adverts, you must make your adverts simple: Simple to understand & simple to order. Keep level of writing at high school English or lower. Use short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs.

I know your literature teacher told you to not write paragraphs with only two sentences in them, but how much money did he/she ever make in advertising? The moment you confuse your potential customer then their attention and sale disappears!

4) Be Specific, Not General

Be specific in all of your advertising. For example do not say "Fill Your post box with Cash." But instead say, "Receive up to £355 a day in your post box daily." Do not say "Secrets to making money" instead it is better to have a headline saying "63 Year old man tells you his dirty secrets to making £578 a day!"

Being specific makes your advertising more believable. Being general makes your potential customers say "He is just making this up." Being specific makes them say, "He must have counted it. I also want to make that much."

Never say in adverts "Distributors required." Instead it is much better to say, "15 New Distributors needed in Larnaca." Do not ignore fact that being specific will beat being general every time. Go over your advertising copy and edit it to become specific.

5) Use Your Background & Be Unique

So many adverts out there today are for just me-too products and me-too advertising. When I say "me-too Advertising," I mean that these adverts or products have been so over used that they just don’t sell anymore.

People are tired of hearing about how your products are best in industry. They have heard that story before.

You need to become unique in your approach. Are you elderly? Are you young? Are you deaf? Are you bald? Do you only have a high school education? Put something of yourself into advert. You need to influence potential customer that there is something different in your product when compared to your competitors.

For example a teenager could write an advert saying, "17 year old boy makes £1,500 per month via Internet!" Be unique. Find something about yourself that is unique and put it into your advertising. Let people know who you are, then they will begin to trust you and trust spells orders.

Conclusion: With Cyprus closing in on EU membership and with business environment likely to become more competitive as a result of this event, Cypriot businesses must know how to use advertising to their benefit. The aim of this article is to give ideas to Cypriot businessmen (large or small) as to how they can improve their advertising effort.

***** End of article *****

Andy George is an accountant with years’ experience as a lecturer. Andy was financial correspondent for eight years at the Cyprus Financial Mirror where he wrote articles on business & accounting related issues to a non-technical audience.

He is the author of eBooks: How to write and Publish Your Own With a Shoestring Budget http://www.budgetebook.com New! Easy Way to Make Auto-Pilot Income http://www.budgetebook.com/cbmall

UNDERSTANDING WHY WE SHOULD MEASURE RESULTS

We measure advertising results so that we can learn how to not waste our money and to learn how to get most bang for our advertising dollar.

Return On Investment or ROI is key measurement utilized to determine value of our advertising.

It is best to show in an example how ROI is measured.

Cost of Newspaper Advertising: $150 Number of Items Sold As a Result: 60 Retail Price of Individual Item: $ 10 Profit on Individual Item: $ 3

Gross Income on Items Sold: $600 Gross Profit on Items Sold: $180

In this example, you have spent $150 to make $180. Your ROI is 120%.

Cost of Radio Advertising: $ 300 Number of Items Sold As a Result: 50 Retail Price of Individual Item: $ 20 Profit on Individual Item: $ 6

Gross Income on Items Sold: $1000 Gross Profit on Items Sold: $ 300

In this example, you have spent $300 to make $300. Your ROI is 100%.

Utilizing these two examples, you can quickly discern why and how we are calculating ROI.

Now, some people would consider both to be good investments of their advertising dollars. In fact, many believe that so long as their advertising generates enough sales to break even as radio example did, then they consider investment to have been in their future rather than their present. So long as you do not lose money on transaction, then you should at least be willing to continue with advertising medium that was used.

However, over time, you might find that newspaper advertising will continue to provide 120% ROI. If that is case, then your newspaper advertising should take more of a center stage in your advertising efforts so that you can develop more profits which can be used to increase your dollar investment into your advertising.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TRACKING YOUR OFFLINE PROMOTIONS

With this introduction, you should now have available to you knowledge necessary to introduce tracking into your marketing efforts. Those who take time and effort to advertise and track their results will benefit more than you can imagine.

Truth be known, a single person with a dream today started every big corporation in world many years ago. Each of these corporations grew from a fledgling operation to a economic powerhouse by tracking and tweaking their Advertising ROI.

Every corporation and small business who will remain in business through long term will be tracking their advertising and promotional efforts today. It is an investment into their future success. If you make same kind of investment of time and cash resources, you too will be making an investment in your future success.