First, and foremost it has no spelling or grammatical errors. Nothing turns a prospect off faster than these types of mistakes. In addition to running all your work through a good spelling and grammar checker, having someone else carefully read what you have written is also a good idea.

Use short ads of two or three sentences with meaningful headings. Most people won't read lengthy online ads. In longer ads, such as on a web site, use of bulleted lists, which gives an overview of key points is effective, and will make copy more readable.

If you are advertising on a web site, there are other conventions you should follow. If it is an ad, it should also be short, and follow rules above. If however, someone who has read your ad, is coming to your web site for more information, it should not leave person reading it with questions that are not answered there.

Never, and that is a very long time, use images that take too long to load. If you do, odds are you have just lost a customer. The text should be easy on eyes and forget cute background and text combinations. Dark blue on a black background is simply too difficult to read.

A white background with black text is still best choice, however dark text on a light background is also acceptable. Using an image for a background is a mistake, and will take away from effectiveness of your presentation.

All caps, either in an ezine ad or on a web page, should be avoided. They are very difficult to read and most people won't. Also, forget fancy fonts. Arial and Times Roman are both very legible onscreen and if printed give a high quality copy. A fixed-width font such as Courier is preferred font for email ads.

"Hi. You've reached Mike and Kathy. Who are you and why do we care?"

It was immediately followed by "beep" signaling my opportunity to leave a message. I obviously dialed wrong number so I hung up. But then I started thinking about that abrupt message. That's exactly what every potential customer thinks when he or she is exposed to any advertising message... "Who is this and why do I care?"

DO YOU KNOW THE ANSWER?

How would you answer a prospective customer who asked, "Who are you and why should I care?" If you were prospect, would that answer increase or decrease desire to do business with you?

Prospects may not ask you this question -- at least not in words that blunt. But they are asking it, silently and unconsciously, every time they see your ad, visit your website or listen to your sales presentation. You can increase effectiveness of all your advertising by automatically answering it for them. It's actually a 2 part question so we'll look at each part separately.

PART 1: "WHO ARE YOU...?"

People only buy products and services from companies and individuals they trust. Part of that trust is assurance that you're capable of delivering benefit each customer expects in return for money he or she pays you.