By Elizabeth Sinclair

The key to writing an effective classified ad lies in your ability to say a lot with a little. In other words, grab my attention, tell me about best features of your product or service, and command me to buy in 50 words or less.

Sound easy enough? Many people think writing a classified ad is a no-brainer until they get started. Then they discover that, try as they might, they can't get their point across in only 50 words.

When you are passionate and excited about product or service you offer, it is difficult to sum up that enthusiasm in a short block of text. However, if you have a few definitive rules in mind before you start writing your classified ad, it will be easy as pie:

1. Capture attention with headlines--Headlines are key to grabbing a reader's attention. They are what people read first, so if you don't interest them with headline, they won't read on. State your best selling point concisely in fewer than 5 words. Use action words that appeal to emotions, like "SAVE" or "WIN."

Many of us in marketing services and/or agency business are starting to see some real tangible marketing patterns emerging that businesses need to be aware of if they want to leverage their marketing dollars in this "post .com implosion economy."

Good Web Site Design increasingly More Important

It's imperative for a company to have a quality web site today - but many firms are still throwing up web sites that are just poorly designed or overly complex. Poor navigation (menus and overall site structure) when coupled with low quality graphics is really problematical (!) - online visitors think less of your company as a result which will hurt revenue in long run. Many think just doing a minimal job is sufficient but they aren't factoring in how close your competition is! On web any potential customer is only one click away from seeing a high quality web site that is well designed and conveys a quality image

A good rule of thumb when budgeting for a web site is to assume you will pay approximately $250-300. USD per page - this should include your graphics design, content development, setting up registration forms, etc. This may sound too expensive for many companies but for better or worse perception is reality in online world! So, don't short change yourself, put some resources into your web site and be prepared to continue to do so - it's now a vital component of any company's ongoing marketing processes that needs constant upgrading like traditional marcom (PR, print, etc.) materials.

Opt-in E-Mail Trending Down but still Viable

Opt-in or permission based e-mail (meaning people give you "permission" to market to them) response rates for Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer are dropping below where they were a year ago by 30-50% on average. What's happening? The ever-increasing deluge of Spam is negating throughput (response rates, purchases, etc.) of quality opt-in e-mail.

Opt-in e-mail is still a viable and excellent way to market your company but expect less results, lower costs/fees (more vendors equals more competition which is good) and need to repeat your campaigns if you want to see tangible results. And don't get dazzled by a design firm or your in house marketing staff that wants to design a fancy HTML e-mail message for you - 65-75% of market today still doesn't want fancy graphics, they want a short message, delivered concisely with short paragraphs in a text format. Less is more!

Performance Based Marketing on Upswing