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You’re the owner of Widgets R Us and your Direct Of Marketing barrels in and out of breath, “I can get us an ad in Forbes timed to the month of our next tradeshow appearance. But today at 5pm is the submission deadline and it’s going to cost $37,000 and change to place it. Here’s the (ad) copy. What do you think? Run with it?” 
He slaps the paper on your desk and waits expectantly. You look at the ad and . . .
Moment of truth time. A lot of money is riding on your ability to tell the difference — is it a good ad? A bad one? Mediocre (same as bad, really)? Will it make you lose money? Will it break-even? Will it triple your ROI?
How do you know? Do you have the training or experience to know? Do you know well enough to bet almost $40,000 on it? How’s your sense of certainty now?
You gotta know that right now, that Widgets R Us owner is prayin’ for some “ad sense” to warn him of a bad ad in the same way that Spider-Man has “spider-sense” to warn him of imminent danger.
While hiring a copywriter with a proven track record of sales success just makes sense, in this case, you don’t have the time to do that. And realistically, even if you had more time — when the heck would you find time to write it? As the company’s owner the buck stops here, and you at least need to be able to recognize the elements of effective sales copy when you see it.
So back to the moment of truth here — is it a good ad or a bad ad? Does it have the best chance to generate a measurable response (increase in sales and/or market responses)? Or will it burn through your $37K and leave you poorer for the experience?
Realistically, with the Internet, it’s so easy to these days to get the bare bones, 101-level of good ad and copy elements because there’s just so much good information out there and that can cuts years off the learning curve.
And you don’t need to be an ad expert in situations like this because there’s a concept called “Good Enough.” In the software development world, developers know that bug-free software is unrealistic, so they shoot for getting it to the level of “good enough” so they can release the product to market in a reasonable amount of time, let the consumers further bug test it, and then release patches, updates or the next version accordingly.
Same idea here with good advertising: get to a “good enough” level of competency so you can give an ad a thumb’s-up or down when it’s crunch time. Do you know the difference between strong copy and weak copy? How do you recognize each?
And is it “good enough?”
Like what you read? Then click here to buy me a coffee.
By Walter |
Topics: Client Top Secret, From The Trenches, Pro Analysis |
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