If you write advertisements for your company, this is what you really ought to do

Of itself there is nothing wrong with that, unless the writing of advertisements is something that you do without taking a lot of time to gather ideas and thoughts so that you can say something new – something which other advertisers to schools are not saying.

For example if, alongside having responsibility for the adverts, you also handle enquiries from potential customers, as well perhaps as dealing with issues arising from current customers, then the chances are you will deal with these matters before you write the next advert.

That’s reasonable, of course, because those customers and potential customers are your source of money and advertisements can wait.

But if the advert is left to the last minute, or even just the last day, then there will be pressure on you to create that advertisement, and that is never a good way to be working on a creative task unless you are very experienced at being creative under pressure.

Because being creative under pressure is very different from doing any other task under pressure.  You might be excellent at making a sale under pressure or solving a customer problem under pressure, but that does not mean you can create a great advert under pressure.

The point is that what most of us need when it comes to creating advertisements is some inspiration, for it is inspiration which powers creativity.  Advertisements written in a hurry tend to be uninspired and often become a list of features – a description of the product or service, rather than inspiring prose based around the benefits.

So instead of writing an advert in a rush at the end of the day or slipping it in between phone calls and meetings, one should be taking one’s time and utilising whatever inspiration you have found.

If you want to know how I find the inspiration to write two or three advertisements a day, I describe some of the processes I use in my book “Creating brilliant emails and websites that sell products and services to schools”.  You can buy that through Kindle, or you can buy it as a download from ourselves – in which case you can share all or part of it with colleagues if you wish.  Details are here.

Alternatively if you don’t want to pay for the book which tells you exactly how to get inspiration and write adverts that sell, you can go to the Copywriting page on our website and click on the free article “Learn to write an email that will generate sales.”

The article doesn’t give you everything that is in the book – far from it in fact because it is only one article – but it certainly contains enough information to get you on the way.

Either way, I would urge you above everything else to spend time working on your advertisements, and never ever to rush them.

If you would like to know more about how we write advertisements, please do call my colleague Steve on 01604 880 927 or email Stephen@schools.co.uk  If you’d like my input on an advert do let Steve know and he’ll forward it to me.