Fred's Advertising Clinic Part 2: Grab Your Audience's Attention!

We live in a fast-paced world...


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Chuck Norvell, What a Great, Great Guy!


In a different way each of these lines grabs your attention and makes you want to know more:

• What's so great about Chuck Norvell?
• Tell me how I can save and get free shipping...
• No, I wouldn't want that to happen to me, so how can I prevent it?
• How can I slow the pace of my life?

There's nothing fancy or splashy about these leads. They're quite simple. But they all have one thing in common: When you see them you want to know more.

That's what the first part of our advertising copy formula is all about -- Grabbing your audience's attention. There are many ways to do it. You can tease the audience, offer a benefit, or entertain them. It doesn't matter as long as you accomplish one thing -- Your audience has to want to know more.

Let's suppose we are writing a spot for dry-erase markers. I picked this product for our example because I've got a couple of them on my desk, and they're fairly mundane as products go. Nothing really sexy about dry-erase markers, is there?

So how do we get the listener to pay attention to our dry-erase markers? Let's brainstorm ....

Dry-erase markers come in many colors ... they are odorless ... the one I'm looking at right now has a fine point, but others have thicker points ... they erase easily ... Hey, I like that. one -- They erase easily. Can we use it? Let's try some approaches that tie into easy erase-ability:

• We can ask a question: "You're only human, right?"
• We can make a statement: "Everybody makes mistakes."
• We can set up a scene: "It's the biggest presentation of your career. Don't blow it!"
• How about a testimonial: "Dry-erase markers saved my job!"
• We can present the unexpected too: "Dry erase markers don't taste very good."

Each of these attention grabbers gets your customers wanting to know more. "Yes, I am only human -- what about it?" "What can I do about my mistakes?" Some tug at them on an emotional level: "The last time I blew a presentation the boss yelled at me for an hour!" And the last one is just too weird not to want to know more.

The key to each is that they hook you, they tease you. They make you want to know more. As a copy writer, hooking your audience is the hardest part of the job. Once you've done it, the rest of the copy flows naturally.

Your next step is to keep your audience's interest and to build upon it -- to get them interested in your product. We'll talk about that next time in part three of "Fred's Advertising Clinic."

Need to get attention for your product or business?
Fred Pagano's Brown Cow Studios of Boston creates attention-grabbing commercials,
Internet ads, product demos and presentations that sell.
Visit the Brown Cow Studios website at www.BrownCowStudios.com to learn more.
Or send an e-mail to Fred Pagano - Fred@BrownCowStudios.com