Writing Great Ads is a 10-Step Dance

Do you want to become a great ad writer?Follow these ten steps and you will rise high and go far.1. Read poetry every day.2. Memorize at least two dozen poems.3. Recite them out loud when you are alone.4. Perform them spontaneously when you have an audience.5. Feel the pulsating rhythm that is the heartbeat of every poem.6. Wiggle your way through the unexpected twists and turns that are its dance.7. Ask a few business owners to evaluate the ads that you have written for them.8. Listen respectfully to everything they tell you. Even when they are wrong.9. Do not try to change their mind about anything. Just write exactly what they would say if they could write as well as you do. Remember: This is their business, not yours.10. Never write ads that rhyme. Use the heartbeat and the dance instead.The pulsing heartbeat is called poetic meter. Study it.The slide and glide of the dance is contained in its unexpected combinations of common words. Look, listen, and take note of these phrases in the poems that hit you the hardest.Common words used in uncommon ways contain powerful magic.Squeeze those phrases and drink the juice.If you do the things I told you, your ads will dramatically outperform the ads of your peers.You will make a lot of money, but your college-compliant peers will tell you that you are “doing it wrong.”Let me now say it as plainly as I can:Successful advertising is not informational. Successful advertising is emotional.Powerful ads do not speak to the mind.They speak to the heart.Like a poem.– Roy H. WilliamsOne more thing:Everything I told you is true when you are writing for social media or for mass media. But the things that I told you do NOT apply to B2B (Business to Business writing) and they only partially apply to website copy. Websites and business communications need to deliver more facts and logic because THAT is what the customer is looking for in those moments.Tim Whitt is a business coach who learned his craft from termites, mosquitoes, and stinging bees. Seriously. After more than 45 years in the pest-control business, Tim says every business owner can learn a lot from the problems that insects and vermin create for homeowners.Listen as Tim tells deputy rover Maxwell Rotbart about the striking parallels between household pests and the damage that toxic employees can inflict upon an organization. He also names the steps that you can take to correct those problems.If troublesome employees are infesting your workplace, Tim’s pest-control perspective may be exactly the advice that you need. It’s time to get crazy at MondayMorningRadio.com