Welcome! Introduction Best Accounts to Choose Common Mistakes Gathering Info Securing Artwork Determining Ad Size Attention Grabber Benefit Headline Copy Other Elements Producing the Ad The fastest way to increase sales! Participate in this award-winning, newspaper-specific ad sales course on-site or in a Webinar.  • Get past upfront stalls and objections without any pushing  • Make the account believe he really needs you  • Get better information from your prosepct  • Develop quick ad strategies that work the very first time  • Eliminate size, frequency, content, cost and most other objections before they ever arise  • Get dramatic responses for all kinds of advertisers  • Never have to push an advertiser to run again click here

Next, underneath the graphic or the words you chose to use to describe the product, you need some sort of benefit to tell the readers why this place is better than its competitors. Try not to just focus on what the advertiser thinks are his biggest benefits, but also think about the things that people care about when deciding whether to buy the product. For example, service might be a huge advantage a small business has over the larger chains, however people buying the product might not care as much about service as price.

Continuing with the example of the seafood restaurant (below), while now people may notice it has seafood on the menu, there's no reason why people should actually eat there. Worst case, they already have a favorite seafood place so there's really no reason to read the ad.

What do people care about when choosing one seafood restaurant rather than another? Probably that it's good and reasonably priced. So that needs to be worked into the headline, as we did below.

Why, you may ask, is the headline under the graphic? Remember, the graphic should be at the top of the spec ad because most people who read a newspaper are used to focusing in on the pictures first and then, in the case of editorial pictures, reading the cutline underneath that describes the photograph.

Use this habit to your advantage when designing an ad by putting the picture at the top. If the picture is halfway down in the ad, a reader might focus on the picture, read down, and miss the headline above the picture and, in doing so, missing the reason why they should read the ad. This would greatly cut down on both readership and response.

The headline could take up another third of the ad for smaller ads, though with larger ads they can take up proportionately less space and still stand out. The headline can promote just one benefit such as with the headline "50% off" for a furniture store, a few benefits combined, such as with the headline "The freshest ingredients delivered to your door for $8" for a pizza place , or could be a summary statement that implies a number of benefits such as "How we'll sell your home faster" for a real estate ad.

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