Obviously, if you're paying to advertise your business, you want people to read your whole ad, so they know what you're offering and can make an informed decision about whether to do business with you, don't you? Here's a few ideas you can use in your advertising to keep your reader interested:- conversational short sentences, subheadings, break up long text into short paragraphs, using bullets to speed the reader through your copy, problem-solving copy the reader identifies with, talking in "What's in it for me?" terms, educational copy, and not revealing price til the end.

Firstly, you need to be aware of the WIIFM (what's in it for me) concept. What that means is you need to constantly tell your customer what's in your ad for them, because if they're reading your ad it's only to find out something that they want to know about. YOUR ADS NEED TO BE THE ONES THAT REWARD THEM (while your competitors' BORE them). This also means you should understand the difference between benefits and features.

Let's say you sell a colour TV with a 90" screen - that's the feature. But the benefit of this is that the screen is so big that it makes your lounge room feel like a cinema!

That's the benefit, ok? Let me now introduce you to two powerful words which will automatically suck out the benefit of any feature;

"WHICH MEANS"

In the example above, in order to put it into WIIFM terms, you could put it together like this - "This sensational TV has a whopping 90" screen, which means you can virtually turn your lounge room into a cinema!".

Another powerful tool you can use in your copy is bullets. Why? Because you can package up your most exciting and riveting benefits into short little bursts. In fact, the effect of bullet after bullet of really amazing benefits can actually cause nervous tension in your reader. They can get so excited that they literally can't read any more and go straight to the ordering details. That's how powerful they are!

Here are some examples of how intriguing bullets can be in your advertising (then you can just adapt them to your own business)

• Why the advertising you're probably running right now is wasting you thousands of dollars, and what you need to do to turn that loss into cash

• How to get movie and TV stars to help you sell your product or service

• How to get hundreds of prospects to seek YOU out

• The one mistake 99% of businesses make which loses them tons of credibility... and thousands of dollars in sales

• The secret about human nature which expert salespeople use to make their fortune

• 11 simple ways to make your business the "king" of your industry

In fact, each bullet point you write in your advertising should be just like mini headlines that promise something of value to the reader. You might have 25 or 50 bullet points in a long sales letter, if each of them are like a mini headline, then you may only need one to stand out to your reader and make them say "Yes, I need to know more about this!"

And this is also where educational copy comes in. You can't assume that people know as much about your business as you do. You work in it every day, and possibly been doing it for years, and often you can get frustrated because you don't think your customers respect your value. But the reality is, THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR VALUE.

So you need to educate them about the value you offer. If you tell them something about your company, then your job is to explain why that's important for them. Let's say you sell an expensive mountain bike, for example. In order to get people to buy the bike you've got to justify why they should spend $2000 on your bike. You've got to tell them the reasons why, which is what educational copy is all about.

Like that the bike has better suspension to handle rough terrain, a comfy seat that you could ride the bike for hours without getting sore, and maybe it has 50 gears for easy riding, and a GPS so you never get lost. These are all just examples of course, but notice how it's talking mainly in benefits to the reader, how it will help them!