There are several advertorial mistakes which can TANK your conversions.
“Pushing the sale” is one of the most common.
That means you’re promoting your offer too hard for the awareness level of your audience.
When you “push the sale” your copy comes off as salesy – or in the worst cases – spammy.
It’s the difference between someone feeling informed and entertained after reading your advertorial…
… or feeling like someone hacked their friend’s Facebook account and tagged them in 67 “Half Price Ray-bans” photos.
Remember, an advertorial is MOSTLY valuable content, with a little bit of ad thrown in.
(Editorial + Ad = Advertorial)
You want your advertorial copy to be…
1 – Valuable
2 – Memorable
3 – Interesting to read
What you DON’T want, is to rush your prospect up the awareness scale too quickly. Otherwise they’ll throw up their “salesman alarm” and click away before they can get to the next part of your funnel.
But sometimes, it IS appropriate to mention your business name or promote your offer directly in your advertorial. (Confused yet?)
To show you the difference, here’s a real-life advertorial breakdown of how you could promote your offer directly using valuable, interesting, and memorable content.
3 replies to "Real-Life Advertorial Breakdown: How To Avoid Looking Spammy"
[…] These Breakdowns are a great way to troubleshoot the hard parts about writing pre-sale copy – like this one about how to get started writing your new advertorial, and this one about how to avoid looking ‘spammy’ […]
It strikes me the focus is to:
-Find one thing your customers want to know about (what are they searching for on Google/Bing, ASK survey responses, etc.)
-Write an article that answers that question in a valuable way…the more entertaining & funny the better, but *answer the question*…
-And the art is slipping in the text links that hook their attention and curiosity. Also maybe a gracious CTA at the end of the article. …With subtle use of all-things-persuasive in the copywriter’s toolbelt.
Great stuff, Rachel!
That’s a great approach to advertorials Mike! – and will also work to bring you long-term organic traffic if you’re doing a little on-page SEO for those search keywords.