A Thread by Lee Duncan

Lee Duncan

4y ago

Author of Double Your Business from Financial Times Publishing. I write about the mindset and methods to grow businesses from ~£100k to £2-£5m.

🙅‍♂️ Small business advertising sucks.

I’m the author of Double Your Business from Financial Times Publishing.

Here are 6 big failures of small biz ads, and tips to fix them 👇

Failure #1: Putting your business or product name in the biggest letters.

The top of your advert is for a headline.

Here are 10 formulas to write terrific headlines:

Failure #2: Losing them by being boring.

Make an effort to keep your readers with a powerful start to your post.

Make it impossible for them to tear their eyes away from your ads:

Failure #3: Writing like an engineer.

The jargon of your industry is a foreign language to your customers.

Keep your sprockets ⚙️ and limited split diffs 🛠 to yourself.

Here’s how to simplify your writing without losing credibility

Failure #4: Not listing the benefits of your product.

Nobody wants to buy a drill, they want to make holes.

✅ Benefits are the reasons people buy.

The better they are, the more you sell.

Explain them in the most powerful way possible:

Failure #5: Not answering all their questions.

Your customers have lots of questions before they’re ready to buy.

Learn some of the best from a Brazilian who sold over $170m with his writing:

Failure #6: Diabolical (or Missing) Call To Action:

The purpose of every advert is to move the reader closer to becoming a customer...

TL;DR - 6 tips that will change the way you write ads for your local business

• Write a headline, not your company name

• Start off interesting

• Use plain language

• Give reasons to buy

• Answer all their questions

If you found this thread valuable:

1. Follow @Lee_Duncan for more threads on making your local business grow

2. Here’s another useful post about getting the most out of your staff as a local business owner: https://twitter.com/Lee_Duncan/status/1522537031926259712