Be An Ad Copy Cannibal!
It's easy and leaves a good taste in your mouth!

This article discusses my own technique for creating an advertising database using Email, Newsletters, Spam and Web Site Ads!

In Marketing one of the more popular sayings you hear about selling a product is, "You don't need to reinvent the wheel". This holds true for much of your ad writing as well. No, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. All you really need to do is rotate the tires and clean them up, for a smart, new look.

I probably receive nearly 500-600 emails every day in my combined email accounts. 80% to 90% of these of course are junk mail, bulk mail or the dreaded "SPAM". The rest are newsletters, business and personal mail. Most people I know delete bulk mail without ever looking at it. That's what I did for quite a while, until I finally decided that I might as well make use of this bombardment of email harrassment.

As an ad/copy writer I often am called upon to literally spit out short copy upon demand. As a busy entrepreneur my time is of great value to me. If there is any way I can lessen my writing time (without affecting the quality), all the better. My Brainstorm? Save all these ads in a database so I can easily refer back to them for ad/copy writing inspirations.

I began saving any advertising that I felt was not total trash or stupidity (which seems to run amok on the Internet). It doesn't really take long. If you're not already proficient at copy/paste you soon will be.

You can use simple text or word editing software or better yet, set yourself up an Excel file for this archiving procedure. With the Excel you can use advanced sorting and filtering techniques. Being a true programmer at heart, I decided to write a little perl/cgi program, which enables me to do searches by keywords and displays headlines and/or the entire ad.

Also using my program allows me the privilege of seeing all the ads or headlines in one long list, rather than hopping from one to the next in a text editor. This makes it much easier to copy and paste the material I like and then turn it into my very own creation.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with email filters and you probably use them to delete much of the spam off of your mail server or dump it into the trash bin before you ever see it. I use the same filtering technique, but only after (and if it's worthy) I save the ad to my trusty little database. I keep a small browser window open for this that has two fields. One for the headline and the other for the entire ad. If I have time at the moment, I enter the email and spam ads as I go along, then add them to my "delete-that-sucker" filter so I don't ever have to see them again. What's nice about the email ads and spam is that quite a bit of the time the subject line is your headline.

When I'm saving my ads, I save the headline only and the entire ad. This gives me the choice of searching and viewing just headlines or both the headline and the entire ad. Why save the headline separate? When writing any copy, I always start and end with my headline. The headline is the draw and must be the most important part when writing ad copy. If your headline stinks, it really doesn't matter how good your ad copy is. Chances are no one is reading it. Another reason for cruising headline material is that quite often I am looking for nice little catchphrases for web site marketing. As I said before, my time is valuable to me, as I'm sure yours is to you. You would be surprised how much time you can save by having a database of ads and headlines at your disposal.

When I need to write copy, I begin by picking several keywords that fit the type of material I am looking for. I do a search of headlines. I have my program set up to give me all the matching material on one page. This makes my Search & Scroll mission easier. When I'm searching for headlines the first thing I usually do is scroll down through the output and see what jumps out and grabs me. I save these headlines if they are applicable at all to the job at hand.

Web Sites, especially the more professional Affiliate Programs and MLM pages offer a well spring of copy. You can never have too much material for ideas. And believe me a lot of the Affiliate Areas are full of great copy material.

I was once asked if there was a copyright issue involved with my techniques. Remember I said you need to rotate and clean up those tires. I would never suggest to anyone that you sit down and use another writer's copy word for word. Although copyright issues for most internet advertising (most, not all), would be a hard issue to prove, common courtesy demands that you use this for technique for inspiration and ideas, not plagiarism. This is why I refer to it as "Cannibalizing". When I write an add, I may tear apart 5 or 10 different ads until I get exactly what I want and you certainly couldn't compare it in any way to the source.

Respect others work as well as your own!

Best to you in your Marketing Ad-Ventures! "Wild Bill"

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