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How To Write Ad Copy

Try dulling the senses of your prospects with some bad business writing.

It's easy. Whether you're writing sales letters, brochures or web copy, all you have to do is follow 10 simple steps to mediocrity:

1. Include a lengthy mission statement. People are bored with this and they'll never read it. They know that 90 percent of all mission statements are nothing but universally held goals (helping customers, providing excellent service), clothed in pomposity and corporate-speak. "We want to maximize our client's experience with our products so that they can better utilize … blah, blah, blah." Besides, no one really cares about a company's mission. Usually, they just want to know if they can get quality products and services at an affordable price -- period.

2. Include a long history of the company. Yes, you want prospects to know that you're not some fly-by-night outfit that's here today, gone tomorrow. Good copy can include a simple reference like "20 years of providing the best in …" But forgettable copy talks on and on about how the business got started, how the company's patriarch held to solid values of a bygone generation, etc., etc.

3. Include a lot of jargon and corporate-speak. Throw around ponderous words like utilize, maximize, facilitate, actionable – all words that no rational human uses in conversation. Your readers will yawn and forget your copy as soon as they put it down.

4. Load up on adjectives. People like to read tight writing. To craft forgettable copy, therefore, your prose should be a machine with many unnecessary parts. Every noun should have adjectives clumped to it like barnacles on a ship's hull. Make everything "one of a kind," "never-before seen," "exciting," "robust," dynamic. You get the picture. The absolutely crystal-clear, unmistakable picture.

5. Write in passive voice as often as possible. For the dullest, most stupefying copy, always write in passive voice. In case you don't know what passive voice is, consider the following sentences:

The boy hit the baseball.
The baseball was hit by the boy.

The first sentence is active voice. It creates a clear mental picture. You can almost see the kid bringing his Louisville Slugger around to meet the ball. The second is passive voice. Because the "doer" (in this case, the boy) isn't the subject of the sentence (the baseball is), your mental picture is not nearly as vivid. Active voice describes somebody doing something – "Our company manufactures alarm systems." Passive voice describes something having something done to it – "Alarm systems are manufactured by our company."

The best part is that you don't even have to practice this. Most people naturally write in passive voice. Forgettable copy is, therefore, intuitive.

6. Omit a call to action. After all, your copy is designed only to take up people's time, not to actually get them to do something. Forgettable copy should merely state facts about the company, its products and its services. You should avoid the use of call now, contact us today for a free offer, or similar persuasive phrases. Otherwise, people might buy.

7. Write long. Whether it's a sales letter or a brochure, people appreciate brevity. Look at your own reading habits. On the newspaper's editorial page, are you more apt to read the long letters or the short ones? Business writing is no different. So to craft bad copy that will make little impact, drone on … and on and on and on. Write two- and three-page sales letters if necessary. Keep it interminable.

8. Avoid humanity. For forgettable copy, strip everything from it that leaves a sense of one human speaking to another. You should strive to write as if you were your company's computer. That means no personal notes, no humor, no warmth. Keep it sterile and overly formal.

9. Include misspellings and grammatical errors. Copy that uses poor English and contains errors says something about your company. It conveys that you're less than scrupulous in your attention to detail. Copy blighted with errors is the ultimate in bad writing. If that's what you want, send your proofreader packing and turn off the spell checker.

10. Don't communicate clearly. Leave your reader with the question, What was that all about? Bad writing keeps clarity at bay. Its job is to obfuscate, not communicate. So make sure the waters stay as muddy as possible.

Do these things and you'll succeed in the art of crafting forgettable business copy. Do the opposite and – well, there's no telling what might happen. You might write copy that gets results.

But that's probably what you really want, isn't it?

bio: Steve Jones is a business writer and a former newspaper editor living in the Atlanta area.

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