Print trade advertising is starting to rebound after years of decline, as more and more marketers realize that direct mail and email have buit-in limitations. To be successful, business-to-business advertising needs to be sharper and more original than ever before. It’s simply too expensive to settle for less. Here are 20 tips to make sure your next ad measures up.

1. Your ad should be about your customer. Too many ads talk too much about a product or a company or a service, and not enough about why the reader should care.


2. Your ad should have a single focus. There is the temptation to include “supporting” features and benefits as copy points. This dilutes both your message and your memorability.


3. The best advertising concepts are visual. People scan before they read. If you don’t catch them when they’re scanning, you won’t catch them at all.


4. Visuals that must be read are confusing. Phrases do not improve your ad because they are written on a prescription pad, computer monitor, calendar, or traffic sign. At any rate, if your visual demands reading, whatever writing it has should serve as the headline. Having a typeset headline and a legible visual is confusing.


5. Your best tool is empathy. It is tempting to affect a sophomoric breeziness toward the sufferings that afflict your customers. They are not amused. Hemorrhoids hurt like Hell.


6. An ad must attract, intrigue, and persuade. Attract with the visual or the design, intrigue with the headline or the concept, and persuade with the copy. If your ad fails to attract, it is ignored. If your ad fails to intrigue, it is glanced at, then ignored. If your ad fails to persuade, it is noticed, read, then ignored. Advertising may be many things, but it must not be ignored.


7. If your headline can be used for a different product, but is still clever, it is probably word play. This can work if it’s relevant and fresh. Usually, however, word play is too clever and not nearly relevant enough or fresh enough. Another tip-off that a headline might be word play is that it works without a visual.


8. It’s okay to be pragmatic. If the offer is 50% off room nights booked between now and December 30, then there is nothing wrong with a headline that reads: “Save 50% on room nights until December 30.” 


9. Writing should be energetic, intelligent, and honest. You cannot bore someone into a purchase any more than you can dumb someone into one. You can cheat someone into a purchase, but that is poor marketing.


10. Racism, sexism, and other us-against-them motifs are not funny. It is no more acceptable to poke fun at a middle-aged white man than it is to poke fun at a young black lesbian. It makes no difference that you, personally, are either a middle-aged white man or a young black lesbian. In fact, it’s questionable whether poking fun at anybody helps sell anything.


11. There is a difference between race and racism, sex and sexism. It is foolish, for example, to make a pantyhose ad gender-neutral. Be aware of cases in which neutering the character of your copy will degrade its effectiveness.


12. Copy points should be supported. “It’s portable” should be something like “You can slip it into your shirt pocket” or “You can move four with a full-sized pick-up truck.” Similarly, “It’s affordable” should be clarified.


13. Don’t weasel. If you must qualify a point, either qualify it as little as possible or spell out the specific qualifications. “Compatible with almost every popular operating system currently available” should become: “Compatible with most operating systems” or, preferably: “Compatible with Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, and NT 4.0.”


14. Characteristics, features, or benefits should not be brought into things indirectly. There are always more facts than you have room for. The desire to state every point leads to unsupported odds and ends drifting into your copy. “A tasty treat that’s high in calcium and vitamin D, for healthy bones.” If good taste is important, then it deserves individual attention. If it's not important, then cut it.


15. There is a tendency to string adjectives (and other parts of speech) together in threes. “Delicious, nutritious, and fun-to-eat.” “Luxury, performance, and style.” Some times this word trio has rhythm. Other times, consider that each point probably deserves its own explanation.


16. The following phrases are fluff, and the more of them you can edit out the better: “as a matter of fact,” “in fact,” “for instance,” “contrary to,” “furthermore,” “in addition,” and “not just (whatever) but (whatever else).”


17. Puns should be exceptionally good or horrifically bad. Or deleted.


18. So far as possible, make your copy grammatical – but don’t be fussy about it. Verb agreement and tense agreement are two common errors that should be corrected. Beginning a sentence with “and” is questionable.


19. Copywriters have an affection for the clever last line. If it works gracefully, and if it is relevant, then it is a small reward to your audience for completing its task. Often, though, a clever last line is nothing more than the copywriter showing off. Not every ad needs a clever last line, any more than every animal needs horns. A call to action makes an effective last line.


20. It takes about 15 seconds to pick up the phone and check whether or not that phone number works. Do it.