Babes in business are often overly excited about spending money on print advertising. After all, it's fun to see your business name in print. This soon wears off, however, if they see little or no return for their hard-earned dollars.

Well, I can't give you a sure-fire way to guarantee that your advertising investment hits the jackpot, but I can give you a few simple tips in preparing an effective ad that gets off the ground.

Captain Hook – Get their attention

The first thing is to remember that your ad may be appearing on a page with a gaggle of other ads all vying for the attention of the one turning the pages. This means you need one STAND-OUT image or piece of text that immediately forces someone's brain to say: "Now, what's this all about?", "I want that feeling!", "I wish I was him/her", or "My life is worthless without that!" I call this the hook and it’s the most important part of your ad. If you don't catch the fish, you have no chance of killing, cooking and eating it.

Peter Pan – The Benefits, keep their attention

We have the reader asking, "What's in it for me?" or at least, "Why should I keep reading?" Sometimes, answering this can be done in one sentence, or a catchy slogan that communicates the main benefits. You must keep the reader interested - in a very small amount of text or they will switch off and move on. Basically, you have to fly around at amazing speed, touching briefly on the major benefits of your product or service.

Don't you dare put your company name or logo anywhere near the top of the ad. An important fact is that the reader doesn't care about you, your product, or even its specifications at this point. The reader is only interested in benefits at this stage, not the product or where they can get it.

Now, your benefits had better be fair dinkum or you will end up in court or, at the very least, put a bad taste in the customer's mouth which puts at risk any future sales from your advertising. Don’t sacrifice long term customers for short term gain.

If your benefits are identical to those of your competition, the customer is doing you a favour if they buy from you. So, add something extra that won’t break the bank, something to say thank to you the customer for buying from you. And make sure it’s not just a gimmick. You should truly be thankful that they are buying from you!

Remember, the grass is ALWAYS greener, and those other ads are still creeping into the corners of your reader's eyes. Turning over to the next page is also a temptation, so now it’s time to prove that you haven’t wasted the reader’s time.

The Crocodile – Clinching the Sale, justifying their attention

If your ad is any good, you have your hook in your reader's ribs or nose and have carried them off to Neverland with the promise of the benefits. It's time to move in for the kill (close the sale) and this requires teeth. Each tooth is a finely honed point that backs up your original promise. It should be a sharp, succinct fact or statistic that makes your pitch irresistible and your argument irrefutable - in as few words as possible, because the clock is ticking. Then you have them. There is only one more thing required.

Tinkerbell – Tell them What to Do, convert attention to action

It amazes me how many companies seem to have sent their staff on, "How to make it difficult for customers to deal with our company" courses. You should bend over backwards to make it as easy as possible to contact you or to make the purchase. Your ad needs a clear call to action that tells the prospect what to do, step by step. We all love it when someone else does the work for us, and it makes us come back again. The same applies with your ad. It should be as easy to buy from you as pointing a magic wand. This requires ‘call now!’ text and a HUGE phone number or web/email address that is so visible it almost rivals the headline, the only difference being it is at the bottom of the ad. Even your company name should be no bigger than this. POW! (little stars everywhere) they contact you - or at least you make enough impact that they contact you the next time they see one of your ads. And you will need to run your ad more than once as this is part of the process. Statistics show that a prospect usually sees an ad a number of times before they consider purchasing, and many publications offer discounts for multiple bookings.

See, your ad doesn't have to be Nanna the dog. You CAN fly!