What’s the real measure of an effective advertisement? While we can come up with many possible characteristics, only one stands out as indisputable – a good advertisements gets the reader to buy.

There are many approaches you can take to write an advertisement that successfully sells. However, these five tips are make up the most basic concepts and serve as a good starting point if you’re at a loss about where to begin.

1. Use Short Sentences

Unlike articles or other types of content, people will often glance upon ads before turning their attention elsewhere. As such, advertisements don’t benefit from long strings of words. Instead, they achieve their best results when written short, fast and to the point.

2. Focus On Benefits

Since you only have a few seconds to make a case for your product, you should spend that time letting them know how your product will be of value to them. Focus on benefits instead of anything else to make the most use of your available opportunity.

3. Vary Your Sentence Structures

Creativity, while difficult to incorporate in such a short copy as an advertisement, sets most good ads apart from ineffective ones. Don’t be afraid to experiment. The more creative your ad is, the more interesting consumers are likely to find it.

4. Close It With A Call-To-Action

Whether you want people to “Buy Now”, “Send In The Coupon Today” or “Click Here”, always close your ads by directing the audience to the appropriate next step. Nothing’s worse than an audience who fell in love with your product but has no idea how to proceed.

5. Keep Your Ad Error-Free

Make sure to walk through your ad to check for factual errors and run it through an English writing software to make sure it’s free from typical grammar mistakes. The last thing you want is for the audience to ridicule your ad for poor writing – it will reflect terribly on both your product and your company.

If you write for a living, much of your income will eventually hinge, at least in part, on how quickly you can put your words to paper. Writing fast will allow you to tackle more tasks, hopefully allowing you to earn more in the process.

Barring physical elements such as typing speed, writing faster often comes down to preparation, focus and taking advantage of available technology. At its most basic, look towards the following things while you get your work of writing done:

Are your research sources already at hand?

Whether you’re using a book, a magazine, an interview transcript or several websites as your sources, make sure to collect your notes before even beginning to write. The last thing you want to do is turn a book several times over while in the process of writing – it breaks your flow and can extend the actual length of time you write indefinitely.

Have you set your writing goals for the day?

Setting a goal that you need to accomplish within the day and sticking to them is a discipline that prolific writers have been able to develop. Even when you’re feeling distracted or out of tune, trudging through those negative feelings to get the necessary work done will serve you well as you continue to develop the habit. This type of focus, regardless of what’s going around you, will ensure that you finish your tasks without wasting time.

Do you use technology to your advantage?

Plenty of software applications available today are designed to help writers get their work done faster. Typing Expanders, for instance, allow you to type a short string to automatically display commonly-used phrases. English writing software, on the other hand, take your haphazardly done text and look for immediate ways to improve it, often facilitating enough modifications that a second rewriting is no longer necessary.