A-List Copywriter Reveals 
Sneaky Secrets to 
Profitable “Advertorial” Format

Looks and Feels Like Editorial, Sells Like An Ad

Lincoln, NE — “If you want to make a ton of money with your advertising, start by making the attention sale,” says Roy Furr, an A-List Copywriter and direct response marketing expert.    

“You must successfully sell your prospect on paying attention to your message before you can sell them anything else.  One powerful way to do that is to first ask yourself what your audience is already paying attention to?”

The answer is not advertising — it’s editorial content.  No matter where you are, no matter the media, people pay attention to content.

This applies in traditional media, but it also applies online.  Even on social media.

Almost nobody digs into any media — online or off — looking for ads.  They’re looking for articles, blog posts, content videos, podcast episodes, and other “editorial” content.

That’s where their attention goes.  That’s what they pay attention to.

And that’s what top copywriters like Roy Furr are using to their advantage when they create “Advertorial” advertising.

If the word advertorial seems both strange and familiar, there’s a reason.  It’s a mashup of the words advertisement and editorial.  This is because a good advertorial looks and feels like the editorial content in the media in which it appears.  But underneath that editorial appearance, it’s designed to sell like an advertisement.

When you do this well, your advertorial gets all the attention of other editorial content.  Wish translates into more prospects paying attention to the pitch and selling message in your advertisement.  Then more response and sales of your product or service.

Furr explains, “It may seem like a sneaky or stealth tactic.  And on one hand it is.  But on the other hand, nobody’s responding to it without knowing it’s an ad.  And it works — extremely well.  It has for decades, if not centuries.  In medium after medium.  And there’s no reason to believe advertorials will stop working at any point in the future.”

Okay, let me break the 4th wall here…

Just in case I didn’t make it obvious enough, the “article” above isn’t a news article.

It’s a nod and hat tip to the style of a news advertorial.

That’s probably the medium where they’ve been used most.

Many of the most famous classic ads that direct response copywriters study are advertorial format, from newspaper and similar print media.

And of course, advertorials have been used in all kinds of media.

Not just other print media, like magazines.

But arguably many great infomercials are a type of advertorial.  If they come across as content, especially news content, this definitely applies.  Many local TV and radio stations even have separate studios dedicated to paid content recording, used for mixed editorial and advertising messages.

In the postal mailbox, formats like magalogs (made to look like magazines, sell like catalogs), issuelogs (look like newsletter issues), and bookalogs (look like books) are ALL advertorials.

But what about online?

OF COURSE advertorials work online!

All those “native ads” that we see around the internet, with the picture and headline?  They’re designed from the same principles as advertorials.  

And in most cases, those ad networks don’t allow you to send traffic to pages that look like obvious ads.  So the first page a visitor hits after clicking a native ad is an advertorial, too.

And online, advertorials don’t just look like news articles.  

In fact, some of the most compelling, interesting, and PROFITABLE online advertorials look a whole lot more like a personal blog post than anything else.  It might be an opinion piece.  It might be a product review.  It might be a personal narrative.  But one thing is for certain.  It looks and feels like normal online editorial content — but sells like an ad!

Heck, even video, audio, and text social media posts that look and feel like platform-native content but that are designed to inspire action?  Those are advertorials, too!  

Especially when you’re putting ad dollars behind it.  (Arguably content marketing is a form of advertorial — though it’s a gray area if you’re not putting any ad spend behind it.)

All advertorials leverage the same fundamental principles…

The #1 thing your ad needs to do, before anything else, is to get and hold the attention of your prospect.

If you don’t do that, you can’t deliver your selling message.

And if you can’t deliver your selling message, you’re not getting the dinero.

So advertorials leverage the natural desire of the audience to pay attention to what looks like news and other similar content.

They look and feel like that content.  But they’re not created by journalists or other content creators.  They’re created by copywriters.  And like any good ad, they’re not meant merely to inform, but to persuade and inspire action.

And in that regard, the average advertorial content is very different from most news or content pages on the internet.

They follow certain rules, principles, and strategies of effective copywriting — especially when it comes to deep structure.

They’re versatile, too — there are so many examples of how to use them…

If anyone would ever write a blog post or news article about your topic or industry, an advertorial can be a brilliant ad format for you.

And you’re not limited to writing directly about the product.

You can, for example, write a customer success story as an advertorial.  In fact, there’s almost no better form of advertorial than showing a customer getting the result you promise!

And here’s something you may find really cool…

You don’t even have to be the one selling the product to write the advertorial.

In fact, one of the most popular uses for advertorials is in affiliate marketing.  You write a review or article about a product.  Your links are affiliate tracking links.  And when the product sells, you get paid.

Some affiliates even create entire advertorial sites.  They sell nothing.  They look like blogs or news sites.  But they make a bunch of money by priming and pre-selling visitors before linking them through to sales pages.

Likewise, advertorials can be powerful for paid traffic online.

You send traffic to the advertorial instead of the sales page.  This can have all sorts of advantages.  It’s a way of testing different leads or copy ideas.  It’s a way of pre-selling and priming the prospect.  It can engage your prospect in powerful ways that sending them straight to the sales page doesn’t.

Like I said, they’re versatile, and there are many places to use them!

Which all begs the question…

If you want to know how to write an advertorial…

You could, of course, practice, practice, practice.  And figure it out as you go.

And yet, I’ve had copywriters think they were 95% of the way done with an advertorial when they bring it to me for a copy review…

Only to have to basically have to start over because they missed some core principle behind what makes a good advertorial work so well.

So…

I’m teaching the principles and secrets to effective advertorial copywriting, in this appropriately titled Advertorial Copywriting training!

You’ll learn the mindset, the structure, the secrets to making them work.  You’ll learn what you want to do if you’re using them for online marketing or in offline media.

Plus, I’ll share quite a few examples of good advertorials.  Some examples I’ve found in the wild today, some classic examples, and some in between!

By the end, you’ll have shortcutted your advertorial education by months or even years, and countless hours of practice.

Here’s how you get access to
Advertorial Copywriting

Advertorial Copywriting: How to write this powerful marketing format, with examples! is the March 2023 Monthly Insiders Call for BTMSinsiders members.

This exclusive benefit of membership — included as part of the BTMSinsiders All-Access Pass — allows you to participate in the training live, plus gives you access to all past Insiders Calls recordings.