Welcome to the latest edition of our current weekly blog series, How to Ruin an Ad. As is most obvious from the title of this series, each week we’ll be identifying a key element of an ad that, when missing, is sure to reduce its effectiveness.

Last week’s ad was ruined by not measuring performance.

Today’s ad is ruined by: Not Testing It

Sometimes proofing alone is not enough. Some ads require you to follow through and take some sort of action.

If you are producing an ad with a call to action, the best thing you can do before the ad is finalized and public, is to test out that call to action yourself.

That might mean dialing a phone number to make sure the right person opens it. That might mean clicking on a link to make sure the right page opens.

Make sure your measurement tools are working correctly, and that your potential customers will have the best possible experience, the one that you intended for them.

Too many good ads go unsuccessful due to error pages, bad phone numbers, incompatibility issues on mobile or with some browsers, etc. This is easily avoided with some quality assurance testing. Test every ad before it goes out, or before it goes live. Doing so might cost you a little time, but it will save you money and embarrassment that comes with public advertising mistakes.

Did you enjoy this post? Do you have a surefire way to ruin an ad you think we should cover in an upcoming post? Share it with us in the comments or by email.