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 fulfilling a promise.

Today’s ad is ruined by: Not Proofing

Nothing helps your brand lose credibility quicker than a typo in your ad. And believe it or not, it happens more often than you think.

You would think that most companies have enough people looking at every ad before it goes out for this to be a non-issue. After all, you’re spending money to show the ad to potential customers, sometimes a lot of money. So wouldn’t you go to great lengths not to make such a basic mistake?

You should. Even if you work for a small company, make sure you have at least two or three people who did not create the ad look at it before it goes out. Make people go out of their way to find things that are wrong with it.

Is everything spelled correctly? Is the punctuation correct? Do our sentences and headlines make sense? What about phone numbers and URLs?

Don’t kill your ad’s effectiveness by forgetting to proofread.

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.