If you are advertising your dealership on television, you are likely more successful than the car stores in your market who are not using TV. There is no better advertising medium for selling automobiles than television. But, before you call the production crew to shoot your store and prior to calling the media rep or your ad agency to place the buy, first you will need to craft a script for the commercial. Here are tips my ad agency copywriters use for developing car ads.

First, you need to determine what you are trying to sell. You must be clear in your message, or the consumer will easily get confused and not respond. Your message must be delivered in just 30 seconds, so you must get right to the point to convey your idea. Select a car you wish to promote. Make a list of all the features for that vehicle, and then turn those features into benefits for the car buyer. Once you’ve listed all the benefits, narrow this list down to 2 or 3 of the most salient selling points and then create a unique selling proposition for that vehicle.

The beauty of television is you have the ability to capture your audience through two senses - sight and sound. Unlike radio where you must convince a prospect with just audio, television allows the prospect to connect the product with the incentive.

Make your commercial message entertaining and develop a memorable tag line, get yourself a jingle to enhance memorbility. I like a little humor in spots now and then, but don’t try and get too cute and miss the whole point of the message.

Keep your message truthful. Don't over promise. Don’t tell consumers they can get payments as lows as $99 a month, with no money down and not deliver. Customers are tired of being misled. Make it real. Always include a call to action. Call now – Visit our website -Come to the dealership – Offer ends Monday.

After writing your script, read it out loud, as the announcer would. Make sure it all makes sense and then polish. I often spend more time in polishing up a script than the actual first draft. Look at all your words and make sure each word really means something. You’ll be amazed how useless words you can eliminate from a script only to add more important selling points.

Test the commercial before you run it. Read it for others in your store and ask them if they understand what you are attempting to accomplish. Many times you will talk to five different people and each will get something different from the message. That means you need to be clearer on what you are trying to convey.

Television advertising can make a considerable dent in your advertising budget and can many times make or break a good selling month. Remember, it all starts with the script. Make sure you have a script that does the most important things in the car business – SELL CARS.