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The secret of Adwords Copy Writing
As you progress in your Google Adwords efforts,
sooner or later you run into this- no matter how
great your keyword choices are, unless you can
make good ads your campaign is dead in the water.
What is the secret of a good Adwords ad? Read on
and find out.
The biggest problem you face is that Google considers
a "good" ad to just be one that gets clicked on
the most, but you need an ad that is going
to bring people to your site that are actually
real customers, and not freebie seekers,
if you are going to actually make some profit.
That is one of the hardest things about Adwords,
it is actually a delicate balance between ads that
get clicked on a lot, that Google considers "relevant"
and the ads that have the highest possible return for your
advertising dollar, which are often not the same thing.
This article is going to present a few ideas starting
at the basic level, and then continue with some pro
refinements to add to your Adwords campaigns.
GETTING TO SQUARE ONE WITH GOOGLE
A lot of marketing of anything is like a funnel:
At the biggest end of the funnel you need a lot
of people that are coming into your store.
Not all of those people are going to become customers
but your advertising has brought them in, so they
are mildly interested in what you have to offer, and
they are willing to take advantage of free information
and learn a little bit more. They are easily turned off.
A certain percentage of those people above will be
willing to take your free pamphlet, or give you their
email address to sign up for your free newsletter or
download something that they think will help them
learn more.
A certain percentage of THOSE will call, contact a salesperson
or if it is a small item, buy it right there.
An even smaller percentage will become your customers,
and if you do a good job, become your lifeling customers, and
buy more products from you.
These percentages make or break your business,
regardless of what you are selling.
How does this relate to Adwords? Your Adwords
strategy should mirror your marketing strategy
for your entire business, with a couple of
added tweaks.
The first thing we are going to do is, for the people
that are frustrated with their Adwords campaign,
getting words inactive or disabled and not being
able to really get the campaign off the ground, we
are going to build the first part of your marketing
funnel, which oddly enough is exactly what
Google wants you to do!
What Google wants is relevant search results.
This probably won't ever change, and hasn't
changed in at least 5 years now. If you can
deliver an ad that delivers relevant content
to what a person is searching for and offers the
solution to that problem as a benefit statement, you have
won half the battle right there.
There is more to this than you think, and tapping into
this Adwords secret is actually a major marketing
secret, if you can do it. Some people can't.
What you need to do is...(drumroll please)
PUT YOURSELF IN SOMEONE ELSES SHOES.
Can you do this for real? If you are in an argument
with your wife can you stop and look at everything
exactly like she would? Can you look at the world
the same way the mechanic does who fixes your
car? If your kid wants candy, can you actually look
at the world like your kid would?
If you can, you have mastered the ultimate
Adwords copy writing secret, and the secret of
master marketers.
Or to say it a different way, its not about YOU,
its about THEM
Here is how to use this secret in Adwords, and why you
need to use it to the hilt:
When people search for something on the internet,
they never go with the intention of buying something,
they go to research and find out about things, and
they usually want their information FREE.
They came to the search engine in the first place
because they wanted to solve a problem. Find
out what that problem is, and give them the solution
to that problem AS A BENEFIT STATEMENT and
you will kill most of the other Adwords advertisors
out there in your market.
The key, the mantra from Google is relevance.
The key for you, is relevance, and what problem
are they trying to solve with doing that search.
Lets say someone is searching for "cheap
childrens shoes"
That problem is obvious-the person wants some shoes for their kids,
and doesn't want to pay a lot for them.
Ok Sherlock, now answer these questions:
Is the searcher a man or a woman?
How old is the searcher?
What is their economic status?
What kind of house do they live in?
What kind of computer are they probably using?
Are they a Democrat, Republican, or Other?
You are right- You don't know. But there are
some statistical probablilties if you are in
the US.
There is a very high probability that it will
be a woman, who is internet saavy, and there
is a good chance that her household actually
has some good disposable income. In other
words, she may not consider herself rich,
but she is definately not poor, and probably
considers herself a smart shopper as well.
So this ad should be written to HER if possible.
Just for fun, I went to Google, searched for cheap childrens shoes,
and I found the following ads. Here they are, in order:
Kids Clothing
OldNavy.com Summer's Must-Have Styles For Kids- Old Navy - Fun, Fashion
& Value
Children's Shoes
www.angelcovers.org Sandals that are fun for kids! The squeaks are a
great parental aid.
Those were on top of the page, we would consider those positions 1 and
2.
Here are the ones on the right side of the page in positions 3-10:
cheap kids shoes
Over 300 shoe brands.
365 day return policy at Zappos.
www.zappos.com
Kid's Shoes at Shoebuy
Free Shipping. No Tax. All Sizes.
Plus Free Returns & Great Savings.
www.shoebuy.com
Kid's Shoes
Learn About ReNForce Sneakers -
Durable Shoes for Your Active Son!
www.NewBalance.com
Children's Footwear
Find the Latest Styles for Children
At Affordable Prices - Shop Online!
www.JCPenney.com
Compare Prices at BizRate
Bargain Prices.
You want it, we got it!
BizRate.com
Find Shoes at Shoes.com
Shop Over 200 Brands at Shoes.com
Free Shipping, Free Returns, No Tax
www.Shoes.com
Save on Discount Shoes
Save 35-70% on Discount shoes.
Web Only Sale-20% off select items
www.SierraTradingPost.com
Sandals - Free Shipping
Your online shoe source
Free Returns & 110% price match
www.shoedini.com
Which ads were best? It depends.
The ultimate test is to do this same search
3 months from now and see who is still
there. That is the ultimate test of
what is "best".
One thing is that the ads that are listed
on the top of the actual search results
have to have a minimum click through
rate that is pretty high, in order to be
featured there, and a pretty high cost
per click, which is why you will often
find big lazy corporations in the top spots.
They just pay for the number one spot, and
in most cases that's just the way it is. Just
try to outspend them. You can't.
So in this case if you have a small shoe
store, forget about trying to compete with
Old Navy. That won't happen.
As you look over the ads, you find a
couple sandal manufactures, a shopping
comparison site with a kind of generic ad,
a shoe manufacturer, another major retailer,
JC pennys, and a couple sites that seem to have
exactly what the searcher is looking for,
lots of shoes at discounted prices.
So what copy would get you to click on these ads?
Here's the benefits, extracted out of all these ads:
*Discounts
*Fun
*Huge Selection
*Return Policy
*Lowest Price Guarantee
*Desireable Styles (only in the old navy ad)
*No tax
Note that if you have done your market research,
( Check out
http://www.dataresourceconsulting.com/marketing-surveys.htm
for how to do this )You should know what the
most important concerns are for your customers.
The only way to know for sure is to ASK THEM.
If you don't know the key benefits your target
market is seeking, or what the key problems
or concerns they are facing, you can't write
an effective ad. For the purposes of this article
we will just use these benefits above and assume
they are correct.This might not be the case, and
out of all these benefits only one or two will be
the most important, but just be aware that market
research fits in right here and is very important.
For now, we will just assume that our market
research shows that shoe shoppers want low prices,
great desireable styles, an easy return policy, lots of shoes
in stock, and lets add fast shipping to that list for fun.
Remember all we want to do at this first level
for you, the frustrated advertiser is make an ad
that people will click on, so that your advertising
program won't be constantly disabled by Google
and you can actually start getting some visitors
to your site.
What is the weapon? Lets stay with relevance
first. One of the other advantages of relevance
is that if you use the keywords in your ad that
the user types in, Google automatically makes
them bold by default. So you can get a bold
ad for the same price as a regular ad, just by
making it more relevant.
This helps you, especially in the title.
Not one advertisor here actually used the
actual search phrase in the title. So lets
use that to our advantage. Here's a first try:
Cheap Childrens Shoes
Childrens Shoes-Cheap Prices, Major
Brands, With Free, Fast Shipping!
www.mysite.com/discount
In this ad, the title and most of the first line
would be bold, which will help us. Also we
are tweaking the display url, and using that
as an additional, subtle benefit.
Here's another idea:
Cheap Fun Childrens Shoes
Thousands of Name Brand Discounted
Shoes, Shipped Fast with One Click!
www.mysite.com/freeship
This one does the same thing, but
emphases convenience and instant
gratification, something that works in lots of
industries and something that internet surfers
are notorius for demanding.
Like anything else, you have to try
a few variations. I have no idea how
well these ads would do, and I have
no affilation with any online shoe store
or company, this is just based on
a 30 second quick look of one search, but
It is a decent first stab at it.
Now that we have conquered relevance,
lets take the next step:
DON"T BE CHEAP
When you have a couple ads that you
want to test that you think are pretty relevant
to the keywords, and you have the first
ads to test, start out by bidding high enough
to get your ads in the first 4 positions.
Make your budget enough that you will
be one of the first ads that people see,
so you can be fair about how it performs.
If you start off with the idea, "well I can
only afford 30 cents a click" you have already
lost the game.
You might have a great ad, but if you bury
it on the second page of search results
you are going to have more automatic
software visiting your ad than actual searchers,
and your click through rate will be abysmal.
If your budget isn't high enough your ad just
won't be shown enough for you to be able
to tell how good it is. You need at least 200-400
impressions (times your ad was shown) for even the
smallest test and the smallest budget, and Ideally all done
the same day, or you will drive yourself nuts.
Once you have tested your ad, either it will
have a better than .5 Click through Rate
(this means one out of every 200 people clicks on the ad) or it wont.
If it does, you can then optimize the
price. If it doesn't, keep testing new ads
until you can get something that works.
Once you get your ad with at least a .5
click through rate you can then move onto
more advanced concepts, including optimizing the price.
Free Resource to learn more about Adwords
copywriting:
Try the Adwords podcast at
http://www.aardvarkabductions.com/
There is a free one hour mp3 all about Adwords copywriting
that you can listen to, with several leading copywriters
This article ended up being a little longer than I planned, and is a
little
bit to digest in one sitting, so I am going to quit here, and save the
optimization techniques for a second article.
Here's to beating the system and cracking the Google Adwords code!
Submitted by steveblom on Wed, 2005-07-13 17:49.
adwords account management | Adwords Tips and Tricks | mastering google adwords
Beating Google's Adwords Rotation System
-Advanced Technique
I admit this is a little geeky and more of a pro level thing for people
that have NO LIFE and are WAY too into adwords, but the potential
is pretty huge, so here it goes:
I have been noticing the same pattern over and over again in the last
several months with almost every new ad group started, in many
different industries.
Google's Adwords rotation system, while I do not know the
exact algorithm, works something like this:
When you load all your keywords and ads and launch your ad group for the first time,
Google assumes a 1% CTR until proven otherwise in the beginning, then tries out your
first few keywords. How many it tries out depends on a few factors, like your overall
account performance, your daily ad spend, your industry, and a few other factors,
but in a typical small account maybe your first 4 or 5 keywords just go right in, with
normal delivery, just enough so Google can determine if you know what you are doing.
Those first few keywords either do well, or they don't.
If they do well, Google moves on
and rotates new keywords in, one at a time.
If those keywords also do well, everything
is great. If they don't do well,
or there aren't a lot of impressions, the ad group starts
having the delivery slowed.
As each new word that has 0 impressions or does poorly,
the position of your ads
goes lower, the clicks get more expensive, and the whole ad
group is slowed in its
number of impressions overall.
If you delete the poorly performing
keywords, it takes a while, but then
that ad group "builds up steam" again.
Lets look at
a typical scenario. Here you start your ad group and it starts out fine:
Next, you add in another keyword, but it doesn't go as well. Notice that the
delivery is still ok though:
It is at this point that google starts rotating in the next keyword that you are getting
into trouble, because according to Google, the CTR is ZERO. So, google still rotates in
the next keyword giving you the benefit of the doubt, but then look what happens:
Even though you tried to pay 5 cents MORE, your position goes down quite a bit.
There could be a lot of theories as to why this is, but a good guess is that the
algorithm has calculated the CTR from all the keywords so far, and the ZERO you
just got, hurt you a bit.
Regardless, I have seen this pattern over and over again. If you have a loser
keyword in there, or several, Google starts slowing you down and making it
even harder to get clicks. Notice what happens now:
As you add more loser keywords, or keywords that don't get a lot of impressions,
your whole ad group starts losing steam, and your delivery and impressions just
keep slowing down.
Now in this case I am assuming that you are using relevant keywords and these
keywords are related in concept, and you are targeting correctly, and you have some
decent ads.
So what do you do about this?
There are a few options:
- Rotate your keywords putting your best foot forward, and once you have some
data about the performance, arrange them so that the first 5 or 6 in the ad group
are good performing keywords. You can always chose "edit keywords" and change
the order in which your keywords appear
- Nuke keywords that don't get any impressions or clicks for 30 days.
- Nuke keywords fast that aren't performing, and target your ads better.
Hope this helps, remember you're only as good as your last ad group!
Submitted by steveblom on Fri, 2005-06-17 20:30.
Adwords Tips and Tricks | Keyword Research | mastering google adwords
The myth about needing millions of keywords
There are many myths about Adwords floating
around on the internet.
One of them is that you can have huge keyword
lists of thousands of keywords and get thousands
of visitors for very little cost.
Like meta tags, this was actually true and good advice at
one time, but it is no longer true, even though it is repeated
often by people who actually haven't done Adwords
for real.
Submitted by steveblom on Tue, 2005-06-14 18:25.
adwords copy writing | Adwords Tips and Tricks | mastering google adwords
Some Amazing Adwords Copy Writing Secrets
Ok, here's some copy writing tips:
I don't have any problem with Click Through Rate in most industries. My ads kill.
But, the rubber really hits the road when you try to teach this stuff to someone else. Its not enough to write great ads, or I would be doing this for the rest of my life, and that's not my job. My job is successful e-businesses. So in an effort to teach people how to make good Adwords campaigns, the first step was to just get multiple people making ads and to hire professional copywriters. That worked like a bomb. But, if you are the only copywriter, kind of lonely, looking at the adwords computer screen, what do you do?
First get your friends to help you. Anything you can do to get more people making ads besides yourself will pay off in spades. Have your friend make one ad in each of your ad groups, and then you make one, and test them against each other. See what happens. You might be surprised.
What else can you do after that? Well now we have to get into Adwords Copywriting.
There are always lessons to be learned from the old time direct marketing guys. Before there was an internet, people have had to solve the problem of how to write copy that would get people to respond, No matter the medium, people either respond to advertising or they don't. There is only one way to find out. TEST.
Fortunately, we have almost a hundred years of copy and tests done by people who have devoted their lives to this subject. One in particular, named John Caples had a 49 year career as a copywriter, never doing any else but write copy. 60 years later, his methods are still being used. There is no better testament to his effectiveness as a copywriter than that.
Adwords ads, while being different than classified ads are similar in that there is a limited amount of space. Some people even look at them as search results, which is what Google really wants. That's why there are all these restrictions on what you can or can't say in Google ads. But some of the same problems and solutions apply to these ads, as they do in classified ads. And for that, we can tap into a wealth of experience and knowledge from the direct marketing masters.
Lets take the headline first. If people don't read your headline, it doesn't matter how brilliant the rest of your copy is, because people that don't read the headline will not read anything further. There is a split second where people are glancing at the page. Some headlines catch their eye, others don't. Why?
According to Caples, headlines that people actually READ (as opposed to headlines that are clever, or that advertising agencies like, or that clients or even copy writers think are good) Contain 4 important elements in approximate order of importance:
- Self Interest
- News
- Curiosity
- Quick, easy way
By self interest we mean not how great you think your product is, but what is in it for your customer. Cory Rudl used to always put it like "What's in it for me?" and that is the key thing. So the first rule is that a headline like "Our most amazing car is now available that goes 100 miles an hour" while having a "benefit statement" really is written from the point of view of the advertisor, not what is in it for the reader. "What is in it for me is actually missing.
"Zoom at over 100 MPH" is a much better subtle restatement of this headline.
I will continue this thread on Adwords copywriting in my next post.
Submitted by steveblom on Mon, 2005-06-06 20:51.
adwords experts | Adwords Marketing | Adwords Tips and Tricks | mastering google adwords
ANALYSIS OF A FAILING ADWORDS ACCOUNT
Ok this is going to be a little fun, and a little brutal at the same time.
This will illustrate the process of analyzing an account that is in pretty bad shape. I would consider over a million impressions with a clickthrough rate of almost ZERO to be in pretty bad shape.
Let's take a look:
When we log into the account, this is what we find:
Ok, with a 0% click through rate we have nowhere to go but up, lets see why this campaign is performing so poorly. As a side note, it is not smart to be using the Google tool to monitor those conversions, even though it is free. Get a real 3rd party tracker. Google representatives have admitted that this data is used in certain decisions Google has to make about the adwords program, and it is not smart to "open your books" to Google in this way. Ok lets look a little closer and see what we can find:
Notice two things- There are NO negative keywords at all, so there is no way to filter out bad or poorly performing traffic, or just plain searchers that are really not looking for a debt consolidation service that this company offers. That is the first thing, The second thing is that there are no sites listed to NOT be shown in the content network. In taking an account that is in trouble, its best to just shut of the content network completely while you work with your ROI on Google only for a little while, because almost every other option including the search network gives you worse quality traffic. So to stop the leakage, that is the first thing to do.
Lets move on a little bit more:
Just as expected, the content network is performing poorly as you can see here. The other thing to notice, which isn't obvious in this picture above, is that there is only ONE campaign and ONE ad group in the whole account. It is very hard to target your ads this way and get a good a good click through rate, which is the chief thing you need in order to reduce your cost.
The other thing that should be noticed is that they are paying a premium price on the content network traffic. The content network hack as described elsewhere in this blog should be employed, so that they can reduce their content network costs, but right now they should nuke it until the account can get under control. So far, here are the immediate steps to do:
- Pause the whole account and lets do some operating
- Nuke the content network from the one poorly performing campaign. Consider nuking the search network too, while you work on your targeting and Click throught Rate
Lets do a little further analysis and see if there is anything that is actually going right in this account:
Submitted by steveblom on Wed, 2005-04-20 18:59.
adwords roi tracking | Adwords Tips and Tricks | adwords tutorials | mastering google adwords
The poor man's adwords tracking code:
Let's say you want to track something and you don't want to give all your adwords conversion data to Google. I don't blame you.
Here is what you do:
http://www.mydomain.com/?c1=campaignname&source=adwords&kw=put+your+keyphrase+here
Just copy the above and fill it in with the appropriate variables.
If you also want to be a real nerd and track the match type as well, like in the example of the keyword phrases mycool product, "mycool product", and [mycool product] it would look like this if you wanted to paste it into your adwords account.
mycool product ** http://www.mydomain.com/?c1=campaignname&source=adwords&kw=mycool+product
"mycool product" ** http://www.mydomain.com/?c1=campaignname&source=adwords&kw=%22mycool+product%22
[mycool product] ** http://www.mydomain.com/?c1=campaignname&source=adwords&kw=%5Bmycool+product%5D
You can also if you want a little more control, also specify the price for just that one keyword. If you wanted to pay 1.25 per click for each of these keywords, here is what you would do:
mycool product ** 1.25**http://www.mydomain.com/?c1=campaignname&source=adwords&kw=mycool+product
"mycool product" **1.25** http://www.mydomain.com/?c1=campaignname&source=adwords&kw=%22mycool+product%22
[mycool product] **1.25** http://www.mydomain.com/?c1=campaignname&source=adwords&kw=%5Bmycool+product%5D
Then you just paste that into the appropriate ad group in your Adwords account. Doing it that way lets you tweak your positions more precisely.
Now, the only thing you are missing is a service like hitslink that lets you put a special
tracking code on every page of your site and then another one on the confirmation page after someone orders. But the above lets you have
a lot more control over your adwords accounts if you have even a basic webstats program.
By the way, doing this can be accomplished with a very simple php script. Contact me if you want to make this script and become rich and famous.
Submitted by steveblom on Wed, 2005-04-20 03:55.
Adwords Marketing | Adwords Tips and Tricks | mastering google adwords
The poor man's adwords competition research
Since it isn't under everyones power to spend 2000 bucks a month to monitor 500 keywords, I offer this simple advice:
- Pick the keywords you want through your usual process
- Run them all through wordtracker
- Pick the keywords you think you can kick some butt in. This strategey is different depending on what you are selling of course. People doing affiliate marketing have to find cheap clicks at any cost, and these days that means moving to keywords with a lot less search volume. But if your business can handle it and you need more clicks you are going to pick the terms that get a decent amount of traffic AND ARE HIGHLY TARGETED for you.
- Clear your cookies and go hit Google on a few of these key search terms and look who is out there. Refresh your browser a couple times and you will see who is testing different copy because you will see the ads change before your eyes when you do this.
- Take any notes you need to, copy and paste the ads somewhere if you want, but then clear your cookies again and come back in 2-3 hours and do the same thing. Each session you can hit a few of the key search terms you want to compete in
- Sometimes after even just a few days of doing this, you can already tell who you have to beat. But do this for at least a week. Many marketers do this for at least 3 weeks before they enter a new market.
- You are looking for people who show up almost ALL the time, especially around position 6, 7, 8. This means they are showing their ads the maximum amount possible and getting the cheapest clicks possible, and you can bet if they are doing that every day, day in and day out over a 30 day period they are making profit. Either that or they are really, really crazy. Sometimes the people who always show up number 1 should be watched too, but only if they always show up every time you search. If they show up number 1 for only half the time that's really inefficient advertising, and eventually you are going to wipe the floor with them.
- During this time, note the ads that are consistently winning, visit the sites to see the sales process, sign up for the newsletter or whatever, and learn what you can. Now with the knowledge of the winning ads, and who the top competitors really are, you can vastly increase the speed of progress of your marketing efforts.
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