AdWords Adviser

Archive for September, 2009

Everyone knows the importance of writing good AdWords ad copy. Simply put, what you say in those four lines of text can make a poor performing keyword into one that has a click-through-rate of 2-3% or more.

If you’re like most, you’ll spend a long time agonizing about writing your AdWords ads copy. And once finished, you’ll probably be disappointed with the results, realising that most of your ads could be written a lot better if only you new how.

Imagine what it would be like if you could write ads in minutes rather than hours. How much easier and less time consuming would running your AdWords campaign become?

Writing good ads doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. Here is a simple formula you can follow that will help you to write the perfect AdWords ad copy every time.

Think of your ad in four separate parts, a heading, feature, benefit and display URL.

Now let’s take a look at each part in more detail:

Heading

In every instance, your heading must contain the primary keyword for the ad group that will trigger the ad. This is usually the keyword that gets the most impressions. However, if a particular keyword phrase shows a higher click-through-rate or attracts more conversions then use that instead.

Once you have included your primary keyword, any remaining characters in your headline can be used to make it stand out more.

Example Headline: How To Do AdWords Ads

Feature

To further reinforce your headline, the first line of your description must describe a feature of your product.

Examples of features might be:

• price – use only if product is price sensitive and you’re price is cheaper than your competition.
• percentages – facts must be easy for Google to verify.
• famous names – endorsements from celebrities and well known personalities.
• product specs – fastest, slowest, sharpest, thinest etc.
• third party endorsements – as recommended by …
• include words such as “free” and “new” when true and appropriate.

Example Feature: 45% of readers report improved ads

Benefit

Everyone knows that every successful sales page must have a call to action and your AdWords ad copy should be no exception. On the second line of your description you therefore need to show a benefit of owning your product with an effective ”call to action” that will get searchers clicking on your ad.

Good benefits that you might use are:

• browse our massive site.
• submit your RFI online today.
• see our list of satisfied clients.
• free UK shipping.
• order today, ship tonight.
• download our brochure.
• free consultation, apply now.
• free demo, apply now.
• free quote, apply now.
• free report, apply now.
• don’t wait, start now.
• call us 24/7.

Example Benefit: Read the “AdWords Adviser” today

Note: It is very important that your main keyword should be included once somewhere in your feature and/or benefit.

Display URL

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could have four lines of text in your ad to get your message across and attract attention?

Most advertisers simply write the domain name of their web site in the display URL field. But to do this is wasting another valuable opportunity to attract attention to your ad.

Your display URL doesn’t have to be the same as your landing page URL. It must however, point to the same domain. If your domain name is not too long, then why not make your ad stand out even more by including your ad groups main keyword in the URL.

e.g. your-domain.com/keyword

Remember, you don’t need to include the “http” or “www” prefix’s in your display address which can give you more valuable characters to play with.

Example Display URL: “AdWords-Adviser. co.uk/adwords-ads”

Putting It All Together

Here’s the complete example ad:

How To Do AdWords Ads
45% of readers report improved ads
Read the ”AdWords Adviser” today
AdWords-Adviser. co.uk/adwords-ads

P.S. Follow this simple template and you’ll soon be quickly writing good AdWords ad copy that will easily out-perform all your existing ad copy.

Now it’s your turn. What tips can you give to improve an ad’s performance? Leave a comment with your ideas.

Your Internet business probably gets new orders from Google AdWords every day. They come to you via email and you process and deliver each customers requirements as quickly as you can.

But, after you’ve delivered their order and received payment, do you send them any further information?

If you are like most Internet marketers, you don’t. And when you don’t follow that initial sale with additional information, you let a valuable repeat customer slip from your grasp!

Every customer that has already purchased from you once must like what you have to offer and the service you provide them. They are therefore willing and wanting to purchase from you again.

But when it comes to the time to make that next important purchase, they can’t find your contact information, remember where they made their origional purchase or worst of all, don’t realise that you sell what they are now looking for.

Your repeat business is gone, all because you didn’t stay in touch!

I Send Flyer’s With Every Order – What More Can I Do!

Okay, I know what you are thinking, you send out a flyer with every order, maybe you even include a money off next purchase voucher. But this is not enough!

If you don’t stay in contact with all your customers by sending them regular follow up messages, next time they want a product you sell, your loyal customer will take their business elsewhere.

Following up with your past customers is more than just a process you do at the time of their purchase – it’s an on-going art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system that will keep your business in the mind of your prospects, and stick to it.

If you don’t follow up with your past customers consistently, then you might as well forget about getting any repeat sales from them.

How To Follow Up First Time Customers

To get your first time customers to purchase from you again you need to follow up with each multiple times, at set intervals and with pre-written messages.

Anyone that has done this for their business will confirm that their sales from past customers have doubled or even trippled. But, setting this process up properly does need some planning.

First, you’ll need to develop your follow up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you probably already send an email to your customers to thank them for their order and to ask if they are satisfied with their purchase and the service they’ve received from you.

This is the starting point for your follow up process. The email should be sent to your customers the day after they have taken delivery of their order.

Your second email needs to go into more detail than the first about your business and the products you sell. Stress the benefits of your products and give reasons why they should purchase from you and not your competition.

Make sure you also give your satisfied customers a real reason to visit your web site again. A discount voucher against their next purchase can work well.

Whatever your incentive, it must have a sense of urgency built into it. If offering a discount voucher, then make sure it has an expiry date set a month or two into the future. You want your satisfied customer to come back and purchase from you again soon.

The timing of your second email is also important. It should be sent 2 to 3 days after your first email.

The next 3 follow up messages you send should be short lists of your most popular products with benefits and potential uses. Also include special offers, giving your prospects another reason to order now instead of waiting any longer.

Write each email so that they can be skimmed quickly but the full force of your message still comes through. Don’t forget to also include a reminder of the incentive you sent them in your second email to add real power to your message.

Get Feedback From Your Customers

Phrase your next 2 messages in the form of a question and try to get your customer to respond. Ask if there are any reasons why they have not purchased from you again. Are your prices to high, do you stock what they’re looking for?

The feedback you get will be useful in helping you modify your follow up emails or product offerings so that other prospects will be more likely to order from you a second time.

The timing of these last five follow up emails is just as important as their content. You certainly don’t want to anoy your prospect! Make sure that these letters are at least a week apart.

Follow Up – An On Going Process

You’ve now firmly embeded your business and the products you offer into your customers mind. But you need to make sure you keep them there.

Continue sending your prospects regular email with new incentives, special offers and reasons to purchase every three to four weeks. A monthly newsletter often works well. Now and again, include a message intended to receive a response to see if they have a particular need that you can meet.

Following up effectively can seem complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. The entire process can be automated by using good Email Marketing Software.

P.S. Our recommendation is AWeber - When you sign up for the AWeber free test drive today, you will understand why so many people get excited about how easy it is to follow up on your customers and you’ll immediately want to start your own email campaign.

Remember when you logged into the new Google AdWords Interface for the first time? Can you recall the sense of excitement you had at getting your first look at all the new features Google had built for you?

Think back to that time and recall what was the first new feature that you noticed?

You’re probably now picturing the performance graph that appears near the top of the screen, just below the second line of page tabs. And you probably thought at the time that this graph looks interesting…

You then shot off to see what other features you could find and have never given it a second glance since. But by ignoring the performance graph, you’re overlooking a valuable tool that can help you with managing changes to your account.

Here is a simple example of how you might make good use of the performance graph in implementing your AdWords advertising strategy.

Try This With Your AdWords Advertising Campaign.

Just suppose you wanted to see what effect raising the position of your ads on the search engine results pages had on the performance of your account. Could a higher ad position bring in more sales?

If you’re like everyone else, when making changes, you’ll want to closely monitor them. And it’s now that the performance graph comes into it’s own.

Show the stats view for all your campaigns by clicking on the “Campaigns” tab, then look just below the page tab and you’ll see a “+” symbol.

Click on the symbol to reveal a drop down window with a list of different metrics that you can show on your performance graph. To monitor the changes to your account for this example, select  to display the “Avg. Pos.” and “Conv.” metrics.

Now whenever you log into AdWords, one of the first things you’ll see is the effects your changes are having on your advertising. 

Start to gradually raise all the bids for your keywords a little each day. Over time you’ll see the blue line in your graph start to drop as your ads begin to appear nearer the top of the search results page.

If raising your ads prominence is having a positive effect on your sales, then the green line showing your conversions will start to rise showing that you’re making more sales.

What Else Can The Performance Graph Show Me?

Okay, you’re probably thinking, you’ve got more sales but can you actually afford them? There is no point in increasing your sales numbers if the cost of doing so is more than you can afford to pay.

In just a few seconds you can change the metric on your performance graph and see your changes from a whole new point of view.

Change the “Conv.” metric to “Cost-per-Conv.” and the green line on your performance graph will now show how your average costs have changed since you started to raise the position of your ads on the results page.

If as the blue line falls the green line is rising, you know that each of your sales are costing you more.

Targeting Change

It is quite obvious that if your costs per sale are rising, you could return all your bids back to the values they were when you started this experiment. The ad positions for each of your keywords will then fall back to where they were previously, but logically, so would your conversions drop to the volumes they were previously also.

Let me ask you, wouldn’t you rather keep those extra sales and just reduce your costs-per-conversion?

Well with a little bit more research, you can.

If you now click on the “AdGroup” tab, you can set up another performance graph to show the relationship of ad position against cost-per-conversion.

By selecting each of your ad groups in turn, you can now see in an instance what the effect of raising the position of your ads on the results page has been to the performance of that ad group.

If your cost-per-conversion for any ad group have risen significantly, then you’ll need to take a closer look at that group and either delete surplus keywords or adjust the bids down.

In this way, you can take selective action that will reduce your advertising costs without doing too much damage to your conversion volumes.

Now you’ve read this article, you’ll begin to realise the true value of performance graphs in managing your AdWords campaigns. Why not post a comment and tell us how you’ve used the performance graph feature in the New Google AdWords Interface to manage your AdWords campaign more effectively.

P.S. If you’re struggling with the performance of your AdWords account then Key Searches are here to help make your AdWords advertising more profitable for you.

In July we reported on how Google was cracking down on AdWords scams.

Hooray – And about time too we all said!!

But, imagine experiencing the frustration of having your account banned when you’re actually a legitimate advertiser doing nothing wrong.

This was the fate of the author from the Electron Plumber blog that we reported on in our recent post. Google wrongly banned them from using AdWords for placing ads that rather than promoting, warned against a particular scam.

Imagine, banned from AdWords for spending money with Google to warn others about a scam done in Google’s own name. How unfair is that?

You can read the Electron Plumbers origional post here…

Could Your Account Be Next?

Since our post back in July, we’ve had a number of concerned advertisers contact us worried that their accounts might fall victim to the same fate. They wanted to know what they could do if Google decided to ban them from using AdWords.

First, let me point out, if you’re thinking that you can continue to advertise your scam using AdWords and get away with it, then you’re wrong. When Google find you, you’ll be banned and there is no appeal system that will get your account back up and running again.

But, if you genuinely feel that you’ve been dealt a bad deal by Google, then you can get things straightened out.

In these short posts, you’ll see how the Electron Plumber sorted their problem with Google and got their account reinstated.

• Google Whacked – Our Adwords Account Still Wrongly Suspended
•  Google Adwords Account Unsuspended!

What Can We Learn From The Electron Plumbers Story?

These posts are an excellent example of the right way to handle Google when you have a problem.

• Keep calm, be polite but also persistent.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for the problem to be escalated to a supervisor.
• Try to think of your problem from the AdWords Support point of view.

Imagine you got hundreds and hundreds of emails every day asking questions about the service or product you sell. Just picture for a moment that you get so many email that you know that you can’t possibly answer them all.

Okay, you’re probably now thinking you’d make sure you did a better job than Google and answer every email you got sent. But what if the volume was so large you just didn’t have enough hours in the day to even read them. This is what the AdWords Support Desk has to put up with every day.

I wonder, if you were in this situation and had to choose which enquiries got a reply, which would you pick?

The email that has a rant at you and your service and gives you next to no information to go on as to what their problem might be or the email that is polite and to the point, tells you what the problem is and what they’ve done to try and solve it themselves.

For me it’d be the second type of email that would get most of my attention – it’s just human nature!

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let everyone know!

P.S. Want to make sure that your AdWords advertising never violates Google’s advertising rules? Then you should have your account professionally managed by Key Searches.