20 Tips for Writing Great AdWords Copy

Make no mistake. Copywriting is the glue that holds an AdWords campaign together. You can have the right keywords, place the right bids, and even have great products and services, but if you don’t have powerful copy, your campaign stands little chance of being successful.

When it comes to writing AdWords copy, there are 2 main components: copy for the ads and copy for the landing pages. Below, you’ll find 20 tips that will help you improve your copy so you can get more clicks and more conversions.

PPC Ads

1.       Use strong words- Searchers need to be snapped out of their passivity. You need to sell them some sizzle. Use powerful words that grab their attention, like: free, guaranteed, discover, today, limited time, improve, increase, exclusive, and you.

2.       Place keywords in the right spots- When you include keywords in your ads, the keywords searched for will be bolded in your ad copy. This allows your ad to get noticed. Include keywords in your headline, ad copy, and even display URL.

3.       Sell the benefits- The only thing customers want to know is what’s in it for them. How does your product or service benefit them? Explain this clearly and briefly.

4.       Have a strong call to action- Searchers need to be motivated to click on your ad. Simply put, you need to tell them what to do. Your call to action should be simple and clear, like “Get Your FREE Consultation Now!”

5.       Include your USP- What makes you different from the competition? What’s the one reason people should buy from you? Focus on your unique characteristics to make your ad different.

6.       Harness the power of ellipses- Those 3 simple dots can entice readers to click on your ad to get more information. For example, “Read This Before You Hire a Houston Electrician…”

7.       Try keyword-rich display URLs-I mentioned it earlier, but it’s worth repeating. Instead of using a generic URL, try putting the target keyword in there, like this: www.yoursite.com/keyword. I’ve seen many split tests where this simple change garnered a lot more clicks.

8.       Include seasonal offers- Seasonal headlines make your ad feel current and relevant. They also create a sense of urgency. Even if your product isn’t seasonal, you can still use this technique effectively. “Home AC Installation Memorial Day Sale. Free install on all orders.”

9.       Ask a compelling question- A question can grab the searcher’s attention and help make your ad more interactive. “What’s the secret to making $10,000 in 2 weeks?” Or “Want to get out of debt fast?”

10.   Always be testing- Never stop testing out different versions of your ads. The smallest changes can make the biggest impact.

Landing Pages

1.       Start with a strong headline- The headline is the first thing someone sees after clicking on your ad. This is your chance to hook the new visitor and to keep them moving forward to conversion.

2.       What is a conversion?-Speaking of conversion, what do you consider a conversion? Do you want people to place an order now? Do you want them to schedule an appointment? Sign up for your newsletter? Identify this action so you can measure the results of your AdWords campaign.

3.       Keep your call to action short and clear-Now that you know what you want people to do when they come to your landing page, you need to tell them to do so. Conversion determines call to action. Also, try repeating the call to action about once every screen view so that people can always take action no matter where they are on your page.

4.       Use bullet points to highlight key benefits-Online users tend to scan content rather than read it word for word. By placing the most important information in bullet points, you make it easy for the reader to instantly see what’s in it for them.

5.       Place the most important information above the fold-According to a recent Nielsen study, people spend about 80% of their time above the fold on websites. In other words, they don’t like to scroll down. So, put your offer up top where everyone sees it immediately.

6.       Start paragraphs with main idea-To further accommodate scanners, you should start each paragraph with the most important information. This helps to put the key points up front, rather than burying them where most people won’t read them.

7.       Include testimonials- Online customers have their scam detectors turned all the way up. They don’t trust you. But they do trust their fellow customers. Use testimonials from satisfied customers to gain credibility.

8.       Eliminate risk-Again, customers are always fearing they’ll be scammed and ripped off. That’s why you need to remove as much risk as possible. Offer a strong money-back guarantee that helps them feel they have nothing to lose.

9.       Beware of choice paralysis-Too many choices actually cause the customer to get overwhelmed, making no choice at all. Don’t give landing page visitors a lot of options. Keep it simple!

10.   Always be testing-Just like with your ads, landing pages also need to be tested. Try testing out slight tweaks to see what you can do to get more conversions.

What are some other AdWords copywriting tips you’d add to this list? Share your best tactics by leaving a comment.

Affiliate Network Review: EWA Private Network

Every now and then, a product, service or program comes along that really needs to be reviewed and promoted - not because it’s a paid review or affiliated site, but because it’s just outstanding.  Even though this is a paid review, that’s definitely the case with EWA Private Network.  EWA, which stands for Eagle Web Assets, is an affiliate network that has built a solid online reputation through ethical business practices, proving they really know what they’re doing, and taking great care of their affiliates and their advertisers.

EWA is made up of a small, hand-selected group of marketers, media buyers, SEM pros, and email marketers.  The company is run by Ryan Eagle and Harrison Gevirtz, who lead a team of dedicated Network and Affiliate Managers 7 days a week to provide the kind of support not often found in an affiliate network.  It is clear that their focus is on their affiliates and helping them to be successful in their affiliate marketing efforts.  They promise to maintain personal connections with all their affiliates and work closely with each affiliate every step of the way to ensure success, and they have a reputation of backing up that promise.

If you’ve been an affiliate marketer or have researched the possibilities, you’ve most likely either experienced or read about issues with affiliates of various networks not being paid on time, as much as promised, or not at all.  Not only does EWA pay out weekly, they pledge to beat any payout for the same program, and they pay everyone - on time.  They truly understand that taking care of the people who count on them (affiliates and advertisers) pays off for them in big ways, which is reflected in their motto: Help more; Pay more; Get more.

Highlights:

• EWA will beat any payout you get from any network.
• They pay weekly - from day 1, with no threshold.
• They are available 7 days a week to help you make your campaigns bigger and more profitable.
• They help you scale and optimize your campaigns and find traffic sources.
• EWA pledges to get any offer you are currently running at another network within 3 days and beat the payout!
• They have over 1500 offers for 60 countries on their network live and active.

So is there a downside to EWA?  Well, not really a downside, but it is a private network.  That means the only way in is usually through a referral.  However there is an application on the site, and even though having a referral will help, if you meet their criteria, you can be accepted without it.  For anyone who is accepted into their network, their “pickiness” is a very positive thing.  They really want to work with serious marketers because they plan on investing in your success through one-on-one training and support.

What others are saying:

If you want to see what the buzz around the net is, check out these other reviews and comments:

AffPortal

Zac Johnson

Affiliate Marketing Compare

Jeremiah Cooper

Bottom line is this: If you’re a serious affiliate marketer looking for an affiliate network run by people who know what they’re doing and who will do everything they can to help you make lots of money off your affiliate marketing efforts, you’d be crazy not to check out EWA Private Network.

Search Engine Marketing – The Basics on Getting Started Today

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, ranging from free methods, like social media, to very expensive approaches, like buying banner advertising.  Somewhere in the middle is Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  While this method is never free, you can decide how much you’ll spend, and that number can literally go as high as you’d like.  If your marketing budget isn’t unlimited (is anyone’s?), can SEM be an effective way to get traffic to your site?  The answer is almost certainly, yes - if it’s done right.

What exactly is SEM?

Search Engine Marketing is buying search terms and keywords from a search engine.  This means that when someone searches for these terms, they see your ad.  Obviously there’s more to it than that, but that’s basically the general idea.

What Makes SEM Effective?

Whatever form of marketing you use, you goal is obviously to get your target market (those who most want your products and services) to see that marketing.  The more laser-focused your marketing is, the less your per-customer acquisition costs are, because you’re not wasting marketing dollars getting your name in front of people who don’t care.

SEM, more so than just about any other marketing vehicle, allows you to advertise to a potential customer in a highly-targeted manner.  When you think about it, when done right, SEM is effectively showing your ads only to people who just told you that your product is what they’re looking for.  It doesn’t get much more targeted than that!

How should you go about starting an SEM campaign?

As with any other marketing or general business initiative, your first step is planning.  You don’t have to put together an elaborate marketing plan, but there are some things you need to decide.  First, figure out which search terms and keywords you want to target.  This should be easy in the beginning, as you’ll simply pick the terms that most relate to your business.  As you get further into the process, you’ll evaluate other possible terms, using tools like Google’s keyword tool.  Next, you want to set a budget for your campaign.  This of course is an individual decision that only you can determine.  Suffice to say that in general the more you spend, the faster you can expect results.  Once you’ve decided on your keywords and budget, you’ll want to figure out exactly what will display when people see your ad.  There are volumes of information online about how to write compelling SEM copy, and it’s a great idea to review some of it.  Don’t try to reinvent the wheel on this one.  Last, but certainly not least, you’ll need to decide which page on your site people will land on when clicking on your ad.  While at first it might seem like your homepage makes sense, there are a lot of reasons to customize your landing pages based on specific SEM purchases.  Again, there is a lot written about landing pages, and you should research this thoroughly.

Ready, Set, Go!

There are three primary search engines, and most agree that your efforts are best spent with them than with any of the smaller sites.  Here are the three, with links to their SEM programs:

Google: AdWords

Yahoo: Yahoo Advertising

Bing: Microsoft adCenter

Each of the above programs offers solutions for the smallest of budgets, and each provides a wide range of tools and training to help you realize success in your SEM efforts.  This post is just an introduction to SEM.  If you’re considering your own SEM campaign, be sure to research your options and educate yourself on the ins and outs of this advertising medium.  And if you have experience to share, please don’t hesitate to do so in the comments!

Understand Your Traffic Streams

If there is one thing that we would like you to take away from this blog post, it is that you cannot use generalizations when it comes to tracking and testing your marketing efforts. You really need to understand where your traffic streams are coming from and micromanage each stream, effectively, if you want to make an overall improvement in your performance. It makes little sense to try and establish averages over a number of different initiatives, just so that you can see how you are doing in overall terms.

We always seem under pressure to come up with statistics, to show that we are being productive with our time or initiatives or to prove that the money truly is “well spent.” The truth is that any analytics program worth its salt will enable you to drill down and really analyze every single visitor.

If you favor Google Analytics, you may have one of those plug-ins added to your blog to show you how you are doing through a summarized form, complete with miniature graph over the last 30 days. You will see your average “bounce rate,” and this may send you running for the hills, but after all what use are these figures by themselves?

The whole purpose of tracking and testing is to make changes. For sure, you could be the smartest marketer in creation or just plain lucky, find that your promotional and advertising methods work right out of the box and you need to do little to modify. We all know marketing a business is about trial and error and even the most educated and successful among us make mistakes and need to make changes. Be prepared to understand that you need to track each initiative before you put it in place, associate results with that particular track and you must be able to differentiate those results from any other concurrent initiative.

It is important to develop separate landing pages and associated anchor text, crucial reference points to enable you to quickly see where consummated sales originate. Remember also that a good proportion of visitors to your site will be poorly qualified and these will certainly help to skew your conversion rates.

If you are lucky enough to have a very highly trafficked site and have not taken steps to differentiate your sources, you will find it very difficult to move forward with any confidence. Whatever you may do to try and increase conversion rates in one particular area will be difficult to quantify as your average conversion rate, bounce rate or simple visitor rate will tend to absorb your efforts.

If you have not set up a trackable, definable list of goals and events and your landing pages are insufficiently identified, then it may be time for you to start afresh, redefine your objectives, come up with a plan and a means to track it and set a future date to start understanding and manipulating your traffic streams correctly.

Are all your traffic streams profitable - if not which ones are dragging you down?

Adam Toren

Marketing v. Advertising: Know the Difference

One of the biggest challenges of being a small business owner is that you must become an expert on many facets of business even if you lack education and practical experience.  Just because you went to school and got an accounting degree doesn’t mean you know much, if anything, about advertising.  Yet, in order to succeed, you must gain at least some level of competency in all these different areas; at least enough to know if the people you’ve hired are doing a good job.

One area that I want to address in this post has to do with marketing v. advertising.  The reason is that the marketing world has undergone a sort of rapid evolution in the past couple years with the insane popularity of Web 2.0/Social Networking.  Web-based marketing, including affiliate marketing, is often good-old fashioned advertising (or worse, spam) dressed in sheep’s clothing.  It is important to recognize the differences between marketing and advertising to make sure you’re getting the most from your marketing budget; and since your marketing efforts are you company’s “first impression” to the public, you also want to be sure you’re representing yourself in the best possible light.

The best way to describe it is using the analogy of a toolbox.  Marketing is a toolbox full of stuff that you can use to represent your company; and advertising is simply one tool.  What that means is that you must have an overall plan of action in place before you make a decision about any kind of advertising.  An ad campaign that does not fit into your overall marketing strategy can actually do more harm than good.

Many advertising agents will try to sell you ad space/time using statistics, and get you to jump on a bandwagon with other companies similar to yours who are doing the same thing.  But you have to look at the big picture.  Your success depends entirely on your ability to stand out from the pack.  If you’re using the same “tried and true” methods to advertise and market your business, it doesn’t matter how good you are—it’s not going to get you any attention.

The great thing about marketing is that it is actually a creative endeavor.  You can devise new ways of doing it which will become part of your company’s identity.  Much of the corporate marketing that is done is highly refined, created to appeal to the broadest range of people.  But recent success stories show that it is the unique, niche markets that have quirky personalities that are thriving.

The bottom line is this:  You’re not going to succeed at business without a solid marketing plan.  And that doesn’t mean buying premium ad space or giving away stuff with your logo on it.  It means looking at your overall market, comparing the strategies of other companies; being innovative with your writing, promotion, and advertising; and having a way to track the effectiveness of your campaigns.  It means basing your advertising decisions on more than just cost.

In the world of online marketing, you can get lost in the shuffle.  Each one of us is bombarded with emails, messages from our “friends”, and banner ads that it has become easy to tune these things out.  Remember:  the key to effective marketing is always going to be making a personal connection with your prospective customer.  So try to look at all your marketing and advertising with a fresh eye and imagine yourself seeing it for the first time.  What does it say about your company and your product?  Is it compelling enough to make you want to find out more?  Is it associated with other, controversial or unattractive concepts?  Be prepared to hear honest feedback and to use it as you constantly refine and redefine your marketing strategy.