Effective Google AdWords Campaigns - Part 2
By Mitchell Harper
Introduction
In part 1 I showed you how to find and segment groups of keywords for your Google AdWords advertising campaign. Today in part 2 I'm going to teach you how to write the actual content of your ads. Even if you don't speak perfect English or have poor grammar, just follow my step-by-step blueprint below and you can't lose.
Recapping Part 1
By now you should have a list of about 10 keywords separated into at least 2 groups based on the context of those words. In our last example we used Windows Vista: people might be looking for information on Vista (in the research stage) or they might be ready to whip out their credit cards and order Vista (in the buying stage).
In this example let's write ads for people that are in the researching stage for Windows Vista. You can easily adapt these ads to suit your product/serivce because the principles and methods are identical.
Start With The Headline
The headline of your ad is critical to the click through rate (CTR) that it receives. For Google AdWords ads you will ALWAYS receive more clicks if the headline matches the text that the user is searching for. Google has a special feature called dynamic keyword insertion that you can use to make sure the searchers exact keywords show in the headline of your ad.
It works like this:
In both of these ads the text that the user searches for will be displayed as the headline of the ad if and only if their search term is less than 25 characters. If you look at the sample ads above you'll notice that in the first ad "Keyword" only has one capital letter - the "K". In the second ad there are two: "KeyWord" - The "K" and "W". This is used to tell Google how to capitalize the words in the headline. Ads with "Keyword" will only capitalize the first letter of the first word in the headline. Ads with "KeyWord" will capitalize the first letter of each word in the headline.
So if the user searches for "windows vista screenshots", in the first ad the headline would be "Windows vista screenshots". In the second ad the headline would be "Windows Vista Screenshots".
Finally, you'll notice the text after "Keyword:" in the brackets. This is called the "backup headline". If the users search text is too long then this text will be displayed instead. What should you use for your backup headline? Generally it should be the most popular search term that you found after reading part 1 of this series.
To recap, the formula for dynamic keyword insertion is:
{ Key[word|Word]: [Backup Headline] }
A few examples:
- {Keyword: Chocolate Cake}
- {KeyWord: Funny TShirts}
- {Keyword: PHP Web Hosting}
Writing the Body of Your Ad
OK, now that's we've got the headline out of the way let's create the body copy of the ad. You get two lines of text, 35 characters per line. The first line of your ad should be a strong benefit the person can expect to receive after using your product/service. The second line should contain one or more features of your product/service.
Successful copywriters have one thing in common: they can differentiate between the benefits and features of a product. A benefit will appeal to the emotions of a person, such as "Lose 30 pounds in 4 weeks", or "Reduce the time it takes to close a sale". Most people buy for benefits.
Let's write the first line of our ad - a benefit. Using our Windows Vista example, let's pretend we run a site called MyWindowsVistaReviews.com where we provide user-submitted reviews on Windows Vista. Our ad will target people simply searching Windows Vista in the hope of converting them to buyers over time:
See the benefit? "Honest reviews to save you time". Come up with the number one benefit of your product/service and put it as the first line of your ad.
The second line is for features. In our example its "Sort reviews by important criteria". People looking for Windows Vista reviews might only want to see negative reviews, or reviews by people who upgraded from XP, and my fictional site would let them sort reviews based on criteria they find important.
Finally there's the URL you show at the bottom of your ad. By simply changing the way you display the URL you can dramatically increase the click thru rate of your ad. You'll have to experiment with how you display the URL. Here are the ways you can display it, shown from best converting to worst converting (in my experience):
- www.YourSite.com
- YourSite.com
- www.yoursite.com
- yoursite.com
- YourSite.com/Something
- www.YourSite.com/Something
The "Beat Your Own Ad" Theory
Using the information in this article you should create just two ads for your campaign. Make the ads identical but give them a different benefit or feature. After receiving about 30 clicks for each ad, use SplitTester.com to workout which ad performed better then delete the other ad.
Create a new ad and this time change the benefit AND the way you display the URL. Keep repeating this until you can get your CTR up to at least 5%. It may take a few weeks but it will be worth it.
Things You Must Test
As well as constantly tweaking the text in your ads, tiny changes can result in massive increases in your CTR. Try changing the things listed below if you want a 0.5%-1% increase in the click thru rate of your best ad (after completing the "beat your own ad" theory above):
- Finish each line with a full stop or remove the full stop from each line
- Separate features with a comma or a full stop
- Use an apostrophe where needed or remove an existing apostrophe
- Use a dash where needed or remove an existing dash
- Capitalize the first letter of every word in your ad
- Use a normal headline, such as "Windows Vista Reviews" instead of using dynamic keyword insertion
- Register a few different domain names and use them as the URL in your ad. Sometimes this can increase your CTR by 3%-5%.
Conclusion
You should now be able to confidently create your own Google AdWords ad's. Try using everything I've taught you in this article and leave me a comment below with your results. If you're running an existing AdWords campaign I guarantee that if you implement the steps in this article you'll at least double your click thru rate.
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5 Responses to "Effective Google AdWords Campaigns - Part 2"
Fill in the form below to leave a comment and share your thoughts.|
said this on 24 Aug 2007 2:48:57 AM CST
Hi,
I've always wondered how ebay got the abstract words I was searching into their headings (I knew they hadn't created millions of ads). Are there any other tricks like that you can do with the brackets {}. I haven't seen it (or anything else like it) documented anywhere? Lastly, I now understand how the searched keyword ends up in the title... but what triggered the ad..? Did ebay have to enter the millions upon millions of keywords into the keyword side, so that ad would trigger? Cheers Matt [From Mitch: Hey Matt. Not sure to be honest, either that or they had a contract where Google sold them their un-used ad keywords as inventory...] |
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said this on 24 Aug 2007 2:54:47 AM CST
One other thing I think everyone should start looking at, is creating channels for their ads based on state and city.
My ads were constantly coming up in positions 4 - 6. By simply copying the list of my keywords, and creating separate campaigns by state and city my ads have jumped up to positions 1-3. I think when Google is now determining the quality score of the ads, it factors in you've specified it down to a city.. so if someone from that city is searching your keyword, Google now thinks it is more important. Cheers Matt |
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said this on 24 Aug 2007 12:16:30 PM CST
Good article Mitchell, It cuts through some of the rubbish I hear generally.
I have a small adwords campaign running and Google have put the click rate on some keywords up really high, because they say those keywords are "poor quality". Do you know what this means? Thanks Mike [From Mitch: Hi Mike. It means they aren't converting well, so Google is penalizing you. Try making the ads you show for those keywords more relevant, and use dynamic keyword insertion like I mention in the article to see if that helps.] |
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said this on 17 Oct 2007 6:26:58 PM CST
Hi,
I implemented the above steps so that my keywords would become the title of my ads. It has worked well, my click through rates are up. There is one really BIG thing you forgot to mention. Any keywords you have, like competitors names etc are fine, because the old ads just showed your company name etc when someone searched your competitors. But with this new setting, your competitors name becomes the title of your ad. We are now being sued. You should warn all your users of this unique 'feature' of using the {Keyword: } setting. Google offers no support, infact Google is currently being sued by the ACCC for this exact setup you've suggested. http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/792088/fromItemId/142 I'm guessing this is why Google doesn't advertise this setup? Cheers Matt |
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said this on 15 Mar 2008 1:27:44 PM CST
Excellent article. Can you recommend nay literature or articles on localized searched, eg. languages and countries other than english or USA or UK?
Thumbs up. Carlos Dieter www.stedica.com |
