Adwords Explained - Page 9 - Web Marketing Copy Writing

Writing effective Advertisements

Adwords only allows a small amount of text to be entered into your Advertisement.

Therefore when writing your Adwords ads, forget about trying to cram in all the detail of the product or service you are promoting. You need to get to the point – quickly.

Real time, real world feedback

While the art of copy-writing is one which some people have as a full time job in the world of marketing professionals, you should not be afraid to get in and have a go yourself. The beauty of Adwords is that you can obtain real, live feedback from your audience which is more valuable than any experts advice. By trying different approaches and observing the results, you will quickly refine your approach.

Build on what works

As you login to review your account, and you notice that a certain advertisement works best or certain wording works best, build on this. At Salsa Internet, we observed that the term “Professional Website” was working very well in attracting users to click on our Websites ads. Therefore we immediately created another 4 or 5 variants of ads with the term “Professional Website” in the heading to see if we could improve things further. All the while however, we left the original high performing ad in place to ensure we didn’t upset a proven formula.

Use wording appropriate to your audience 

Keep in mind the type of user you are targeting your message to. If they are rocket scientists buying fine scientific instruments, then complex scientific terms are fine, but in general – most users respond best to simply crafted messages using simple words. That doesn’t mean they are stupid, it’s just a reality that most people don’t like jargon.

Despite keeping things simple in wording terms, don’t be afraid to use a little flamboyance in your message, but use words like “flare” rather than “flamboyance” when you do it !! As with keyword bidding, and choice of keywords, measuring user response to this is crucial to see if it is working.

Target your message

If you have an advertisement such as:

Hoover Vacuum Cleaners
Easy dust emptying
Faster cleaning of your carpet
http://www.bobscarpets.com

….consider who is going to read this. If you focus only on industrial vacuum cleaners, then the above ad is going to attract people seeking a vacuum cleaners for their home and result in your spending valuable ad dollars on attracting users who are far less likely to purchase your product. Make sure you use wording that clarifies who you are targeting – for example:

Industrial Hoover Vacuums
Heavy duty vacuum cleaners
Long lasting, 5 yr warranty
http://www.bobscarpets.com

…which may appeal more to an industrial vacuum cleaner purchaser. Emphasising key features and benefits of your offering are important so be sure to think through what people will be looking for. Trying to include keywords that people are likely to search on, within your advertisements themselves is also useful (ie in the example above, if Industrial and Vacuum are popular search keywords, then including them in the title of your ad is useful).

Include a “call to action"

When writing your advertisements, consider inserting a prompt or specific incentive for them to click on your ad. Things such as “Free trail”, or “Mention this ad for 20% discount”, or “3 months free subscription”, or “Online Demo” are all enticements that may draw users in. They obviously need to be appropriate to your business, but it’s well worth testing these in your Adwords campaigns to see if they improve your CTR on certain ads.

Remember the Websites address 

When authoring your advertisements, it’s worth remembering that user’s respond to the web address or URL that is displayed on the ad. Displaying a top level address ie www.mysite.com is generally a better strategy than showing a sub directory ie www.mysite.com/mypages/2006/thispage.html.

You can also use limited capitalisation in your website address ie www.MYSITE.com which may be useful (give it a try!). Google restrict most use of capitals and don’t allow punctuation such as exclamation points in the main title, but they will allow certain punctuation to be used within the ad itself and it’s worth experimenting.

Page 10....Testing different ads, and measuring conversions