Ad Writing Tips And Shortcuts
Posted on December 13, 2007
Filed Under Adwords, Internet Marketing
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The Copy Cat Approach
Because I have the mad skills to write a great ad I don’t do this for the reason others do it.
Marketing is a game of mental warfare. Remember that. It’s a game of influence. It’s a game of attention. It’s a game of planting the seeds of ideas until those ideas add up to something powerful enough that another human MUST take action.
So here’s why I copy ads - I love getting in my competition’s head and nothing pisses an Adwords marketer off more than having their ad copied (and it’s totally legally – and, like, I’m totally not a lawyer, you know).
The Adsense Site Approach
I advise building “Adsense sites” around the successful PPC terms you use. Sure, you can make a little change with Adsense (and you can smoke crack too).
But, I like building these sites and using tracking software like Adsense Detective that tells me who’s ads are producing clicks in the world on content network advertising.
You and I can GUESS which ads do well; seeing actual click data, however, is a crafty trick you’ll only learn from a world class asshole like me.
If All Else Fails, People Love to Have Their Fears, Doubts and Suspicions Aroused.
Life sucks, everyone’s a cheating, thieving whore. The government’s corrupt, athletes are juiced up freaks of nature, and that Paris Hilton . . .
Misery, my friends, loves company. Don’t underestimate just how miserable 90% of the population is.
But I hope I’ve made the point this can either be well done or butchered beyond belief.
Don’t Lose Sight of Your Objective
I have observed that most people write ads without giving much thought (MUCH? Come on - they aren’t giving a fucking ounce of thought to it) to the objective of the ad. Is it to generate clicks (and spend as much money as possible)? Is it to sell a product? Is it to sell a free download? Is it to gain a subscriber?
The answer may seem so obvious it’s stupid to even waste space with such an asinine question.
Think again hotshot.
The objective of your ads is to get THE RIGHT people from point A to point B – from Google to your site – who will take the next action you wan them to take.
For X, the next action is usually to optin. No selling, no attempt at the exchange of money, occurs until AFTER that event. If I’ve attracted THE RIGHT PEOPLE then once we’ve established a relationship I show them the goods.
If you ain’t clear, you gonna get rung.
I see too many people jump on the latest scheme like “Is This a Scam” (a weak knockoff of my “Don’t buy until after you read this revealing review” approach) and while that probably used to generate some clicks, what frame of mind is that person in when they click?
Oh, shocker, I’m on a hyped-up-to-hell sales page wondering if this is a scam or not.
Yeah, brilliant.
Oh, Some Basic Stuff
You have four parts to an ad and each can be utilized to PUSH THE SEARCH TOWARDS ACTION.
First of all, you must understand the frame of mind a searcher is in when they do a search. A search is the desire for information pushed forward by some degree of pain and discomfort.
I think I’ve shared this somewhere before: entertainment - ALL ENTERTAINMENT - is an escape from reality. Really - who wants to watch TV when they could be in a state of orgasm? They don’t. They watch TV to get away from the misery and boredom of current reality. And they search for much the same reasons.
So . . . you have two things to consider. One, people search because they have questions and they want answers. What is Internet marketing? Do people really make money doing this? If they do make money, what are the best programs for teaching how to do that? OK . . . everyone seems to like this program, what’s the best deal I can get on it?
Do you know the questions in the mind of your targets? You better.
The second part of this equation is entertainment. Your job is to answer questions and to do it in an entertaining manner. If you had all of the answers and you were on fire about what’s sitting on your plate right now, would you be reading this blog? If you had a super-hot member of the sex you get revved up about getting nasty with ripping at your clothes right now, would you be reading this blog?
Sometimes you want to go right to the point - and sometimes you want to take people on a detour from reality. Because people don’t buy products - they buy illusions they hope become realities.
OK . . . back to the basics of ad writing.
Headlines best practice (but not the only) -
Your search terms with a question mark . . .
Internet Marketing?
Description best practice -
Do a search on “adult dvds” for great examples. State your USP whenever possible. Get to the point. Tell people what they want to know, need to know, that answers the questions you’ve identified in their head.
They’re looking for something and if you are not getting clicks then what you’re saying isn’t what they’re looking for (or you have failed to create a new question in their head).
Remember - a click on a link means “I have a question and I want an answer”. Fail to hit on the question they have, they couldn’t care less about your answer (another term for this is, uh, relevance).
Destination URL best practice -
This is highly underutilized real estate. I went crazy on this in the Black Book DVDs. There’s still tons of www-keyword.com real estate available out there. It works. .org is also a good route - people trust .org and .org is almost always available.
Content Network
I was going to stop but I can’t - not yet.
I’ve been addicted to content network advertising lately. It’s a different beast. Using the Adwords 180 approach (think page targeting instead of site targeting) I’m running ads on pages that promote competitor products. A good idea, you know.
But being the insidious bastard that I am, I don’t just write a standard ad. No. I’m on a page written by an affiliate promoting another product right? And the poor damn schmuck, he puts Adsense on the page because he thinks he’s going to make a few extra bucks.
So here’s what I do . . . with his glowing testimonial in hand, I write my ad -
I Recommend This Highly -
Product Y Is Good, but Product X is
Better for WHATEVER THEIR ISSUE.
www-mysite.com
Now, after the reader has read how great Product Y is, on behalf of the author I’m telling the reader “Here’s something even better”.
I don’t think “evil” is the word. No.
OK - I’ve given you more than enough to get jacked up about for one day. Now get to work (or give an IM guru the finger, eat a scone . . . and then get to work).
X
PS - Don’t forget about the Black Book DVDs offer. Get em now, pay for them later and save a ton. Quanties? They’re more limited than you know and I’m not duping ANY MORE. NEVER.
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2 Responses to “Ad Writing Tips And Shortcuts”
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Hi X,
Great blog post! I have a question for you… I notice you talk about optins. Are you noticing that Google is severely lowering the quality score of optin landing pages?
I have sites that are getting slammed with ‘poor’ QS ratings now, and just 2 months ago they were getting ‘great’ ratings.
Thanks for your time!
Mike
Hi Mike,
I’m working on a new post about this issue. Since it’s taken me 2 weeks to get this far on your question, the simple answer is . . .
I do not now, nor have I ever believed that Google has an issue with opt-in landing pages. (If they did, we’d probably have ads that go to them disapproved).
That said, I’ve always had a very tight keyword focus for my campaigns and the landing pages they go to (and 100% of all of my PPC traffic goes to an optin page).
Like you, I’ve seen a difference over the last 6 months which has required me to add relevant content to these optin sites to keep the quality scores up (something I did not need to do until this past summer).
I’ve used PPC Riches to a certain extent and I’m now adding blogs to many of my sites - all subtly linked from my optin page.
PPC Riches - at least the function I use - is basically like the article scraping programs that were hot for Adsense sites a couple years ago - so if you have one of those programs then you probably don’t need to buy PPCR to do the job.
X