A consumer will not buy a product. Consumers purchase solutions to problems they are having. They make a purchase in order to fill a need or a want. You can encourage a consumer to buy your products by making your sales copy trigger an emotional response. They are five major emotional appeals sales copy uses to persuade consumers.
The primary emotion is curiosity. You've probably seen many ads making outrageous claims. These ads attempt get attention by making consumers want to know if such statements are true. In general, the more shocking the claim, the more you can peak curiosity. The more curious you can make a consumer, the further they follow you down your sales funnel.
Internet marketing Adwords ads tend to work on curiosity. Have you seen the ads where the marketer claims to me making $90,000 a month? Have you been curious to find out if that's true or how he did it?
Another emotion is insecurity. Almost everyone has certain aspect about himself or herself that they are insecure about. In addition, certain demographics tend to share insecurities. For example, teenagers tend to be insecure about their popularity in school. Your sales copy can promise to address feelings of insecurity.
Good examples of insecurity in advertising are commercials for insurance for senior citizens. These commercials appeal to the health concerns of the elderly, and promise security with their policies.
Fear is the third emotion you can use. Consumers have many fears, death, financial debt, loss of someone close to them, aging and more. Your sales copy can appeal to these fears, and them promise alleviate them with your product.
Pharmaceutical commercials for high blood pressure or heart disease tend to rely on fear. These commercials use statistical figures to provoke fears of disease and death.
Vanity is the next emotion. People tend to want to improve themselves. Your sales copy can promise to make them look better, feel stronger or be healthier. Fitness equipment uses vanity in their advertising. How many home gym machines promise all three of the above?
Greed is another powerful emotional trigger. Almost everyone could use more money. Internet marketing ads make use of greed, promising more traffic, more sales and bigger returns.
Your goal as a copywriter is to use these emotional triggers and tie them to your product or service. Explain to a prospect how your product will benefit them. Persuade them that your product will make their life easier or safer. Promise to make them happier and healthier. Appeal to their wants and desires.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Avoid Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)!
Dynamic keyword insertion is widely touted as the greatest thing to happen to Adwords in the last two years. The biggest benefit may be to your CTR. When a consumer sees the exact search term in your ad, it can be very compelling. CTRs will often rise when using dynamic keyword insertion.
However, dynamic keyword insertion is not for every situation. You must be careful not to over use or abuse it. The following problems can arise when using dynamic keyword insertion.
1) Dynamic Keyword Insertion doesn't increase the relevancy of your ad.
Adwords likes to see the keyword you are targeting in the headline or ad description. It will increase your quality score if the keyword is part of the ad. However, it doesn't consider dynamic keyword insertion to be the keyword. So you miss an opportunity to improve your quality score.
2) Dynamic Keyword Insertion can lead to poorly written ads.
You've seen ads that don't seem to make sense when you read them. You can be sure that such ads are using dynamic keyword insertion and that accounts for the poor sales copy. When you use a large keyword list, it's practically impossible to write a single ad that will make sense and be compelling.
3) Dynamic Keyword Insertion can't help your landing page.
You may have read that your landing page can benefit from dynamic keyword insertion. It can't. Your landing page is outside Adwords. Dynamic keyword insertion only occurs within Adwords. Want proof? Stick the token {KeyWord} on your landing page and view it a browser. The token will not be replaced.
4) Dynamic Keyword Insertion may make it difficult to track ad performance
Split testing your ads and sales copy is a proven method to improve your ads. However since you won't know exactly what you ad said at any given time, it makes if difficult to test changes to your sales copy.
You must be aware of the advantages and drawbacks before you use dynamic keyword insertion. You must then make an informed decision if it is right for your situation. You are generally better off without it if you customize your ads and landing pages.
However, dynamic keyword insertion is not for every situation. You must be careful not to over use or abuse it. The following problems can arise when using dynamic keyword insertion.
1) Dynamic Keyword Insertion doesn't increase the relevancy of your ad.
Adwords likes to see the keyword you are targeting in the headline or ad description. It will increase your quality score if the keyword is part of the ad. However, it doesn't consider dynamic keyword insertion to be the keyword. So you miss an opportunity to improve your quality score.
2) Dynamic Keyword Insertion can lead to poorly written ads.
You've seen ads that don't seem to make sense when you read them. You can be sure that such ads are using dynamic keyword insertion and that accounts for the poor sales copy. When you use a large keyword list, it's practically impossible to write a single ad that will make sense and be compelling.
3) Dynamic Keyword Insertion can't help your landing page.
You may have read that your landing page can benefit from dynamic keyword insertion. It can't. Your landing page is outside Adwords. Dynamic keyword insertion only occurs within Adwords. Want proof? Stick the token {KeyWord} on your landing page and view it a browser. The token will not be replaced.
4) Dynamic Keyword Insertion may make it difficult to track ad performance
Split testing your ads and sales copy is a proven method to improve your ads. However since you won't know exactly what you ad said at any given time, it makes if difficult to test changes to your sales copy.
You must be aware of the advantages and drawbacks before you use dynamic keyword insertion. You must then make an informed decision if it is right for your situation. You are generally better off without it if you customize your ads and landing pages.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Should you scare your customers?
Should you scare your customers? Should your sales copy persuade visitors by attempting to scare that they are missing something vital without your product or service.
Machiavelli was an Italian renaissance author who wrote a work called the "the prince". His book was intended to instruct the young Italian rulers of various city states how to govern. One of the main points of the work was the conclusion that it is better to be feared than loved.
Could you use fear to persuade your customers to buy from you?
Much of the sales copy in Adwords ads today focuses on making the consumer either curious or greedy. This is particularly true in the ads for internet marketing. Most of them make an outrageous claim, like "see how I'm making x dollars a month". This ad is designed to appeal to marketing consumer by appealing to his greed. Plus, the more outrageous the amount, the more curious the consumer is to see how the advertisers is doing it.
This is a very good tactic. Appealing to these two emotions is a great way to approach sales copy.
But, in a column of Adwords ads, you want your ad to stand to out. You should always strive to stand and be noticeable in the crowd. So, if other advertisers already advertisements of this type, could you profit from a different tactic.
As Machiavelli discovered, consumers also respond to fear. In recent years, political campaigns have tried, or accused each other of tried, to use fear to get candidates elected.
You could appeal to a fear your consumers have in the first line of ad. Your second line then informs them that your product or service provides a solution. This will compel your consumers to click your ad.
Machiavelli was an Italian renaissance author who wrote a work called the "the prince". His book was intended to instruct the young Italian rulers of various city states how to govern. One of the main points of the work was the conclusion that it is better to be feared than loved.
Could you use fear to persuade your customers to buy from you?
Much of the sales copy in Adwords ads today focuses on making the consumer either curious or greedy. This is particularly true in the ads for internet marketing. Most of them make an outrageous claim, like "see how I'm making x dollars a month". This ad is designed to appeal to marketing consumer by appealing to his greed. Plus, the more outrageous the amount, the more curious the consumer is to see how the advertisers is doing it.
This is a very good tactic. Appealing to these two emotions is a great way to approach sales copy.
But, in a column of Adwords ads, you want your ad to stand to out. You should always strive to stand and be noticeable in the crowd. So, if other advertisers already advertisements of this type, could you profit from a different tactic.
As Machiavelli discovered, consumers also respond to fear. In recent years, political campaigns have tried, or accused each other of tried, to use fear to get candidates elected.
You could appeal to a fear your consumers have in the first line of ad. Your second line then informs them that your product or service provides a solution. This will compel your consumers to click your ad.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Factors Influence your Keyword Quality Score.
What determines a Quality Score? You've read the free guide and you know that the higher the quality score, the less expensive it is for you to buy traffic from Adwords. But what is at the heart of the quality score? How does Adwords assign a quality score?
* CTR within Adwords
The most important factor of your quality score is it's CTR. Google realizes that everything it's robots scan a page for can be manipulated. In fact, Google encourages this manipulation. Google tells you that the landing page must be relevant to the keyword. Therefore Google expects you to optimize your landing for a keyword.
But at the end of the day, the CTR is pretty much written in stone. The CTR is the clicks divided by the impression. If a human consumer find your ad relevant to the keyword / search term, they click your ad. Conversely, human consumers won't click on irrelevant ads. Google counts the CTR so heavily because it's based on the real human visitors to their search engine. Google is essentially letting the consumers drive the process. Google does this because the daily human consumers are a better judge of relevancy than any program.
Google assigns initial quality scores based on other factors. Nut once the impressions start, your ad will sink or swim based on its CTR. It's a Darwinian game of survival of the fittest.
* Ad Copy and Ad text relevance to query
Google examines your ad copy when assigning a quality score. Google likes to see the keywords in the ad headline or text, and rewards you with a higher quality score.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion tokens are not counted as keywords. So while Dynamic Keyword Insertion is likely to appeal to human consumers, Adwords will not boost your quality score. In fact DKI may damage your quality score id you remove the actual keyword from your ad in favor of the DKI tokens.
* Historical keyword performance
Google keeps your keyword historical data, primarily the CTR. That means deleting a keyword will not remove the already generated data. So, if you are deleting keywords and re-adding them to try to clean the slate, it's probably a waste of time.
Adwords considers the recent history to have more impact. This allows you to adjust poor performing keywords in the hopes of increasing their CTR. Without this consideration any keyword that performed badly historically would have a low quality score.
Deleting keywords is still an important task of campaign management. Like pruning plants, you must remove poor performing keywords to raise the overall quality of your campaign.
* Landing Page Relevance
A relevant landing page lowers your minimum bid and potentially increases your ad position. Google now considers the landing page relevancy when determining a quality score. A higher quality score translates to lower bids and higher ad positions.
In conclusion, Google has this to say about quality scores.
"There are over 100 factors that can affect quality score. However, not all will be triggered depending on the conditions involved."
* CTR within Adwords
The most important factor of your quality score is it's CTR. Google realizes that everything it's robots scan a page for can be manipulated. In fact, Google encourages this manipulation. Google tells you that the landing page must be relevant to the keyword. Therefore Google expects you to optimize your landing for a keyword.
But at the end of the day, the CTR is pretty much written in stone. The CTR is the clicks divided by the impression. If a human consumer find your ad relevant to the keyword / search term, they click your ad. Conversely, human consumers won't click on irrelevant ads. Google counts the CTR so heavily because it's based on the real human visitors to their search engine. Google is essentially letting the consumers drive the process. Google does this because the daily human consumers are a better judge of relevancy than any program.
Google assigns initial quality scores based on other factors. Nut once the impressions start, your ad will sink or swim based on its CTR. It's a Darwinian game of survival of the fittest.
* Ad Copy and Ad text relevance to query
Google examines your ad copy when assigning a quality score. Google likes to see the keywords in the ad headline or text, and rewards you with a higher quality score.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion tokens are not counted as keywords. So while Dynamic Keyword Insertion is likely to appeal to human consumers, Adwords will not boost your quality score. In fact DKI may damage your quality score id you remove the actual keyword from your ad in favor of the DKI tokens.
* Historical keyword performance
Google keeps your keyword historical data, primarily the CTR. That means deleting a keyword will not remove the already generated data. So, if you are deleting keywords and re-adding them to try to clean the slate, it's probably a waste of time.
Adwords considers the recent history to have more impact. This allows you to adjust poor performing keywords in the hopes of increasing their CTR. Without this consideration any keyword that performed badly historically would have a low quality score.
Deleting keywords is still an important task of campaign management. Like pruning plants, you must remove poor performing keywords to raise the overall quality of your campaign.
* Landing Page Relevance
A relevant landing page lowers your minimum bid and potentially increases your ad position. Google now considers the landing page relevancy when determining a quality score. A higher quality score translates to lower bids and higher ad positions.
In conclusion, Google has this to say about quality scores.
"There are over 100 factors that can affect quality score. However, not all will be triggered depending on the conditions involved."
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
How negative keywords improve your CTR?
Negative keywords help qualify traffic and make it more targeted. They do limit your traffic, but the traffic you do get will be more focused. This will pre-qualify your traffic before it clicks your ad.
A negative keyword is a word that you have decided not to show your ad for. You have regular keywords and phrases, and adding negative keywords tells Adwords not to display your ad when a negative keyword appears in the search terms with you keyword.
The most basic example of a negative keyword is the word free. Imagine an online retailer selling running shoes. That retailer may have the keyword phrase "running shoes" as a phrase match in their Adwords campaign. But, the retailer is obviously selling shoes, not giving them away. So, the phrase "free running shoes" may be undesirable. The retailer uses the negative keyword "free" and chooses not to show his "running shoes" ad for any search containing the word free.
Why do you want to eliminate traffic? If your goal is just pure traffic, you may not want to limit your traffic. But if you are looking for qualified leads, negative keywords help you screen out unwanted impressions and traffic. Screening out traffic means that a consumer who is unlikely to make a purchase with your website doesn't click on your ad. That can save you wasted clicks. But, negative keywords also stop the ad from appearing, which reduces the impressions of your ad. The CTR measures the clicks per impression, so if you limit the impressions of your ad to targeted traffic, your CTR should improve.
Continuing the running shoes example, a keyword search turns up the phrase "running shoes clipart". The retailer is not interest in consumer looking clipart. You would not wants impressions or clicks from someone looking for clipart. So, clipart is a good negative keyword.
You establish negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level. At the ad group level, you are eliminating impressions of you ads for all searches with the negative keyword. At the campaign level, you are applying the negative keywords to all ad groups, which filters down to all keywords.
A negative keyword is a word that you have decided not to show your ad for. You have regular keywords and phrases, and adding negative keywords tells Adwords not to display your ad when a negative keyword appears in the search terms with you keyword.
The most basic example of a negative keyword is the word free. Imagine an online retailer selling running shoes. That retailer may have the keyword phrase "running shoes" as a phrase match in their Adwords campaign. But, the retailer is obviously selling shoes, not giving them away. So, the phrase "free running shoes" may be undesirable. The retailer uses the negative keyword "free" and chooses not to show his "running shoes" ad for any search containing the word free.
Why do you want to eliminate traffic? If your goal is just pure traffic, you may not want to limit your traffic. But if you are looking for qualified leads, negative keywords help you screen out unwanted impressions and traffic. Screening out traffic means that a consumer who is unlikely to make a purchase with your website doesn't click on your ad. That can save you wasted clicks. But, negative keywords also stop the ad from appearing, which reduces the impressions of your ad. The CTR measures the clicks per impression, so if you limit the impressions of your ad to targeted traffic, your CTR should improve.
Continuing the running shoes example, a keyword search turns up the phrase "running shoes clipart". The retailer is not interest in consumer looking clipart. You would not wants impressions or clicks from someone looking for clipart. So, clipart is a good negative keyword.
You establish negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level. At the ad group level, you are eliminating impressions of you ads for all searches with the negative keyword. At the campaign level, you are applying the negative keywords to all ad groups, which filters down to all keywords.
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