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Making Sense of Trademarks in AdWords

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

I was talking to a small business owner the other day, who was complaining to me about how difficult it is to run Pay Per Click ad campaigns on Google when you are faced with conflicting information all the time. I asked him to elaborate and he said:

“I talked to my Google AdWords rep recently and he said that using company names in an ad violates Google’s terms. Also, in some of your blog posts, you seem to suggest bidding on common brand names is also a violation. But I was under the assumption that this was common practice. Is it not? I’m sure our competitors are doing that and I’m wondering if I could report that to Google?”

It did seem like a confusing issue, so I decided to research it a little more.

Use of Your Company Name or Trademark in AdWords

Putting your own company name or trademark in your ad is certainly not a violation, it’s encouraged, particularly if yours is a well known brand/name. In the section of AdWords Help called Use of Trademarks in AdWords, there is an authorization form you can submit to be able to use your brand / trademark throughout your account.

Use of Your Company Name or Trademark by Competitors

The use of your trademark by competitors is where things get complicated. It differs between region and differs again between ad text versus keyword bids. Google actually opened up trademark keyword bidding two years ago, however AdWord’s trademark policy is now dependent on the region your trademark is registered in and the region/s your billing account is located in.

This is a crucial change and one that has likely gone unnoticed by many advertisers. So here are the main regional trademark policies:

AdWords Regional Trademark Policies

1. In certain regions, Google allow some ads to show with a trademark in ad text if the ad is from a reseller or from an informational site. There is covered by a separate trademark policy for resellers and informational sites.

2. For regions that are NOT included in Google’s trademark policy for resellers and informational sites, if their investigation finds that the advertiser is using the trademark in ad text, Google will require the advertiser to remove the trademark and prevent them from using it in ad text in the future.

3. In most regions covered by the Trademark policy (250+ countries including UK, USA and Canada), Google will investigate ad text only. They will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint in these regions. Furthermore, their investigation will only affect ads served on or by Google rather than those served on partner sites.

4. In EU and EFTA regions, Google does not prevent the selection of trademarks as keywords. However, in response to a complaint, they will do a limited investigation as to whether a keyword (in combination with particular ad text) is confusing as to the origin of the advertised goods and services.

5. In some limited regions, Google may investigate the use of trademarks in ad text, in keywords, or in both ad text and keywords. These regions include:

• Australia
• Brazil
• China
• Hong Kong
• Macau
• New Zealand
• North Korea
• South Korea
• Taiwan

Because Australia and New Zealand are included in the above list (and these are the countries in which I operate), I have witnessed a few keyword trademark infringements and represented some clients who lodged complaints procedures based on this policy. I have also been following closely a landmark case playing out in Australia about this very issue:

Landmark Test Case

In 2005, Australian telecommunications company Telstra found themselves in legal hot water when an online publication owned by one of their subsidiaries purchased Google AdWords blatantly using the names of competitors in their ads.

As a result, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched legal proceedings against the Trading Post Australia and Google Inc. in 2007.

In their Federal Court case hearing earlier this month, the ACCC challenged the use by Trading Post of the keyword phrase “Kloster Ford”, which was the name of a car dealership in Newcastle, as misleading conduct in breach of the then Trade Practices Act. When “Kloster Ford” was searched for using the Google search engine, this advertisement appeared:

Kloster Ford
www.tradingpost.com.au New/Used Fords – Search 90,000 + auto ads online.
Great finds daily!

The ACCC argued that Trading Post’s use of “Kloster Ford” in its sponsored link was misleading and deceptive as it represented that there was an association or affiliation between Trading Post and Kloster Ford and the ad suggested that information regarding Kloster Ford or Kloster Ford car sales could be found on the Trading Post website, when it could not.

The ACCC also alleged that, by publishing the results pages with these AdWords, Google had itself engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. In response, Google raised a defense that it was engaged in the business of advertising and did not know that AdWords purchased by Trading Post amounted to an infringement of consumer legislation.

On 22 September 2011, the Australian Federal Court held that the Trading Post had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct under the Trade Practices Act 1974. However, they dismissed the claim against Google, stating that while Google provided the technical facilities that permitted the relevant advertisement to be seen, it did not follow that they had endorsed the information conveyed. Consumers would understand that the message being conveyed to them was an advertisement from the advertiser, they stated, rather than the publisher. A settlement between ACCC and Trading Post has since followed.

This case is significant for all Australian businesses that place advertisements through Google AdWords and other pay per click models, because it means that use of competitor trademarks, business names, brand names and URLs could potentially breach Australian consumer protection laws.

Navigate With Care

So the upshot of all this is that unless they have your explicit permission, your competitors generally aren’t allowed to use your brand/name in their own ads, but if you’re located in the US or other areas outside the limited regions mentioned above, they ARE allowed to bid on your brand/name as a keyword.

But it’s not all bad news – it means that you are allowed to bid on their brand/name as well.

However, as with any legal issue, tread carefully when using trademarks in your ads. Accidental or not, a violation of AdWords policy can result in the closure of your account by Google and possibly even land you with a lawsuit.

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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Social & Search PPC Advertising, is it One or the Other?

By Resource Nation in Featured

When you think of pay per click advertising, chances are, you instinctively think of search engines. Online social advertising still doesn’t get the credit it is deserved. Granted, social advertising is a maturing medium, Facebook advertising has only been around a few years and Twitter less than a year but the opportunities are there for marketers.

The latest annual findings from Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization indicated that paid search marketers are turning to PPC advertising on social media channels to complement and enhance their online marketing portfolio. Traditionally these portfolios were heavily weighed by search engines, then display and affiliate advertising came along, and now social media.

According to eMarketer, “More than half (52%) of companies worldwide vouched for the “moderate” or “huge” impact social media has had on their search engine marketing programs within the last year. Add that to the growing number of social media channels offering a PPC advertising model, and it’s no wonder 47% of North American companies are running PPC campaigns on Facebook, and more than a quarter (27%) are doing so on LinkedIn.

Most of the critics of social advertising claim that “buyers aren’t in the buying process when they are browsing Facebook or Twitter.” To back up these critics, many US companies still rely on traditional placements by AdWords because simply, ROI is there. Social however, is often much cheaper than search advertising giving way to new and innovative ways to target users. For instance, on Facebook you can target an ad to every Male who likes the movie Fight Club and lives in Chicago. These innovative segmenting tools are growing social advertising.

Google is seeing their search shares drop and are trying to get in the “social” search mix. Incorporating targeted messages to users based on their Google Accounts. For instance if you are a logged in to your Google account and type “urban clothing” you will likely see different search results than if you aren’t logged in. Google takes your previous search history and demographics in to account when populating these searches to make advertising more relevant and profitable.

Social ads are still maturing and for the most part remain a branding tool for many businesses. They are able to get people to recognize a brand, interacting or “liking” a page is often the main goal. You don’t want to try to give a hard sell on social advertising, (leading users to a product page), you should put a squeeze page to capture people’s interest on the respective social media site. Getting a users engagement, email, interests or thoughts are potentially more valuable long term than a one time sale.

If you are trying to decide whether to advertise exclusively on social or search, just test it! The first month, set up a tracker and determine which site is bringing more traffic, CTR (click through rate) and ROI. If your business is highly “brandable” you may be better off shifting a portion of your online marketing budget to social, however if your business is a service or requires extensive commitment, think about search. As social advertising matures, consumers may begin to embrace social media sites as a way to buy, but for now people are just there to work and play.

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Matt Krautstrunk is an expert writer on online marketing based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as internet advertising at Resource Nation.

Clever Use of AdWords Lands Man Top Advertising Job

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

What’s a job at the top of your field worth to you?

To unemployed advertising executive Alec Brownstein, it was worth around USD 6. That’s what Alec paid Google AdWords to get the attention of New York’s top advertising agencies and score himself two job offers.

Alec decided he wanted a job at one of New York’s top ad agencies. But to get an interview via the regular channels could take months. So he decided to bypass normal job application procedures and appeal to the egos of the Creative Directors instead.

How did he do it? He set up PPC ads using Dynamic Keyword Insertion that would appear whenever one of the Creative Directors Googled themselves, otherwise known as a *vanity search*. So a Google search for Gerry Graf, David Droga, Tony Granger, Ian Reichenthal or Scott Vitrone would trigger Alec’s ad to appear.

The ad read:

Hey [Director's Name]
Googling yourself is a lot of fun.
Hiring me is fun, too.

A click on the ad led to Alec’s site and contact details. According to Brownstein, nobody was bidding on the names, so he was able to achieve the top ad slots for around 10 cents per click.

The result? Alec scored interviews with 4 out of the 5 Creative Directors and job offers from both Ian Reichenthal and Scott Vitrone of Y&R Advertising. He took one of the offers and now has a permament gig at Y&R New York.

Clever eh?

Google Display Network to Showcase Media to Advertisers

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Google has announced that all their non-search display advertising will be collectively called the Google Display Network from now on, replacing the existing Google Content Network.

The new network covers Google display ads on Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Finance, Blogger and other ad partner sites. Google made the announcement on their Inside AdSense blog, claiming the move was to make their display media clearer to advertisers:

“The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites where advertisers can buy ads through Google, including the over one million AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partners as well as YouTube and Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, and Blogger… The Google Display Network offers all ad formats – text, image, rich media, and video ads – enabling advertisers to unleash their creativity and engage visitors on your websites in various ways.”

If you’re an AdSense publisher you’re already part of the Google Display Network. No changes have been made to how AdSense works and no action is required by you to opt-in. However, if you use AdSense for search, your AdSense for search ad space won’t be part of the Google Display Network.

Advertisers will continue to be able to purchase ads on your search results pages in the same way they always have.

Choosing a Niche Market According to Niche Market Potential

By Bill Wynne in Featured

You want your business to be successful so you need to make sure that you do not make the mistake of choosing a niche market with no potential. The niche market potential and size is something that you must research. Of course if this is just a hobby blog or site it really does not matter.

Here are some guidelines that I use when determining a niche market.

Personal Interest – There are a number of interests I have but when it comes to being a profitable niche I find out there really is not any money in it. For example if you were interested in “Training an Elephant to Paint” your prospective buyers is going to be a small number of people. I do believe that it is best to choose a niche market that you have interest in since you will spend a lot of time with it, that is, if you want to successful with your website. Create a list of topics that you would like to market in and then apply the rest of the guidelines in this article to determine which is going to be the best niche to market in.

Niche market potential – Naturally you want to sell something that has a lot of people with interest in your niche. To determine this use Google Trends, Adwords and Amazon.com.com. Go to Google Trends and type 5 of your niche ideas into the search box. You will see on the graph which one is the most popular. The niche that appears to be the most popular may not be the niche that you want to get into, the next rule tells us why. Next, navigate to the Google Adwords webpage, go to Google.com, enter your niche in the search box and count how many paid for sponsored listings there are at the top of the search results and the links down the right hand side of the page. Those listings show that people are spending money on your niche which is a good sign that the niche market potential of your niche is really good. Lastly, go to Amazon.com and type in your niche. Are there books written about your niche and products for sale in your nice? If there is nothing then you should think twice about the niche you are thinking about and find something where there are products for sale.

Fad likeliness – This is a topic that I don’t here people talk about. You need to be cautious, regardless of the amount of traffic in that niche or the number of products that it is not just a fad. Having been in the retailing of vitamins and supplements there is something new every quarter and the old stuff sinks into insignificance, for example, bee pollen, deer antler velvet, shark cartilage and others. These supplements are not as common and popular as Vitamin E and other supplements and herbs that are popular and people will always be looking for.

Competition - There are two different schools of thought on how to relate to competition. The ideal would be to find a niche with a lot of traffic but no one seems to be targeting it. Those niches are hard to find, kind of like the black 69 Camaro that has been driven 150 miles and then sat in Grandma’s garage. She lists it in the classifieds not knowing what the value is and you buy it for a song. Apart from the ideal there are the two groups and the first group suggests that you go into a niche market with little competition and you will be able to rank high in the search engines with good keywords. The opposing group believes you should compete in the more competitive niches. The are competitive because there is a greater profit potential. To do this you need to know how to do the best SEO possible. That is something that you will have to determine for yourself. It is true though that to try to rank for a popular prescription drug without Adwords or some black hat SEO methods would be near impossible.

Those are the most important rules that will assist you in finding the best niche with great niche market potential. Take your time to make this decision, don’t rush or you will most likely regret it.

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Niche Market Potential is something Bill Wynne understands having made a great passive income from operating a number of niche websites.

Are you paying too much for your AdWords?

By Justin Deaville in Featured

Chances are you’re paying too much for your Google AdWords pay per click advertising but you can start right now on the path to better response rates for less money.

I’m Ian Howie and I’m going to give you some great ideas from my new book Wordtracker Masterclass: Google AdWords PPC Advertising in which I give a step-by-step guide to reducing AdWords costs and increasing response.

Success in PPC advertising requires a range of creative, trading and technical skills that few possess:

What Is AdWords Quality Score And Why Is It Important?

By Adrian Key in Featured

If you’re like many Google advertisers, you’ll be very frustrated by your AdWords Quality Score.

You’ll be regularly hammering your fist against the table with anger because your score is stuck at 1 or 2 and no matter what you try, you just can’t seem to get it to rise.

But what is AdWords Quality Score, why is it important and how is it calculated?

Once you understand the answers to these questions, you’ll be able to improve the Quality Score for all your keywords and save money too.

What is AdWords Quality Score?

Just think about it, what is the purpose of Quality Score?

Google prides its self on providing users with relevant search results to queries. Quality Score is their way to ensure that only the most relevant AdWords ads appear to users.

Why Is Your AdWords Quality Score Important?

The reality is that AdWords calculates a Quality Score for a keyword every time it matches a search query. In general, the higher a keywords Quality Score the lower your bidding costs and the higher the position your ad will appear.

What this means to you is that the higher the Quality Score for your keywords, the less you pay in bids.

How Is AdWords Quality Score Calculated?

If you’re like most people, when you start using AdWords for the first time you might find the way your Quality Score is calculated and keeps changing very confusing.

What is actually happening is that when you create your brand new campaign, Google calculates a provisional Quality Score for each of your keywords based on how the keywords you choose have performed in the past when used by other advertisers and how relevant your ad is to those keywords.

The right thing to do therefore when setting up a new campaign is to divide your keywords into small ad groups of 10 or less closely related keywords. Each ad group should trigger at least one relevant ad that includes within it the most popular keyword in the ad group, ideally in the title and in the first line of the text.

The landing page of your ad should also point to the most closely related page of your web site for those keywords and not your home page.

As time passes by, Google will evaluate your landing page and the rest of your web site.

Therefore your entire web site or at least a significant amount of the content on it needs to be on the general theme of the keywords you’ve selected.

Now, as your account starts to mature, so the Quality Score of your individual keywords will change based on their performance. If the ad your keywords trigger has a high click-through-rate then it’s likely that your Quality Score will rise, poor click-through-rate and it will probably fall.

As a rule-of-thumb you should be aiming for a click-through-rate of at least 1% for all your keywords.

What Is Google Actually Looking For?

The actual formula for calculating a keywords Quality Score is a closely guarded secret. However, we do know what Google looks at when making the calculation.

Your AdWords Quality Score is calculated differently depending on if you’re using Google and the search network or the content network.

For Google and the search network, factors used to calculate Quality Score include:)

• The historical click-through-rate of your keyword and the ad it triggers.
• The historical click-through-rate of your entire account. The historical click-through-rate of your domain.
• The quality of your landing page.
• The relevance of the keywords to the ads in your Adgroup.
• The relevance of the keyword and matched ad to the search query.
• Your accounts performance in the region you’re targeting.

For content network, factors include:)

• The ads past performance on the target and similar sites.
• The relevance of your ads and keywords in the ad group to the target site.
• The quality of your landing page.

The best way to improve your keyword Quality Scores is by optimizing your account. This entails making sure that each of your ad groups contain descriptive ads all advertising the same product or service, and that each keyword in the ad group closely relates to the ads.

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Adrian Key is editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. Learn more about improving your Quality Score and discover resources, ideas and tips to improve your AdWords campaign at: ==>> http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/

Google Adwords. Goldmine Or Minefield?

By admin in Featured

The global financial downturn is driving millions of people to try to earn extra income from the Internet, without losing what little they have.

Many thousands of internet entrepreneurs have succeeded and attained financial security. So what is their secret? How do they get a steady stream of visitors to their website and how do they persuade them to click the “Buy Now” button? By far the majority of marketers use a combination of Google Adwords and Search Engine Optimization.

Google Adwords carry millions of small ads every day, for every conceivable product or subject imaginable. So it must be the way to go, right? Sure, many people are making a good living from Adwords and a few can make a fortune at it. But, if you’ve tried it, then you’ll know it the true difficulties involved.

Being potentially very profitable, this market is very difficult to break into. First, you have to learn how this thing works, then you have to constantly improve your ads and you will need to spend money before you find the best performing keywords and the most profitable ads. You can set a daily limit to your spending but just twenty dollars a day will mop up 600 bucks in the first month.

Most popular keywords cost anywhere from 50 cents to 2/3 dollars per click, so twenty dollars won’t buy many clicks and, at a click-through rate of two or three percent, you will not get many visitors per day.

There are only about eight slots for ads on each page of Google, so the competition for these slots, particularly on the first page of results, is very fierce and often very sneaky. Each of the eight “tenants” of those valuable places on Page 1 are striving to get to position one, which, on average, gets over 70% of the traffic on that page and the only way to do that is to push the others down. All the Adwords users on the second and third pages are also fighting to climb up the greasy pole.

It is now possible to buy software that will allow you to spy on details of competitors’ campaigns and to see what keywords they are using and even what they are paying for each keyword, so you can potentially bid slightly higher and gain a higher position. If you do get your ad on Page One or Two, someone will be sniping at you with this type of software. Even if you have gained a comfortable position on Page 1 of Google, it is a constant struggle to maintain that position.

There is an alternative approach to running a successful Google Adwords campaign. You can employ a specialist team of experts, with the experience and the time to do the whole thing for you. The problem is, they won’t be interested unless you’re going to be a big spender on Adwords. That’s why I say that Google Adwords may be one of the most difficult ways to make money on line, certainly for a newcomer with little money to risk.

So how about Option Two? Search Engine Optimization. Surely this is the ultimate solution!

You learn how to design and build a web page which meets all Google’s guidelines (and I’ll tell you what they are) and then you get on Page One, with a page which costs nothing to be there and wait for the money to roll in. How cool is that?

This is all you need to do. Find a suitable keyword phrase (preferably 4 or 5 phrases) which gets at least 100 searches a day and which does not have many heavy hitters in the competition. 1,000 searches a day is obviously much better but is likely to have strong, well-established competition.

Then you need to get a domain name which incorporates the main keyword or phrase and build your web page so that it includes the keywords in the Title of the page; in the Description of the page; in the URL of the page; in the Headline of the page and in the Anchor Text of all links to other websites. That’s not too difficult, is it?

Then, to convince Google that yours is an “Authority” site, you need to get multiple links to your page, from other related sites, dealing with the same subject, whether it is Health, or Family, or whatever. The more important these other sites are, the more weight Google gives to these links. I can tell you, getting these links is hard work.

Here’s a real example. My website is on Page One of Google, for the phrase “Stop Arthritis Pain”, out of 2.1 million results. Last time I looked, it was at position 6, on Page One, and has been there for months. The same search phrase is on Page One of Yahoo (at position 2), out of 21.7 million results. Impressive eh?

I’ll bet you’re thinking “that page must be pulling in a ton of money”. Well, it isn’t. The reason is, that keyword phrase is not a popular search term and only gets about 20 visitors a day, so it makes a few dollars a day but nothing significant. Think about those other twenty million pages, who are getting even less traffic than those on page one.

So, if you can get onto Page One of the big search engines, you may make a lot of money but 99.9% of the pages up there are having no impact at all, in terms of making money for their owners. In many cases, it’s a lot of time and effort for no reward.

A well established method, used by High Street businesses for many years, is gaining credibility in online marketing. Make money by giving stuff away for FREE! We’ve all heard of BOGOF – “Buy One, Get One Fee!” How about, “Get this valuable stuff, without buying anything”? Many internet marketers, smarter than I, claim to be making excellent earnings with this method and without the aid of Google Adwords or the Search Engines.

This is a quote from an expert, who has many profitable websites from using these methods -

“There is no more powerful way to sell your product than by ‘preselling’ it with free and useful information, typically with a free ebook.”

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Ken Charles – Learn who this guru is and see how he makes huge money, with exactly this method. His Free eBook is packed with detail and with Free Software as well. Get it Now, at Harvey Segal and decide for yourself.

SMX Sydney: PPC Ad Group Management

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Live blogging of Writing Killer Ad Copy session by Tim McDonald from The Found Agency at SMX Sydney 2009.

Tim says PPC advertisers need to structure their ad campaign effectively. How much time do you have to manage your campaign? Plan effectively BEFORE launch. There are limitations to an AdWords campaign but generally you can use a single campaign to manage hundreds of keywords.

Within your campaign you can use the targeting and then within the Ad Group is where you get specific.

Targeting options

Campaign targeting =

- search / display /
- geo / time / demographics
- start / end dates
- daily budgets

Ad Group targeting

- keywords and sites
- CPM / CPC bids
- Ad creative – text, display

25 campaigns per account
100 ad groups per campaign
2000 kw’s per ad group
50 ad creatives per ad group
spend $$$ and limits can be increased manually

Keep in mind when planning that relevance is key. It leads to high click through rates.

Why be concerned with Click Through Rate (CTR)?

- direct impact on your CPC
- it’s a metric of ad/keyword effectiveness
- impact on your quality score
- if little or no relevancy, ads may not show
- high CTR = more visitors/better ROI

Showed an example search query for “richmond real estate” where PPC ads lead to specifically targeted landing pages for the query.

Best AdWords Account Structure

- no single structure is best
- make it granular + manageable
- clustered keyword themes
- test and adapt

Tim also recommends using few keywords per Ad Group, which I always agree with, but when he suggested using 30 separate AdGroups for 30 different keywords, he kinda lost me at that point. From a management perspective, I’ve found that grouping together keywords via specific themes is much more logical than creating a new AdGroup for each and every keyword.

Tim says to consider separating:

- brand & high performers
- content / display
- Head vs long tail
- keyword match type
- keyword topics / themes

Tim recommends breaking out high performers from Ad Groups and putting them in their own Ad Groups so they have their own budget rules. Break out search and content ads into different ad groups to allow easier management and ad type display. Also consider breaking out separate keyword match types (exact / broad / phrase etc)

- Isolate exact match keywords

- Use phrase / broad match for keyword discovery

- Use negative keywords

- Don’t rely on AdWords to show you the “best match”. Do your own keyword research

- Use search query reports in your analytics to dig deeper

Content Network Recommendations

- Separate Content Network-only campaigns

- Fewer keywords per Ad Group

- Use Broad Match

- Separate bids for content audience

- Consider top-performing placements

SMX Sydney: Writing Killer Ad Copy

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Live blogging of Writing Killer Ad Copy session by Lucas Ng of Fairfax Digital at SMX Sydney 2009.

Lucas starts by saying think about how you write. It doesn’t just apply to ad copy.

Google’s Guidelines for Writing Ad Copy

1) Use the keywords in your ads. Use of keywords give your ads 50% more clicks

Lucas then presented a case study showing an ad using a keyword and an ad without and the conversion rate difference.

2) Use prices and promotions

This sets a pricepoint for your users and lets them know what to expect.

3) Use a strong call to action e.g. get more information / buy now / subscribe today

That’s not all there is. Capitalize the first letter of each word in your ad, this apparently works. [I was really surprised to hear this.  I'd have thought AdWords editorial guidelines wouldn't allow that and even if they did, I don't think it's the most effective strategy].

Understand Your Audience

Who else is influencing the searcher? e.g. does the wife have the final say in the purchasing decision? Write the ad for the purchaser, not necessarily the searcher. Think about age, gender, geolocation.

For example, the day that Steve Irwin died, people were searching for:

1) Crocodile Hunter’s Deadly Dive

2) Crocodile Hunter Dead

3) Crocodile Man Killed

4) Steve Irwin dead

Fairfax’s competitor used headline 4), with Steve Irwin in the title, while Fairfax didn’t consider search trends for persons who knew his name and used the more generic headlines. Result was that their competitor became the #1 news site in Australia for the first time in 2 years.

Killer ad copy differentiates in two ways:

1) it uses a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – is it faster? is it cheaper? was it first? etc.

2) it’s highly relevant to your landing page

Great ad copy:

1) appeals directly to the audience

2) uses a USP

3) uses one or more psychological triggers (there are 30 of them!) e.g. a sense of urgency, a desire to collect, a desire to belong (brand association), exclusivity, instant gratification etc. Type *psychological triggers* into Google to see more.

4) filters clicks (qualifies your leads automatically)

5) differentiates

6) is a continual process of testing and refining. Try changing slight things e.g. question mark, capitals, different URL etc.

Test,  refine and test some more. For best results, you must always be testing new ad copy. You’ll need to write new ads and gradually phase out the ones that don’t work. Ad constipation occurs when you just can’t write a new ad. Ask people and get new ideas. Look at your competitors and do the opposite. Steal from your sales team, use Twitter, look at magazine covers for inspiration.

* Photo courtesy of Andrew Ballard of ReBusiness

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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