Developing Ad Copy for Your SEM Campaign

I'm in process of optimizing a campaign for a client and thought it would be a useful post to provide some guidelines on how to write ad copy. I'm going to approach this at a high level for now.

1. Make sure your ad copy is relevant to your ad group and landing page. The more relevant your ad is to the search query and landing page content, the better your Quality Score will be and you will experience some cost savings.

2. Using AdWords as the specific example, you've got three lines to work with for a total of 95 characters. Break down each line into three distinct sections:

a. The Headline (25 characters): like headlines in newspapers, you've got to attract the searchers attention. Keep in mind
you're vying for the attention of a searcher who is looking at organic results and your competitors ads.

b. First Description Line (35 characters): you'll find yourself getting creative to convey your message within the character
limitations. State the product/service you're offering in this first line. Its the set-up for line two....

c. Second Description Line (35 characters): here you want to trigger an action. "Buy now" is a call to action and tells people
what to expect when they click on your ad.

I recommend you develop ad copy in excel, create multiple versions and use the LEN formula to calculate character count. Don't implement your ad copy right away no matter how compelling it is. Sleep on it and approach it later to make sure the ads make sense as a whole and clearly state the value a searcher will experience by going to your site. Implement 3 versions of ad copy and see which one performs better (be sure to allow the ads to be displayed evenly).

Successful Paid Search Optimization

Its only been four days since we optimized this account, but, we're really excited about the results so far. When we calculated daily averages before and after the optimization we saw some incredible improvements in such a short time:

- Average CPC decreased 33%
- Clicks increased 63%
- CTR increased 42%
- Conversions increased 58%
- Cost/Conv. decreased 36%
- Cost rose just 8%

Friends Getting Props

Check out our friends from Klick Studios recent mention in this article about the best examples of light and space effects in web design.

Great Cause

A friend's son and wife came up with a great idea to help people who lost their job in this tough economy. Imagine if you lost your job today. Visit Gift Cards for Dinner and donate your unspent restaurant gift cards to those less fortunate.

Woopra

376 days ago I blogged about Woopra and I'm at it again because you should use it.

It's not replacing Google Analytics or other ewb analytics tools, but, it is providing me with data I love...real-time data. You can see in real-time the visitors come to your site, click through your site pages and hopefully complete a conversion action. Here are some reasons to check it out:

1. Client engagement: one client I enabled this for as a test run is loving the tool. In fact, I'm getting the reaction I hoped for. They are looking at the data and asking questions. These questions lead to great action which has turned into sales

2. Customer Service: since you can view visitors in real time you will be able to help them as they navigate your site. Get them on the phone or live chat and you'll be able to see their exact click through path and help them complete a sale. The other side is, if you see people hitting a common stopping point then you can address the issue ASAP.

3. Marketing Campaigns: we launched an email yesterday and I was able to watch the people come in from around the world and click through the site. It was great to see hundreds of visitors hit the site at the same time and see who was buying.

Sign up for an account an install it on your site ASAP.