This is a 4-part series so stay tuned over the next 4 days to get the whole lesson.

Attracting Buyers (Part 1/4)

Initially, when an advertiser is beginning to write his own ads, he might have a narrower focus for their objective. “How do I attract visitors?”, or “How do I get a higher click-thru ratio?” are usually the first instinctual questions he’ll ask himself. If not aware of these next 2 goals, the purpose of attracting buyers is most certain to be fruitless and unrewarding. This is the part of ad writing that gets you higher CTRs. The better you qualify website visitors, the lower your CTR will be.

Write Catchy Ads. Well that was easy. Duh. Of course we want to write catchy ads but how do we write the catchiest ads? Try not to pressure yourself too much. We won’t really know which ads are the most attractive unless we test multiple ones at the same time. I’ll talk more about testing at the end of this article (Part 4/4) but for now, I want to give some key advice which will make the ads catchier. Look at this sample ad about coffee beans.

In the ad description, you will see the offer for “20% Off.” Description lines are where we should include special offers, unique selling points, key features, and supporting description if the ad title is vague in any way, and a call-to-action. Google recommends having the special offers on Line 1 along with features and descriptions etc. and a call-to-action on Line 2.

Studies have been done that show people are highly attracted to numbers (percentages and dollar amounts). When inquiring buyers perform a search, they will get a list of results and then scan the page for information. Typically they are scanning for relevancy (mentioned next) and incentive. Numbers often times imply incentive and if we use them, wandering eyes will be more likely to stray in your direction.

Unique selling points like Free Fast Shipping are always going to grab more attention when product shipping cost might be high or when buyers might be eager to receive their shipment. A good call-to-action like “Order Online!” following the free shipping part will make the buying process seem most effortless and fast.

Relate the Ads to the Buyer. This is actually more responsible for making ads catchy because the relevance takes place most effectively in the ad title. I separated this part out from the previous section because it requires a whole separate set of actions that must be done outside the scope of simply writing the ads.

First, in order to relate ads to the buyers, we have to know what they want. Luckily, we kind of know because they type in these little things called keywords which tell me exactly what they desire. Now that we know what they are looking for, it makes a lot of sense to simply put an ad in front of them that matches this desire. It’s easy, right? Depends…

Too many times I have visited a new Adwords advertiser account and inside the Adgroups I notice that there are all types of different keywords which really have no textual relation to one another. For instance, in an Adgroup that uses the mentioned sample ad, I might see these keywords: Dark Coffee, Coffee Gift Basket, Costa Rican Coffee, and Dark Ground Coffee. These keywords might seem highly relevant to each other as they have the word “coffee” but they don’t all do a good job of relating the ad to the buyer. Let’s review.

Dark Coffee - Although extremely general, this keyword is the best suited for this ad title. All the words in the keyword are in the ad and it is still very relevant overall.
Coffee Gift Basket - Way off the mark. I don’t see gift basket here in the ad at all.
Costa Rican Coffee - All this could be somewhat relevant, it is better if we put it in an Adgroup with the title “Costa Rican Coffee”.
Dark Ground Coffee - Totally irrelevant. This ad says “Coffee Beans” and “Whole Bean Purchases.” Why would we put this in front of someone specifically looking for “ground” coffee?

If you happen to find yourself in a situation where you are guilty of compiling all sorts of keywords into one ad, don’t trip out. It’s not the end of the world. All you have to do is make a list with groups of similar sounding and meaning keywords; all of which describe the exact same product. Once you have this list, just make more Adgroups in the same campaign. And make the ad title most relevant to keywords within that Adgroup.

These keywords might be better suited for the above ad: Dark Roast Coffee, Dark Coffee, Dark Roast Beans, Dark Coffee Beans, and Dark Roast Coffee Beans. When these terms prompt the corresponding ad to show on a search, any actual words the ad possesses will bold up and stand out to the person searching.

So imagine you are the person doing the search. You go to Google. You type in Dark Roast Coffee. An ad appears that says ‘Dark Roast Coffee Beans’ as those keywords in the ad bold up. There are other ads that don’t seem as relevant to your search. This one matches your search exactly. Isn’t this where you want to click and possibly buy?

Come back tomorrow to see Qualifying Buyers (Part 2/4).