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Posts Tagged ‘Motivations’

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Precipitating Events

Monday, April 29th, 2013

 

Some of us are proactive some of the time. And by some of the time, I mean like 2-5%. The other 95 to 98% of the time we are reacting to something, whether it’s a sudden opportunity or a newfound problem.


I mean, do most of us buy running shoes just because? Or do we buy a new pair when our old ones break down? Or at the start of a new running season? Or when someone comments on how ratty our old pair looks?


Why does this matter for PPC? Because people don’t conduct a search just because either — they usually conduct a search as a respons to an event. And keeping that event in mind helps you write ad copy that’s more immediately relevant and response-generating.


Check out this recent win and see for yourself:




The winning ad won because it was more relevant to the most likely precipitating event for safety signs: someone was notified that they were NOT in compliance with workplace safety standards. And who is most likely to be doing the notifying? Well, OSHA and ANSI, of course.


I think it would work even better had the winning ad also mentioned the availability of express shipping, since fixing a safety discrepancy usually comes with some sense of urgency, but overall, it’s the ad that most directly addresses the emotional state and motivations stemming from the precipitating event that wins. In this case, the ad boosted CTR by 20%


So take a tip from the Boosters and give some thought to what kind of precipitating events are motivating your prospective customers. Then adjust your ad copy accordingly.


 

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Clarity, Clarity, Clarity… and Just a Dash of Curiosity

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013

 

OK, I’ll admit: clarity without relevance isn’t going to get you anywhere with your PPC Ads.


Ultimately, your ads and their essential offerings have to match the motivations of the searcher in order for her to bother reading and clicking on your ad. But if the searcher can’t understand what your offering, she’ll ignore your ad altogether.


So your ad has to be clear and relevant — AND at least credible enough in its claims to make it worthwhile to click for more information.


So is it any wonder why this contest resulted in such a huge win? See for yourself how the winning ad more than doubled CTR — boosting it by 135%:




Think of it this way, if you’re planning a trip to Chicago with your kids and one of the places you want to take the kiddos is the Shedd Aquarium, which ad is going to make more sense and seem the most relevant? We’ll let’s start with the headline:


  • “Visit the Shedd Aquarium” or
  • “Shedd Aquarium & More”


Well, they start out almost as a kind of a tie, really. The winning ad more directly fits my motivations, but the losing ad pushes the key phrase to the beginning of the headline, which is important and generally considered a best practice.


Where things tip in the favor of the winning ad is the “& More” of the losing ad’s headline. See, if I’m searching on Shedd Aquarium, I’m looking just for that, at least initially, so the “& More” makes me feel like I’m getting set up to be pitched something I’m not interested in.


But really, those differences are relatively minor. Where the big difference comes in is the ultimate clarity of the offer. The winning ad makes it clear that I can save 55% off of the entrance fees for Chicago attractions and activities by buying some kind of multi-pass that would allow me to see the Shedd Aquarium plus 24 additional attractions.


I may or may not end up wanting that deal, but at least I can clearly understand it in order to make that decision. That’s where CLARITY comes in and why it’s so


And really, how can I know if I want the deal until I learn what the other 24 attractions are and how much the multipass costs, right? So even if I’m not quite sure whether I want this deal, the offer is at least sufficiently credible to be worth the click — I still want to CLICK ON THE AD. That’s where the dash of curiosity helps to spike the CTR scores.


Compare that to the losing ad: if you read the body copy, are you at all clear on what they’re offering?


  • Does the Shedd Aquarium offer tours and museums and cruises?
  • Or are these tours museums and cruises offered by someone or someplace else?
  • And why would I want to buy all that when I’m just researching a trip to the aquarium?
  • What’s in it for me?


Mediocre and amateur PPC copywriters worry about squeezing in as many appeals and buzzwords/keywords as possible. But they almost never worry about being clear about their offer and what’s in it for the searcher.


Professionals START with clarity as a must-have baseline, and then work on “boosting up” an ad from there. So take a tip from the boosters and do the same.


 

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Caveman Follow-Up

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

 

A few week’s back, I wrote about a contest between two ads, one for “The Caveman Diet,” and the other for “The Paleo Caveman Diet.”


The Caveman Diet won, mostly because the major search term was “caveman diet” and if you’re calling it a caveman diet, that’s usually because you’re not yet familiar with the term “Paleo Diet” and therefore the hybridized term “Paleo Caveman Diet” could come off as confusing.


Well, what happens when you change the search terms?


I think the following contest answers that question rather well, a contest for an ad featuring the same diet for those who are searching on “the paleo diet” this time:




  • Notice that the hybridized term still doesn’t work. It either comes off as weird or condescending.
  • Notice also that the ad with the closer/exact match of search terms, as well as additional use of the terms, does better.
  • And finally, the ad that features the imperative verbs and more clearly understood call to action still wins out over the more statically worded ad.

So search terms matter. And you knew that. But search terms also indicate INTENT. Someone searching on the caveman diet might be earlier in his researching and buying process than someone searching on Paleo Diet, who probably already knows a little bit about the diet. That means that an ad for the Paleo Diet search term should speek to the intent to move past preliminary research to actual experimentation, hence the winning ad’s improved CTA: “Discover the paleo diet with us.”


In other words, don’t just vary your ads use of terms to reflect the search, vary the ads psychology to speak to the changing motivations behind those changing terms.


 

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The Language of the Dog

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

 

“Speak to the dog, in the language of the dog, about what’s important to the dog”

— Roy H. Williams


The very first rule of good PPC Ad Writing involves SCENT — people look for information online like dog’s searching for food: they follow one scent trail until it leads to food or stops. If it stops, they then go back to the beginning of their search to pick up another scent trail to follow.


When people search on keyword terms they are expecting results that carry the same “scent” as the keywords they put in. In other words, your ad has to match the search in terms keyword usage. This is why the default headline for most ads involves mirroring back the search terms, and one reason why Dynamic Keyword Insertion can work so well for headlines — it allows the ad to mirror back the exact terms used by the searcher.


But keywords aren’t the ONLY thing that carries scent, and good ad writers have to deal with these other factors, too.


And what are these other factors?


  • EXPECTATIONS
  • CONCERNS, and
  • CONNOTATIONS


People can conduct the same search with different motivations, and therefore markedly different expectations. Given two ads with equally good keyword scent, the ad that best matches the motivations and expectations of the searcher will win.


Also, even if people have similar motivations, they can have different levels of concerns regarding the product or service they are shopping or the information they are seeking. Two ads with the same level of keyword scent and same reflection of motivations can perform radically differently if one better addresses key concerns than the other.


Lastly, there’s word usage. If the language your ad uses better reflects the natural language of the searcher, than your ad will outperform a competitor, even if her ad equals yours in terms of keyword, motivation, and concern-related scent.


Given all of that, is it any wonder why the winning ad won in the contest below?




Of course not. The winning ad better reflected keyword scent in the headline by exactly matching the keyword term, while the losing ad only approximated the keyword. So there’s an advantage on keyword-related scent.


The winning ad also addressed Do-It-Yourselfer concerns regarding ease of use, calling the blowers “Reliable” and “Easy.” The losing ad addresses no such concerns. So there’s an advantage on concern-related scent.


And the winning ad also uses easily understood terminology for describing the performance of their blowers (2500 lb/hour) vs. jargon (Force 1 2 3 & Wasp). So there’s an advantage on CONNOTATIONS.


That’s three strikes and you’re out for the losing out which was outperformed by the winning ad by a mighty 126% — more than doubling CTR


So remember, make sure your ad talks to the searcher (via keyword match), about what matters to the searcher (via expectations & concerns match), in the language of the searcher (via words with the right CONNOTATIONS), and your ads will outperform the competition.


 

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Matching Copy to Searcher Intent

Friday, November 2nd, 2012

 

The key to powerful PPC performance is presenting the searcher with ads that most directly, relevantly, and credibly match his motivations for searching google.


The searcher has a problem or goal. Your ad is making him an offer. The more closely matched the offer — to the goal, the more likely the ad is to win the click.


That means the same product can be, and in fact SHOULD BE, represented dramatically differently in response to different search phrases. For example, if I asked you to pick the winning ad in this contest –




– the first thing you should do is ask, “what are the search phrases?” If the search was on “Media Player for FLV Files” you might expect Ad B to win.


But if the search term was on “Managing Media Files” you might expect Ad A to do better.


Why?


Searcher Intent. One searcher wants software that’ll be able to play a specific media file, while the other wants software to manage his media files. So even though it’s the same product/software, different abilities are emphasized through different ads.


And while I can’t provide you with the exact search queries in this column, I can say that the ad campaign was for a broad range of “Media Software” terms, and that, as you might guess, Ad A beat out Ad B. In fact, Ad A boosted Click-Through Rates by 134%


“Manage” and “All in one place” are powerful phrases to a person overwhelmed with media files. And “The only media player you’ll ever need” is equally powerful to someone confronted with un-playable media files. Which phrases work best depend on context.


Bottom Line: optimizing PPC Ads requires human-powered psychological tweaking and testing. And optimizing PPC Ads at scale requires large scale human-powered copywriting.


Do you have the kind of large-scale, human-powered ad writing on tap to optimize your PPC Campaigns?


Maybe we could help you with that…


 

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