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Posts Tagged ‘Phrase’

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The Right Word and the Almost Right Word

Monday, May 13th, 2013

 

Today’s column will give you two tips for the price of one. But first, check out the contest that demonstrates both tips:




OK, first tip: beware of the emotional association of your words. Yes, cheap does mean “inexpensive.” But it also means “of poor quality, inferior” and “worthy of no respect” and “vulgar.” NOT the kinds of qualities that a bride would look for in a wedding dress, even if she would like to get her dress at a discount.


So you can see why headlining your ad with “Cheap Wedding Dresses” would be problematic, whereas 70% Off Wedding Dresses” would be quite attractive in comparison.


The other tip? When advertising discounts, it helps to reassure the buyer of quality. Even when you don’t describe the products as “cheap,” anytime you advertise a discounted price, concerns about quality inevitably arise in the mind of the prospect. So a phrase like “You Will Look Beautiful” really helps.


“See our dresses” now also helps because it offers the searcher the chance to judge the dresses with her own eyes. If it was me, I might even ditch the “& Save Money Too!” to include the “30-day Returns” or some such to further alleviate quality concerns.


And that’s it — 2 Tips From the Boosters to help your PPC ad copy effectiveness.


 

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Lightning and The Lightning Bug

Monday, April 15th, 2013

 

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” — Mark Twain.


That quote explains everything you really need to know about this contest:




Why do I say that?


Because the difference in performance between these two ads — representing a boost of 63% in Click-Through Rates — comes down to nothing but a few choice words, as there really is no difference between he offerings. Here’s specifically what I mean:


  • The writer of the winning ad focused on kids clothing rather than clothing in general — mostly out of a hunch that adults don’t usually search for ladybug-themed clothing for themselves. So what’s the difference between “Ladybug Kids’ Clothes” and “Ladybug T-shirts”? A much better match-up between searcher motivation and ad — leading to a 63% increase in response rate.
  • What’s the difference between “Ladybug Design Clothing” and “Ladybug T-Shirts”? Well, the first sounds a whole lot nicer and higher quality than the second phrase, doesn’t it?
  • And aren’t “Adorable” and “Cute” exactly the right descriptions for what moms are looking for when shopping for little kids clothing? Notice that the winning ad uses those words, while the losing ad doesn’t.


So what’s the tip you can take away from this and use on your own ads?


The right words (as opposed to almost right words) almost always come from the customers themselves. They’re the words THEY would use to describe what they’re looking and hoping for.


Sure, some of those customer-words get typed into the search engines — and those are obviously super important. But not all of them become search terms and these non Keyword customer terms and including them in your PPC copy can significantly boost performance.


And that’s this week’s Tip From The Boosters.


 

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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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Will THEY Think It’s a Benefit?

Monday, January 28th, 2013

 

First, take a look at this recent, winning contest:




Now, a couple of things about these two ads:

  • They both have the exact same headlines and URLs
  • Each ad has one and only one promotional claim/info-bit that the other ad doesn’t
  • The winning ad has “Get Exclusive Access” and the losing ad has “Style Delivered Daily”
  • Apart from those two differences, both ads contain “Premium Brands,” “80% off,” and “Free Sign Up / Join For Free.”
  • The winning ad way more than doubled Click-Through Rates, bosting it by 185%


In other words, apart from some slight rephrasing, the differences that made the difference between these ads comes down to the increased appeal of “Get Exclusive Access,” which seems reasonable enough, and the repulsive effect of “Style Delivered Daily,” which seems kind of odd to consider at first.


Why would “Style Delivered Daily” REPEL searchers?


Possible Answer: because people don’t want that many offers junking up their in box. Or maybe, because it now sounds like they’ll be marketing to you, rather than granting you “Exclusive Access.”


Either way, the point is that it’s entirely possible, and even likely, that the prospects for this ad didn’t consider “Syle Delivered Daily” to be any kind of benefit they wanted. And may have considered it something to be actively avoided.


Three Take-Aways


First, that without testing, this brand could have made that phrase a key tagline of theirs, without ever realizing that it was actively driving prospects away from their website. That’s how crucial PPC Testing is!


Second, that a professional ad writer can and should put herself into the prospect’s mindspace to see what might NOT be so attractive to them, even if it’s something the company feels IS a selling point.


Lastly, in order for a professional copywriter to take an outsider’s perspective, it really helps if they are actually an outsider — someone outside the organization. In this case, the winning ad was penned by Booster JeffBaum71, who is indeed outside of the client’s organization.

So… are you sure that YOUR selling points are really seen as attractions by your prospects? Have you tested it?


 

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Inigo Montoya’s Secret to PPC Ad Writing

Monday, October 29th, 2012

 

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
– Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride


Let’s switch things up and START with the contest first, shall we?




So, if you’re like me, you probably see that and think: “how can that other ad lose? It’s way more specific and credible on both price and turnaround time! What gives?”


And that’s where you have to understand Inigo Montoya’s Secret: sometimes words don’t mean what you think they mean.


In this contest, the word “custom” most likely doesn’t draw the same mental picture in the mind of the reader as it conjures in the mind of the ad writer. To the ad writer, custom means “your design,” as in “you design it and we’ll print it.”


But custom can mean a lot of things. Nike supposedly sells custom shoes, but that doesn’t mean that you send in a last (aka mold of your foot) and they custom shape the shoe to exactly match your foot. Nor does it mean that they’ll build any shoe you design.


For Nike, custom means you get to pick out the color combinations (from a limited selection of colors) for a shoe they already make, and then they’ll monogram or inscribe the shoe with your chosen initials/name/wording.


So is it inconceivable that a cynical audience might think that a supposedly “custom” post card might be a “We’ll let you customize a design with picked out colors and wording.”


Or “we choose the paper stock and quality of ink/prining and you pick out the design within some very restricted parameters?


Of course it could.


And that’s were the winning ad’s “Upload a Design or Design Online” helps to eliminate any and all doubt. Uploading your own design means “custom” in an unambiguous way — something that Booster, cshen, expertly leveraged to produce a 491% increase in CTR!


Bottom Line: different words can mean different things to different people — make sure you phrase your ads to leave no doubt around your most important sales propositions.


 

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