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Inner Circle Roundtable of 21st Century Marketers |
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Chapter Eight
How to Write an Effective PPC Ad
By Ben Hart
One of the biggest mistakes people make with their Google PPC ads is to have the ad be about them and not specifically about what their potential buyer is looking for.
So their Google Ad will look something like this:
I see ads like this all over Google’s PPC listings. I call it this a “business card ad” because that’s basically what it is.
What is this ad about?
It’s about the lawyer. It says nothing about the prospective customer – the searcher.
What is the searcher looking for?
Well, if the searcher is looking for a lawyer, he must have a specific legal problem he’s worried about.
In fact, let’s take my case. I received two reckless driving tickets in one week.
I really was not driving recklessly. But I was driving 72 in a 50.
More than 20 miles per hour over, the speed limit is automatic reckless driving in Virginia. Twice in one week, that’s a license suspension and possible jail time.
I needed a lawyer – someone who specializes in reckless driving charges, or at least who is expert in Virginia traffic law – specifically Fairfax County traffic law.
So, what do I do?
I go to my computer and start typing in keywords like “reckless driving fairfax county virginia lawyer.” Lots of terms like that. Very specific. Terms that precisely describe my problem.
I did not want a lawyer in California.
I did not want a family law specialist.
I have a reckless driving legal problem in Fairfax County, Virginia. I’m due in court in three weeks. If my lawyer is not damn good, I could end up in jail or with my license suspended or both, plus a heavy fine and higher insurance rates.
So I see lots of PPC ads for lawyers. Lots of lawyers on the organic lists as well.
Only 8 ads come up on the PPC list for the keyword phrase “reckless driving fairfax county virginia.”
More than 1,000,000 people live in Fairfax County, which is right outside Washington, D.C. It’s one of the wealthiest areas in the country. There are more than 1,500 prisoners in the Fairfax County jail – many of them for traffic offenses.
Yet only 8 PPC ads come up in my search results.
One ad has the headline Dan Miller & Associates.
That certainly does not appear to be about my problem.
Another says Quality Respected Firm. Ughh!
Another has the headline Leesburg Traffic Lawyer. That’s not bad, but wrong county.
Another says Virginia DUI Attorney.
That’s better because maybe he also knows something about reckless driving, but it’s not exactly on target, is it?
Another ad says VA Traffic Defense.
That looks promising, so I click on that ad. But it turns out this is not a lawyer or a law firm. It’s just a database of lawyers from all over the country.
I click on some of the other ads, and also some of the organic search listings.
I can’t find anything like what I need. When I click on most of these links, I am taken to a general website of the law firm with photos of lots of lawyers.
“Who the heck do I call here to solve my reckless driving problem?”
I can’t tell from any of the ads and listings I see here – even though I specifically typed “reckless driving fairfax virgina lawyer” (and various word combinations along these lines) into Google.
That’s how people search for what they want or need on the Internet.
They are very specific with their searches.
I don’t care that Bill Smith is a Virginia lawyer – which is what his ad is telling me. What I want to know is: “Can Bill Smith solve my reckless driving legal problem? Can he keep me out of jail?”
Your ads and all your marketing must be about solving your prospect’s problem.
Your prospect is telling you exactly what his problem is with the keyword search terms he’s using. No one is searching for “Bill Smith Virginia Lawyer.”
A good AdWords ad would say:
Google will highlight all my keywords in the ad to make sure I don’t miss them.
Google will want to show me I struck paydirt.
Bingo!
“That’s exactly what I’m looking for!” I would think . . . if I ever found such an ad.
Notice this ad does not mention the lawyer’s name or the name of the law firm.
It’s all about the problem the searcher is looking to solve – in my case a panicked searcher.
I don’t care what the lawyer’s name is – or the name of his firm.
All I care about right now is “Can whoever it is solve my specific problem? Is a solution to my problem even being proposed . . . by anyone?”
“Is there someone out there who can help me?” is what the searcher wants to know.
We can get to credentials and all that later – even though 70% of people will hire the first lawyer they can get on the phone without even bothering to check out their credentials.
That’s how thrilled people are to find someone (almost anyone) who at least says they can solve their problem.
There really is no excuse for failure if you do your marketing correctly.
Mostly, marketing is about putting yourself in the path of a thundering stampede of people who are frantically looking to buy what your selling.
It’s really not a whole lot more difficult that that. You just need to know how to find the stampede of your buyers.
Focus not on you or even on getting your customer. Focus on what your customer wants.
Emphasize that.
But don’t feel silly or embarrassed if you’ve written ads like the bad ads I’ve shown you here. Even the pros make this mistake all the time.
We are always tempted to talk first about ourselves in our advertising instead of about what our customer wants.
Let’s take me as an example. I made exactly this mistake when I launched my first Google AdWords campaign.
You might think this is incredible because I have a 20 year background in direct marketing.
But I made an amateur’s mistake with my first Google AdWords Campaign.
Here’s what my ad said:
Direct Mail Copywriter Ben Hart’s direct mail letters have generated $500,000,000 in sales.
What’s wrong with that ad?
The problem with this ad is that it’s all about me. It’s not about anyone else but me.
Stunningly, I did get business from this ad anyway – showing that bad advertising is better than no advertising; and showing that even a terrible ad can be reasonably successful on Google AdWords -- which is why I see the same bad ads running on Google every day.
And the keywords I selected to connect with this ad were just as bad – words like “direct mail copywriter,” “copywriter,” “direct mail expert.”
Again, what’s the problem with these keywords?
Same thing.
The keywords were all about me – not about what businesses actually want or need.
I began to think about this. Not many people were actually hiring me to write copy. Some were, so the ads were still profitable. Mostly I just had my stable of clients.
But what I noticed was that people were buying my books.
People did not necessarily want to pay me thousands of dollars to write direct mail letters and ads for them. But they were willing to plunk down some money to buy my books and learn how to do it themselves.
Hmmm.
I started to think.
What people want is not a “direct mail copywriter.” What people want are “sales letters” and “ads.” What businesses want are more “sales.”
So I canceled, or drastically scaled back all my “Direct Mail Copywriter” ads, and I started to focus on what businesses really want – and that’s more sales.
Hiring a copywriter might be a means to that – might be a necessary expense, a necessary evil.
But hiring a copywriter is not the end result they are looking for. The end result business owners want is more sales, more money. They want a growing business.
I figured this out in large part by noticing how well How To Write Blockbuster Sales Letters was selling.
I was selling 200 copies per month or so – with just my little Google AdWords campaign that wasn’t even advertising the book. It was advertising my copywriting services.
So I retooled my ad, my marketing strategy, and my entire marketing approach.
What do the great generals do? They make adjustments to meet reality.
They had a plan. The plan isn’t working, or it’s not working as well as it could, so they adjust.
My results were showing me that what entrepreneurs want are sales letters and marketing letters.
They do not really want a copywriter.
So I built an AdWords campaign that just focused on the keywords “sales letters” and “marketing letters” to sell my book – How To Write Blockbuster Sales Letters.
The headline on the ad just said:
This ad would take the clicker not to the home page on my general website, but to a webpage that was just about the book.
The page was essentially just a big display ad for the book.
Well, that worked like gangbusters. For the same advertising cost, I was now selling about 500 copies of the book a month for $32 each, plus shipping. It was costing me about $10 to find a buyer using Google AdWords.
It was costing me $3.80 a piece to print the book. So I was clearing about $18 profit per book sold.
Not bad.
Once people bought the book, they were added to my email list. They started getting my e-newsletter on marketing. From this, I also got quite a few very good clients.
Google only allows 25 characters for your headline. So your headline must be very brief. No room here for creativity. You must be very brief and exact about what you are offering – or, more precisely, what the big benefit to the searcher is for clicking on your ad and going to your website.
This is actually great training for headline writing. You must be super-focused and to-the-point. Nothing fancy.
Always ask: “Does the headline on my ad deliver a big immediate benefit to the searcher for clicking on my ad?”
Headlines that have worked well for me are “Great Sales Letters, Free” . . . “Model Sales Letters, Free”,“Free Killer Sales Letters” or just “Free Sales Letters.”
That’s what anyone typing “sales letters” into a search engine wants.
My early AdWords headlines that were not successful tended to talk about me. Headlines like, “Direct Mail Copywriter” or “Copywriter for Hire.”
But then something else happened that caused me to make yet another adjustment.
Quite a few people who bought my book wanted one hour of coaching.
So I started offering that. For $250, people could buy one hour of coaching over the phone on their marketing.
That’s how my Inner Circle program was born.
This is a training program for small and medium-sized business owners who want to grow their businesses faster, bigger and with less effort by improving their marketing.
There seemed to be a big lack of places people can go to really learn how to market effectively. And there seemed to be a big demand for marketing advice, training and coaching. So why not set up an affordable marking training program designed for entrepreneurs?
So I gave that a try.
Bingo!
It worked great.
What I found was that it was much more profitable to take How To Write Blockbuster Sales Letters and just give it away free as a lead generation piece (an “ethical bribe” to get visitors to fill out my sign-up form) than to sell it.
I was able to collect 10 times more email addresses that way than by selling the book. This then increased the ultimate productivity of my Google Adwords ads by many orders of magnitude.
It’s much better to have people paying me $38 a month for an ongoing training program than $32 once for a book. I’m still near the top position on Google for the keywords “sales letters” and “marketing letters.”
I then did the same with my book Automatic Marketing.
Instead of selling it, I’d give it away free as an “ethical bribe” to get people to fill out my sign-up form to get on my email list.
I would then be able to covert 10% of these leads to Inner Circle members or trial members.
The result as of this date: 2,200 Inner Circle members are paying me $38 per month.
And this program is only a year and a half old as a write these words.
Yes, I have a big Google AdWords bill – about $25,000 per month.
That’s certainly a lot of money.
But I don’t mind one bit, because I am able to double my money about every 65-75 days.
I don’t know many investment gurus on Wall Street getting a better return than that.
But I did not start my Google AdWords campaign at this level. I started by just spending about $50 a week until I started to get the hang of it.
So how am I about to double my money every 75 days using Google AdWords?
Well, by getting about 25% of those who click on my Google ads to fill out my sign up form to get the free book . . . and then through my marketing process, converting about 10% of these leads into Inner Circle members or buyers of some kind.
Some Inner Circle members have also become clients who are paying me thousands of dollars per month.
I’m not even counting this business as part of my overall business model – because my goal is to completely get out of the business of having clients at all.
I just want members and product buyers.
I am paying about 54 cents per click on average – a click representing a visitor to my site. I started off paying just a nickel a click, but ramped up slowly as I got my ads to work.
So that’s my business model in a nutshell.
The headline on one Google ad says this: Great Sales Letters, Free
This ad takes clickers to a landing page that gives them a free digital copy of How To Write Blockbuster Sales Letters if they fill out my sign-up form.
Another ad says this: Marketing Plan, Free Book
This ad takes the clicker to another landing page that offers a free digital copy of my book Automatic Marketing.
They have to fill out the form and get on my list to get the book.
That’s the “ethical bribe” part.
I am betting that my sign-ups will be so blown away by the quality of the free gift, that they will be curious to find out what they will get for something they’d have to pay for.
In other words, I’m betting that I will be richly rewarded by exceeding expectations by a mind-bogglingly wide margin. That hypothesis is certainly paying off.
Exceed expectations with the first transaction (even if its a free transaction) and you will have no trouble getting people to buy from you again and again. Exceed expectations, and your selling job is then over.
This is even more true today with all the scam artists out there on the Internet. People almost expect to be scammed these days.
So when people find something that’s really good, that really OVERdelivers on what it promises, you get fiercely loyal customers. That’s certainly proven true for me.
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