I recently ran an Adwords split-test where the only difference in the ads was the 2nd line of text: Ad #1: “40 years experience. Call today” Ad #2: “39 years experience. Call today” The first ad got a 2.50% click Read more…
In 1984, a business guru wrote an interesting book.
It was interesting, in part, because it was in the form of a novel. It’s called “The Goal” (by Eliyahu Goldratt).
The novel outlines a number of ideas about business organisation, particularly in manufacturing.
One of these is called “the theory of constraints” and deals with bottlenecks in factory assembly lines.
However, it’s relevant to all types of business.
But, before I explain how it is relevant to you, I’m going to explain it in terms of (more…)
“People don’t like to read”
“People have short attention spans”
“People don’t scroll”
“You need to keep it short, no-one’s going to read ALL that.”
These are the things you’ll hear when the subject of long copy comes up.
Yet, at the same time, direct marketers – people who measure the response to their sales messages – say things like this:
“As a rule, good long copy will always beat good short copy.” (Drayton Bird)
So who is right?
A couple of months ago, I wrote a long copy version of a client’s sales page. This longer version had 1089 words, compared to the existing version’s 360.
Unsurprisingly, there was some resistance (more…)
When I first started managing PPC accounts – back in 2006 – PPC was seen as SEO’s poor cousin.
At that time, that probably made sense – after all, the ads were just text ads on the right hand side of the search results page.
Nowadays, paid listings take up around 85% of the first fold of Google results. And that – combined with Google’s crackdown on SEO link building – has, in my opinion, turned the tables and made PPC the superior choice.
And here are 11 reasons why…
A 2012 study by Wordstream showed that, for highly commercial search terms – the sorts of terms you’d SEO for – sponsored listings take up 85% (more…)
I’ve had a lot of fun this week putting together a list of some of the best marketing articles I’ve ever read. The initial list had over 30 articles. Here are the 8 that made the final cut: #1: 1,000 Read more…
Did you know Adwords allows you to target certain searchers that are most likely to buy from you? I’m not talking about keyword selection, time of day, geographic location, cpa bidding… or any of the other normal Adwords methods.
Instead, I’m talking about something that only 1% of Adwords advertisers are using to target the best prospects within (more…)
One of the things I’ve tested is price points.
My tests have indicated that price points of 7 and 9 tend to underperform price points of 5 and 0 – often by over 30%.
So, for example, £75 or £80 would usually be “good” prices compared to £77 and £79. (Good = more sales.)
However, there are experts in America who claim 9s are best.
The evidence they cite is a 2003 study by University of Chicago and MIT titled, “Effects of $9 Price Endings on Retail Sales: Evidence from Field Experiments”.
This experiment took four products priced $39, $49, $59, $79.
They tested what would happen if (more…)
A couple of weeks ago, Google made a major announcement: they announced that they’ll force “close variant matching” on all advertisers. Why is this important? Two reasons: #1: Because this means phrase and exact match, as we knew them, are Read more…
This week, Google pubished an Adwords “best practices white paper” called “Keywords to the Wise”. You can get it here: http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/weve-got-you-covered-with-our-new-guide.html However, true to form, it’s full of lousy advice that’s far more likely to cost you money than increase Read more…
As I mentioned yesterday, on 22nd April 2014, Google is going to make a big announcement about “improvements” to Adwords. I took a stab at guessing what those changes will be. Today, as a bit of fun, I’m going to Read more…
