[thelist] [Marketing] AdWords, AdSense, Overture, etc

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

> Ian wrote
> 1. My own experience; didn't do so well in the end. I was promoting my
> own services, and the web design category is so busy that you have to
> be
> quite lucky to stay in it. It needs a good deal of effort especially
> at
> first. This is because you have to be clicked on a certain number of
> times, or Google drop you. They make your ad inactive while you tweak
> it. For example, if your ad is shown ten times (or however many) and
> no-one clicks it, you are suspended. You need to worry about the
> proposition and the marketing message you are promoting.

Yes, this is about ad copywriting. Basically your ad has to be
persuasive. People have to click on it, otherwise Google, using the
only information it has, starts to think it's irrelevant to the user.
Since Google's prime purpose is to provide a useful user experience,
they'll ditch your ad until you come up with something better.

This is in everyone's interest, think of it as them helping you write
a decent ad.

> 2. Marketing consultant I work with - gets half his business through
> adwords. Swears by them. He is a sales guru and knows how to sell
> himself in ten words, though.

Exactly :-)

> I will certainly use Adwords in the future, probably with the paid
> assistance of the guy in #2. :)

The skills to write a good Adwords ad are advertising copywriting
skills, so using a professional may well be worthwhile.

The other thing that's important is testing. Write two ads and compare
them, then ditch the worst and write another based on what you just
learned. Keep going, maybe set aside an hour or so every couple of
weeks to do this until you're happy you can't improve the ad.

There's keyphrases too ... are you an Internet software developer, a
web developer, a website developer, an online expert ... you get the
idea. Each of these target keyphrases probably need a different ad.

That's before we get into working out which of those keyphrases is
popular enough to be worth working on, and into tracking the results
when the enquiries reach your website.

It's full-time stuff :-)

Sorry if I've wandered off track .. you probably knew all this :-)

J