I've heard have a "call to action". Has this really been proven to work better?
Should i mention specific sales or discounts? Or have some general words about my product line?
Just trying to figure out what people have tested and see what works best compared to other strategies.
Zack
My current copy text (not the headline) is the "A" in the classic "AIDA" formulae of selling - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
For the headline, I have always found best results using just the keywords, even if they don't really make sense as a headline - it doesn't matter. They will appear in bold, and it is exactly what the user was searching for.
You can use {KeyWord:Alternative} as your headline to automatically use the search query as your headline (if it is short enough) or "Alternative" if not.
Specifics work for me, but they don't work for dmorison. The word "buy" works for some people, but I have never had much luck with it. You really need to test and adwords makes it easy to do this.
Adding the keyword somewhere to the headline is best. That is the one definate. This is why you shouldn't have more than a few related keywords per ad. You can use the {KeyWord:Alternative} but just be careful. It may make your ad look sloppy and turn clickers away.
I've also heard that it is ALWAYS best to bid .05 per keyword. Would anyone agree with this?
No. Analyze your ROI. Find out what is best. 1, 2, & 3 is the best place to be, if you can afford it. If you can afford those spots, it is well worth the money.
I've also heard that it is ALWAYS best to bid .05 per keyword. Would anyone agree with this?
Actually, I've found the exact opposite for highly targeted keywords (I don't recomend this for general keywords, but ones that are very related to your site). When I overbid on keywords, my CTR rate is high enough (usually 15-35%) compared to my competitors that my actual cost per click is lower than if I bid around what my competitors bid. By breaking the rule of bid what you can afford, I actually save money.
If I did this on general keywords that drive some traffic, I'd go broke quickly, so for the general keywords that are used for branding as much as anything, I'd agree that a lower bid is more useful. It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish by advertising.
I've heard have a "call to action". Has this really been proven to work better?
I've found that for a lot of my ads, making the add look informational about a product, instead of a call to action increases the CTR. People for the most part don't want to buy something, they want to learn about it, and then buy it. This isn't true for all my ads, but for about 75% of them, when the ad copy was:
keyword based title
Questions about keyword?
Read our keyword info
url/keyword-info
I've also found that by adding /keyword to the url has also increased ctr by 2-5% as people are becoming more aware of how sites are designed, and don't want the home page, they want a specific page about what they're looking for.
