MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Being very descrip­tive is prob­a­bly one of the sin­gle most impor­tant rules of writ­ing effec­tive online ad copy for Google AdWords. How­ever, it is often over­looked and rarely mentioned.

Why?

• It is too obvi­ous and just com­mon sense
• It is not flashy overly cre­ative and fun to do

The funny thing with com­mon sense is that all too often peo­ple don’t fol­low it. Instead, peo­ple keep chas­ing the next fancy new AdWords opti­miza­tion tips and tricks. Going back to basics, how­ever, can often do a lot for you as the exam­ple below will indicate.

In the exam­ple below, we sim­ply added three words to the first descrip­tion line of our Google AdWords ad. The three words are “Learn how to”

Why was this strat­egy so effective?

First of all, peo­ple are on Google because they are look­ing first and fore­most for infor­ma­tion and by start­ing the ad copy with “learn how to” our ad copy looks as if the site that we are adver­tis­ing is more likely to answer the cus­tomers question.

Sec­ond, it might also be that the Google AdWords ad copy that con­tains the words “Learn How to” appears to be less com­mer­cial, which might also fur­ther increase the appeal of the ad and the con­ver­sion rate that we see.

I would def­i­nitely have to say that our win­ning ad is not one of the most sexy ads that I have writ­ten but it cer­tainly is one of the more effec­tive, deliv­er­ing a huge boost in the click-through-rate and ROI.

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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