MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

One of the things that I enjoy the most in writ­ing my Google AdWords ads is to test dif­fer­ent adjec­tives to elicit an emo­tional response from the Google vis­i­tors. I find it fas­ci­nat­ing that chang­ing one word can have rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent results.

In a way, writ­ing ads for Google AdWords clearly shows that words truly are powerful.

They get peo­ple to respond in very dra­matic ways and more often than not, it is impos­si­ble to guess before­hand what will work. Below is another test where we tested two dif­fer­ent words. We tested “trans­form” vs. “improve”

Clearly “trans­form” is a far more emo­tional word than sim­ply stat­ing “improve.” As you will see, using such a pow­er­ful word sig­nif­i­cantly boosted the click-through-rate of our ads. How­ever, far fewer peo­ple took action. One clear hypoth­e­sis is that putting vis­i­tors into a mind­set of “trans­form­ing their life” is a huge promise so when they end up on the fol­low­ing site they are disappointed.

How­ever, if you are more descrip­tive by using copy such as “improve your life” vis­i­tors might be far more inclined to learn more about your prod­uct since they believe that your prod­uct might truly address what they are look­ing for.

Here are the detailed results of of our test:

While the power word “trans­form” boosted the click-through-rate by 44%, the con­ver­sion rate dropped by an incred­i­ble 75%. Clearly, in this case using the word “trans­form” in the copy got us a lot more eye­balls but not more leads and cus­tomers. This is also another rea­son why look­ing at the con­ver­sion rate of each ad is so important.

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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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