MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Most Google AdWords Advertisers always think of cramming as much text as possible into their AdWords ads. After all, if you can add 35 characters per line, then why not getting the most out of your space?

Well, here is a Google AdWords tip for you: Less can truly be more!

The next time you create a new text ad on Google, go for less! Use less words on every line and see what happens. Whatever you do, don't clutter up your ads! Instead, only add the essential copy and see what might happen.

Here is a great ad that we had been running for a long time for one of our clients:

This ad did quite well for us. It consistently got a CTR of 2.31%. This is not bad and we were quite pleased. We also had a conversion rate of 5.7% (i.e. 5.7 percent of visitors signed up for the free course). Overall, the results were very respectableand this was one of our better performing ads.

However, we just did a new test. When I wanted to setup a new ad, I ran out of ideas of what copy to test, so I just deleted the second line and turned the first line into two lines. Here is the new ad we tested.

Overall, the copy is far shorter and we even left out one of our key benefits. We no longer mentioned that we offered a free guide. However, what happened? Our CTR shot up to 3.61% and that is a 56% improvement in the click-through-rate. On top of that, the sign-up rate for our offer jumped up to 18.8% which is a 230% improvement! I was and I am still quite stunned by the huge improvement. I guess I will be testing lots more copy that is simpler, shorter, and goes straight to the point.

What is even cooler is that I received an alert the moment I had completed a successful test of these two ads. How did I get this alert? I am using a free new tool called the "AdWords Optimizer." You can access it here:

http://adwords.clickmuse.com

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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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