How To Quadruple Your AdWords Conversions In Just Under 20 Seconds

To the nine of you reading this blog who happen to be experts in AdWords, you can skip this post. For those of you who have no intentions of launching an AdWords campaign ever, read it anyway. The lessons extend into other areas.

Because of the fan socks, I get a lot of email with “socks” in the copy. Most of the fan mail I get now starts like this:

“I know it’s not fan socks, but…”

This means that a lot of the contextual advertising I get in my gmail is sock related. Since I like socks, this isn’t quite as ridiculous as it could be.

The other day, I got an ad that read “The Funkiest Toe Socks” and since I dig funky toe socks, I clicked through. Bear in mind, this came in through my business email and I was busy doing, um, businessy things. But the promise of the funkiest toe socks was too much temptation.

I click through. The page takes forever to load. (Yes, I know THIS page takes forever to load, but I’m not advertising in your email, am I?) I’m waiting. I’m waiting. I’m waiting. Somewhere deep down in my subconscious, I feel that the longer I wait, the better the socks will be.

Finally, there it is. The left sidebar loads, then the right. Then the header. Then, finally, after much ado and excitement, the content!

It says:

“For men’s socks, click here.

For women’s socks, click here.

For kids’ socks, click here.

For dog socks, click here.”

Note the startling lack of toe socks.

Other than completely offending my sensibilities with the worst SEO in the history of the internet, I realized that I had been lied to. I was promised toe socks and toe socks had not been delivered.

Therefore, the lesson, as it applies to AdWords:

If you sell more than one product, NEVER, EVER, EVER send clickers to your home page. Send them to EXACTLY what they clicked on.

Don’t advertise in gmail. The contextual relevance is generally horrendous, and the likelihood of targeted traffic is so low it’s stupid. Spend your money on active search. Put your ad dollars in advertising ON GOOGLE when people search for EXACTLY WHAT YOU SELL.

Bonus lesson for people not running AdWords campaigns:

Regardless of what you do, at some point you’re probably going to advertise in some capacity. You want to make sure that what the customer arrives at, whether it’s your website or your call-in line or your brick and mortar location, is exactly what you promised them.

Create maximum flow.

Do not make your customer think, “Did I click on the right thing?” or “What the hell am I supposed to do next?” or “Huh?” In fact, if you can avoid making your customer think at all, that’s even better. Create as seamless an experience as you can from where they came from to where they end up.

Consider this in a banner ad context. If you’re advertising on IttyBiz and your ad reads “Click here for the best fucking fan socks ever!” with a picture of, say, fan socks, your landing page should look the same. Same copy, same picture, same color scheme as the ad. Either make them feel like they’ve never left the original site or actively welcome them from the original site in your copy.

“Welcome to the super secret IttyBiz reader discount page! (Shh. Don’t Tell. It’s SUPER secret.)”

Not exactly the best line of copy ever written, but it’s a shitload better than “Click here for men’s socks”.

By Naomi Dunford