When Google introduced Responsive Ads to all advertisers in July 2018, I saw it as an opportunity to simplify the workflow for a common optimization task performed by search marketers: ad copy testing. It has long been a best practice to run multiple variations of ad copy simultaneously, accrue data, and decide winners and losers […]
After somebody clicks on an ad, the only way to turn that person from a window shopper to a customer is the experience you provide for them on your website. It’s that critical moment, right after a click, for your brand to make an impression, gain trust, and ultimately get the person to spend their […]
I wanted to start this blog series off (check out part 1) talking about one of the most underutilized and misunderstood digital marketing mediums: email. Email marketing is much more than just sending a newsletter or sales to your consumers. There are many secondary benefits from running an email marketing program, most of which can help […]
When I first got into PPC management, I had basically no client management skills. I got into PPC because I read a book called The Future of Music (I’m a musician) that explained to me how digital distribution was changing entire industries and how the Internet made it possible for anyone to sell anything to […]
The Technique In a previous post, I showed you how telling your customers how many have converted unlocks the principle of social proof and is helpful in persuading more people to take action. In that test, I simply replaced a fairly generic introductory text in an ad designed to attract subscribers on Facebook to include […]
PPC Management Takeaways From Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 With another Black Friday and Cyber Monday PPC season under our belts, it’s time for us to exhale with the rest of the retail and marketing world. As we take a second to catch our breath, we wanted to look back at the crazy week […]
The Ecosystem Approach If you have ever chatted with me about digital marketing, you have most likely heard me say (over and over again) that digital marketing is an ecosystem. Over the next few months, I’ll be writing about the ecosystem approach to digital marketing. I’ll tackle all the components of the marketing ecosystem, what […]
The Technique It’s been well-documented in marketing psychology books like Brainfluence and others that offering too many choices to your customers can create frustration and a mental paralysis that leads to lower rates of people taking action. This New York Times article dives more deeply into the psychology behind it. But basically, when the number […]
Joe Martinez, our Director of Paid Media & Community at Granular, just wrapped up presenting at Confluence Conference for the third year in a row. Everyone in attendance got to learn why they cannot avoid YouTube advertising anymore. Besides learning about the value of YouTube, marketers got to learn all of the targeting options to make […]
There’s a single word that can lead you to getting better results from your PPC ads. That word is because. Why is this word so effective? Because whatever you put after that word acts as a justification or reason why a person should comply with your request. And because people have grown used to whatever follows that word having good rationale behind it over the course of their lives. Because of this, they can be more likely to comply with a request. (Because I just gave you this, you are now scientifically more likely to go do this test!). 🙂
Of course, the higher the stakes, the better the reason you’re going to need to get a prospect to take the action you desire. In many situations, you can implement this principle in your PPC advertising by making your requests with a strong rationale, no matter how clear you think the reasons behind your request may be. Let’s look at how I applied this principle in an ad test to achieve better results…
Here were the attributes of the test…
The campaign I ran this test in already had really good performance with Above Average CTR, but I thought I could do better. So I decided to test this principle out versus another psychological principle that works pretty well (trust & credibility). Below are the ads from the test.
The first is the control ad which played on the principle of trust & credibility in the 2nd headline by saying “From The Kitchens Of Experts.” My hypothesis was I could get better performance by giving the reason of “You Won’t Be Disappointed.”
YouTube campaigns in Google Ads seems pretty straight forward, right? You have a YouTube channel. You link it with Google Ads. Then you can promote your videos on YouTube to the exact audience you want. Well not so fast. There are a few caveats you should know before creating your new campaigns. Let’s break a […]
The Technique A classic way to be persuasive in advertising is to use a principle known as social proof. The principle holds that when people are uncertain about a course of action, they tend to look outside themselves and to other people around them to guide their decisions and actions. One such way to implement […]