Ad Quantity

I’d recommend that you not start any PPC campaign with less than 4 differently worded ads. By using multiple ads instead of just one, you’re able to test different negative qualifiers, descriptive words and different emotional responses. How do you come up with multiple ads?

* Start with a base ad with no attempts to “marketize” it.
* Do two rewrites to add descriptive words that form an image in your mind
* Do two rewrites to evoke emotion in the reader. Pride, joy, anger, fear, laziness, greed, and envy all work well.
* Now do two more rewrites that add negative qualifiers (price is good, or you can use something from the sales letter)

Run Your Ads

You’ve now got 7 ads - the base ad, plus 6 variations. This is the point that separates the successful marketer from the wannabes. Go start your campaign with what you feel are the best 3-5 ads. Don’t show them to any friends, don’t have your wife or husband critique them, and for God’s sake don’t try to analyze them. Don’t do ANY further rewrites.

Any further work on these ads is completely wasted time. Your friends, your spouse, and even yourself have absolutely NO IDEA how these ads will perform. Anything they tell you (or that you tell yourself) is complete speculation - only the people you are actually selling to can tell you which of these ads work and which don’t. They don’t tell you this directly; they tell you through your statistics.

Analyze FACTS, Not Speculation

Once you’ve placed your ads on the PPC systems of your choice, it’s time to let them run for a week or so. Don’t obsess over your stats - find something else productive to do while you let these ads do their job.

After a couple of days, take a look at your stats. These stats will tell you what to do.

Low clickthrough, low (or no) sales: Your ads don’t evoke mental imagry or emotion in the target audience. They do not compell the reader to click on them. Rewrite them after learning a bit more about your target audience.

High clickthrough, low (or no) sales: Your ads appeal to too broad of an audience - add better negative qualifiers.

Low clickthrough, high sales: The product’s sales letter is doing it’s job, but your ads aren’t. You may want to do a few rewrites to try and make the ad more appealing to a broader market, or ease up on your negative qualifiers.

High clickthrough, high sales: This is the sweet spot! If you feel you can get better numbers, then feel free to play around with some rewrites.

The stats that your ads get will always, ALWAYS tell you exactly what to do next! If you “lost money”, then rewrite your ads using different emotional triggers or descriptive words. If you’ve gotten lots of clickthroughs but no sales, then you need better negative qualifiers.

Even if you’ve spent $50 in PPC and haven’t gotten a single sale, you haven’t failed! You’ve simply found a few ways that don’t work for this market. That’s great news, because now you know, without a doubt, what not to do in this market. Remember, in this phase of your internet marketing career, you need to learn everything you can, and the best way to learn what works and what does not work is by DOING.

If the thought of “losing” $50 in advertising frightens you, then I dare say you’re not ready for an internet marketing career. Instead of having the mindset that you are “losing” $50, you should think of it as spending $50 to learn more about a market that you can eventually dominate.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

So once you have a week’s worth of statistics for your ads, and you’ve evaluated those stats (and therefore know exactly what to do next), you simply do it again. If your ads are working, leave them alone (or add additional ads to your campaign to try new things.) If your ads are not working, then refine them with new descriptive words. Attempt to evoke other emotions (if your first set of ads concentrated on evoking feelings of pride, try anger instead. Or greed…) If you’re getting too high of a clickthrough, refine your negative qualifiers as well. If you’re getting a very low clickthrough, make your negative qualifiers less restrictive.

The Result

And that’s it! Spend 10 minutes writing your PPC ads, and let them run. Don’t over analyze them. Get them written, and get them running. After you have some results, make adjustments as needed. Next time, we’ll talk about step 3 of the “Beginning Affiliate Marketing” process - cashing your checks :)