Internet Megaphone» Small Business Website Tips

9 Tips For Writing Irresistibly Click-able AdWords Headlines

John Jorgensen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:56:19 +0000

An AdWords headline can only consist of 25 characters. That’s 82% shorter than the maximum length of a Twitter message.

The headline also happens to be the most important line of your ad. If your headline doesn’t grab searchers’ attention as they quickly scan a Google search results page, your ad will go unseen. That means you have a very short window of opportunity to make those 25 characters count.

Here are nine guidelines to writing headlines that will give your ads the highest probability of being clicked on.

1. Don’t use your company’s name.

This is a big one that I see a lot of small businesses get wrong. Unless your company is a household name like Amazon, Walmart or Coca Cola, don’t waste your precious headline space by announcing the name of your company.

The only people who will recognize your company name and click on your ad are those who are already aware of your business and are probably already a lead or, even worse, a current customer themselves.

And for those who have never heard of you? They don’t care what your company’s called. They just want to know if you can solve their problem. By using a headline that doesn’t grab their attention, they will probably never get the chance to find out.

2. If you’re a local business, mention the location you’re serving.

If you’re a dermatologist in Nashville, Tennessee, put “Nashville” in your headline. Remember, it’s all about grabbing the searcher’s attention. You have to make the headline as relevant to them as humanly possible. What better way to do this then to put their location in big blue letters right at the top of your ad?

By the way… if you’re doing this make sure you’re geotargeting your ads OR all of your keywords include “nashville.”

3. Use emotional trigger keywords.

Cheap. Free. Fast. Limited Time. Special. Now. You.

These are all words that evoke emotion in people. Human beings may be complicated, but we have the simplest triggers that get our attention and compel us to take action. Use them to your advantage and your ad is more likely to be clicked on.

4. Include the price of your product or service.

If you’re beating most of your competitors when it comes to price, don’t be afraid to put it right there in your headline with a shiny dollar sign in front of it. Most other advertisers won’t be doing this.

5. Try reverse psychology.

“Don’t Buy < x >,” “Don’t Try < x >.” Replace x with your product or service. If you use this technique, in line one of your ad you should lead with something like “Unless you buy from us.” This will almost certainly stand out against other ads in your industry (unless your industry is internet marketing).

6. Make an outrageous claim.

“Acne Free In 3 Days.” I haven’t checked to make sure that’s 25 characters or less but you get the point. Make a bold claim, but make sure that your landing page backs it up… Google actually has rules about this. You don’t need scientific reports (necessarily), just be sure you have some info on the page that supports your claim.

7. Put it in quotation marks.

“Studies have shown” that human beings’ eyes are “drawn to quotation marks. “

“See” what I mean?

8. Use at least part of your keywords in the headline.

If you’re bidding on the keyword “gourmet catering,” don’t just run an ad with a headline that says “Food Delivery.” You want to use at least one of the keywords in your headline for two reasons: one, because any words that match the Googler’s search term will be displayed in bold (ex. “Fast Catering”), and two, the word is more likely to catch the searchers’ eye because it is exactly what she searched for.

9. Use symbols $#@*-!

The majority of advertisers don’t use symbols in their headlines. Using a few where appropriate can make your headline stand out as searchers scan the page. Note that I mean “where appropriate” very loosely… I test pretty much all of my headlines with a question mark at the end at some point.

Photo credit: try_to_touch

Ditch Your Stone Age Business Email Address and Get a Contact Form

John Jorgensen — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:03:13 +0000

If your visitors aren’t picking up the phone, the only other way they can contact you from the comfort of their computer chair is electronically.

So many small businesses get this wrong on their websites by putting an “Email us” link on their site.

If you want your website to acquire customers and make money for your business, there are multiple problems with this.

First, in the same way that so many businesses hide their phone numbers somewhere on their site, the email link is usually tucked away somewhere on the bottom of the page or sitting on a “Contact” page hoping someone finds it and clicks on it. Even if the “Email us!” link is front and center on your site, it fails the 5 second test because it looks like just another link. It doesn’t grab your visitors’ attention and tell them you’re a business that can solve their problem.

Plus, email links demand a lot from your visitors and makes them jump through hoops to contact you while giving them plenty of chances to become side tracked along the way. You may be thinking to yourself, come on… it takes two seconds to send an email… is this John guy lazy or what?

But think about what you’re actually asking your visitor to do. Here’s what’s going on inside one of your average potential customer’s heads as she is debating whether to click the ‘email’ link on your site:

1. “This business looks like they might actually be able to solve my problem. But it’s too late to call them, and plus I’ve embarked on a personal year long challenge not to speak…”

2. “Okay, here’s an ‘Email Us’ link. I guess I could send these guys an email… but what information do I need to give them? What if I leave something out? Maybe I’ll just do it later…”

Here’s where a third of your customers make a note to send you an email later on and then promptly forget about the email, your business, your product, and what they had for breakfast. Never to be heard from again.

3. “I guess I’ll send them an email and get a little more info.”

4. *clicks link, waits for desktop email application to load*

5. *still waiting…*

6. “Finally. Now, what do I put for the subject? How about ‘Hi.’ No wait, that’s too unprofessional. Wait, it looks like my boss just emailed me and she’s upset that I’m only communicating by smoke signal at the office…”

You get the idea. If she finally does send the email, she probably doesn’t include half of the information you actually need to qualify her as a customer, so now you have to put in the time to follow up just to see if she’s worth the time to follow up with.

There are so many things that suck about expecting your customers to email you that I’m tired of talking about it.

Let’s get to the solution…

A big contact form on every page.

Here are a few of the things I love about contact forms:

Visitors cannot overlook them as just another link
They have those big, empty text boxes that are just begging you to write something in them
They let you request the essential information you need from your potential customer
They have shiny ‘Submit’ buttons… and who doesn’t like to press buttons?
No outside applications or email websites required
Formsmake it brain-dead simple for visitors to know what they’re supposed to do without requiring a single electron of thought: fill it out.

The best way of encouraging your visitors to contact you online is by placing a giant contact form on every page of your site.

These days you don’t have to be a web developer or even know HTML to get a contact form set up on your website. Here are my recommendations…

I’ve tried out a few different pieces of contact form software and my hands-down favorite is MachForm. It makes it incredibly simple to create big, clean looking contact forms and stores all of the responses in an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate. MachForm also makes it a snap to go in and edit any of your forms. At the time of this writing it costs $39.

You can see a MachForm form in action on a website I created for one of my PPC management clients at http://www.WindowsOfHopeCounseling.org. Check it out, you can’t miss it.

If you’re using Wordpress, there are a variety of free plugins that let you put a contact form on your site. The one I’ve used the most in the past is cformsII.

It doesn’t matter how you do it, just get a big form on your site. No matter what else happens with your website, you’ll know that you have made it as easy as possible for your potential customers to become current customers.

Bonus: Once you have your form set up, here’s how you can turn the act of filling it out into a “conversion” goal for Adwords conversion tracking (How to Use Google Conversion Tracking in Wordpress) or Google Analytics (How to Track Form Submissions With Google Analytics Goals).

Do you have experience with any other great contact form software or Wordpress plugins? Leave ‘em in the comments!

3 Ways NOT To Display Your Business Phone Number On Your Website

John Jorgensen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:38:23 +0000

1. Don’t hide your phone number at the bottom of your site.

2. Don’t make your visitors dig for it by only putting it on a “Contact” page.

3. Don’t place it in the middle of your home page in the same font as everything else where it nicely blends in among all of your other text.

Here are good places to display your business phone number in a big, bold font:

In the header at the top of your site on every page
Just below the header on every page
In the top right corner of every page

Are you noticing a pattern?

Think of how you browse the web. If you’re like me, you land on a page and decide if it’s worth your time within 5 seconds. Studies support this. That means you have 5 seconds to capture your visitors’ attention.

By putting your phone number in a big font at the top of your site and telling them to call for an appointment/appraisal/demo/etc. you are telling visitors: “We are a business who can solve your problem today. Call us.”

Don’t let your small business site be confused for an informational page or some junior high student’s class project.

For bonus points, put a call-to-action (no pun intended) next to your number or right below that says “Call today for a free consultation!” or “Call for an appointment today!”

Make sure your number is impossible to miss for anyone who’s looking and then tell your customers to pick up the phone. You may be pleasantly surprised at how many listen.

Photo credit: mia_takahara

The Two Simple Things Your Small Business Website Absolutely Must Have

John Jorgensen — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:53:21 +0000

When creating a website for your small business, there are so many things to consider that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Here’s a quick list off the top of my head:

Site design
Advertising
Content
Pay-per-click marketing
Visitor analytics
Graphics
SEO
Blog
Newsletter
Adobe Flash?
Photos
Page hierarchy
…the list goes on.

All of these things are important, and a good website should incorporate each of them in one way or another (with the exception of Flash, which is usually a waste of money and hurts your SEO… plus is annoying to your visitors 95% of the time).

However, you could have the slickest, most technologically advanced, easy to use website that’s #1 for a hundred keywords on Google and it will mean nothing for your business if you don’t motivate your visitors and potential customers to contact you and make it brain-dead simple for them to do it.

Every aspect of your small business website should work towards this single goal.

How many customers has your website generated for your business? This is the only metric by which you can measure your site’s success. Not traffic, not press coverage, and not how cool anyone thinks it looks.

Either it causes your phone to ring or it doesn’t.

That’s why the two most important things your site aren’t your cool logo, your visitor tracking or any of the above…

If you care at all about making money or generating customers online, the two items your website must have ON EVERY PAGE are:

1. A giant phone number (3 Ways NOT to Display Your Business Phone Number on Your Website)

2. A giant contact form (Ditch Your Stone Age Business Email Address and Get a Contact Form)

If your website does not have your phone number and a contact form (not an email address) prominently displayed on every page, stop what you’re doing and get these two things in place.

These will be the best additions you’ll ever make to your website.