Last year my friend and mentor, Bryan Eisenberg, exposed the biggest lie of pay-per-click marketing: “Keywords don’t fail to convert!!! It’s we who fail to convert visitors from those keywords.” Bryan’s point is that as long as: the keyword phrase...
Using and Testing The Images You Already Have
I spotted this ad on my wife’s Facebook page and a few thoughts flashed through my mind: 1) Boy is that photo a jumbled, hard-to-look-at mess! 2) “Secret Photo Skills”? Color me suspicious… 3) I wonder if there aren’t more...
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Tribal Is As Tribal Does
What good does it do to hyper-target your market if you don’t tailor your messages and offers to reflect the targeting? If you’re going to send all your segmented target audiences the same or almost the same messages and offers...
When & How to Try to Push the Boundaries on “Non-Existent Functionality”
Facebook is admirably clear on their advertising guidelines. Lots of (IMO) sane and common-sensical Dos and Don’ts aimed at protecting the user experience. They don’t want users creeped out by ad creative displaying uncanny access to user data They don’t...
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Ads in the Wild: Fill the Frame
If you’re already dealing with a small image size, as you are in crafting Facebook advertisements, you never want to zoom out on the subject matter — that’ll just make the item appear microscopic. Instead fill the frame with your...
Addressing the “Yeah, Sure” Response
So I couldn’t help but notice this ad on my wife’s Facebook page: You gotta admit, the bold, fluorescent green font proclaiming FREE books would grab they eyeballs of most anyone, and capture the attention of every avid reader that...
Fiction Writing for Improved PPC Performance
I don’t want this to sound too scandalous, but it’s a natural mistake for most copywriters, including PPC Ad Writers, to assume that they’re writing non-fiction — that’s a huge mistake. Of course, a decent ad should be non-fiction in...
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Intentionally Excluding Half Your Audience?
Imagine you’re creating a Facebook ad targeted to professional photographers. And you don’t have ready access to the data which would allow you to target by Nikon or Canon preference. Would you still be willing to design ads that call...
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Seasonal Greetings? I Should Hope So!
It’s social media, right? Meaning that social context has huge influence over what gets noticed and reacted to, right? And by “social context” I mean that you think different thoughts, and are likely to respond to different bids for your...
Images, Headlines, and Targeting — Oh My!
I once saw a video clip of British-Irish comedian, Jimmy Carr, doing a bit on “enlargement” e-mails, asking if everyone else was getting spammed by them too, or if they were somehow targeting him based on some sort of presumed...
Learning from “Controls”
In direct marketing, the ad that sets the performance baseline — the ad you’re writing against — is known as the control. Sometimes controls get beaten and replaced very quickly, and sometimes they run for decades. And learning from successful...
Facebook Ad Autopsy
When most people think of testing results for Facebook Ads, they think in terms of boosting click-throughs — getting higher response rate by using the right picture and saying the right things. But that’s an incomplete picture. Don’t get me...
