Creating an Adwords ad - advice needed

[beyonddriving]

Has anyone got any hints or tips on creating an effective adwords ad to draw in customers for corporate events and team building for a company I work with?

The site is www.holmescales.com (not my site, I just work for them on the events and they've asked my advice).

Thanks in advance.

 

[AdwordsPro]

Here's one: use the keywords that people have searched for in the ad itself ... they will be bold on the search page.
There's plenty more tips on this forum and the web or hire a pro ;-)
If you pull an ad together, I'll be happy to critique it for you.

 

Has anyone got any hints or tips on creating an effective adwords ad to draw in customers for corporate events and team building for a company I work with?

The site is www.holmescales.com (not my site, I just work for them on the events and they've asked my advice).

Thanks in advance.

(1) Take a good hard look at "placement targetted" ads for each of your keywords...used well it is cheap and effective

eg The top ranked site for "team building" is
http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/h-articl/tb-basic.htm

And they carry google ads on the first fold

(2) Use image rather than text ads to stand out from the background...on the sites that permit it

(3) Think in terms of a direct marketing process....decide what you want the visitors to do...and direct specifc landing page copy to achieving that single objective

eg....what PROOF is there that outdoor teambuilding events actually work.. offer a FREE report for those who visit to sign up with a really killer title eg

"Scientific PROOF that TEAMBUILDING is PROFIT!!
The essential facts that you must know before booking teambuilding events... Dont book any event until you have read this!!"

And once you have the emails, you can begin the process of persuasion...

 

[beyonddriving]

Much appreciated adwords, I was hoping you'd jump in.

The plan is to try one simple phrase ("teambuilding") and work on an ad that is relevant to our site (so we don't get people wanting a "drama" event, when we mainly do outdoor stuff), and target it geographically. We've got an "adwords qualified" person doing the ad itself, so I'm expecting it will be fine, but without any personal experience of adwords I want as much info as possible.

Two heads and all that....

I may well ask you to have a quick look at it once we've got it all sorted, many thanks for the offer.

 

[beyonddriving]

Admagic - thanks also.

We'd not considered placing the ads on certain sites - can you decide which sites you want them on? Or is it more of a hit and hope process than that?

I'd certainly considered a pic ad as some of the stuff we do is quite evocative, I've only just realised that you can only do that when the ads appear on a site (rather than on a search engine - d'oh).

I'm always a bit cynical of ads which say "proof that..." or "read this before...", so I'm not so sure of doing that, but I suspect you may be right about the effectiveness and as you say - once the enquiries are in, then we can sell our credentials and our quality.

May be worth a split test....food for thought.

 

Admagic - thanks also.

We'd not considered placing the ads on certain sites - can you decide which sites you want them on? Or is it more of a hit and hope process than that?

I'd certainly considered a pic ad as some of the stuff we do is quite evocative, I've only just realised that you can only do that when the ads appear on a site (rather than on a search engine - d'oh).

I'm always a bit cynical of ads which say "proof that..." or "read this before...", so I'm not so sure of doing that, but I suspect you may be right about the effectiveness and as you say - once the enquiries are in, then we can sell our credentials and our quality.

May be worth a split test....food for thought.

THere is a process of careful research.. not hit and miss.
The sites must be well targetted to the mindset of potential purchasers..
With adverts on the first fold with good contrast

And the interesting thing about placement is that you can bid CPM, not Cost per click, and grab ALL THREE SPOTS TOGETHER!!

I chose that site because it gets 40% of the organic traffic to the phrase teambuilding...

your customers will be cynicall....
that is WHY you must give them CREDIBILITY that there is a bottom line for events like teambuilding before they will want to pick up the phone,particularly in this economic climate.

Good adwords usage is good direct marketing practise...apllied.
Finding good adwords people is not easy......

 

[beyonddriving]

Thanks again, food for thought.

Is the cpm model effective? I'd not considered this at all, but I think that with good images it could be an effective way of doing things.

How much do you think that would cost to do on that site, and how long would x amount keep us there?

 

[AdwordsPro]

I may well ask you to have a quick look at it once we've got it all sorted, many thanks for the offer.

I'll look out for it now - always interesting to see what my competitors come up with!

 

Thanks again, food for thought.

Is the cpm model effective? I'd not considered this at all, but I think that with good images it could be an effective way of doing things.

How much do you think that would cost to do on that site, and how long would x amount keep us there?

CPM placement used WELL is IMHO the hidden jewel of adwords..but it is a matter of careful testing....ie have a very short tolerance for non performing sites. My own rule is, if I dont get a click in the first 100 impressions, I kick the site out of my list.

I have managed to get several times the traffic from placement on some campaigns than google says is the search total, because well focussed sites get their own traffic. And it is not uncommon to get the traffic for around 25% of what you pay on search.

BUT ONLY IF YOU DO IT RIGHT!! - and have very careful criteria for selecting sites, and a very low pain threshold for non converting sites.

Anyway...that is enough as a freebie....hope it succeeds for you.

Good advertising is all about mindset..
And right now the mindset of most MDs will be to reign in all expenditure not directly traceable to bottom line. So you have to prove that teambuilding can do that....

 

[AdwordsPro]

Nice one Admagic. On the money as usual.

 

[beyonddriving]

Much appreciated guys.

I'll get back to you once we've sorted out what we're doing.

 

[Minnsy]

Mentioned this in another thread - www.keywordguardian.com - put in a selection of keywords you might want to use, and it reports back with every ad across the 3 main main search engines where those keywords were used. It also has the actual pages showing the ad, so the ad copy of all ads is instantly available..

Free trial available...

(I have to admit to having an 'interest' in this product)