Intent is more important than technique

That line, from Mahan Khalsa’s most excellent book on consultative selling, Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, is one of my business (and life) mottos.

Here’s a story

In 1991, I was flirting with a macrobiotic lifestyle. I was attracted to the strictness of the diet, the sense of fixed rules, and the “magic” of the rituals that promised cures from all known diseases and joyful longevity.

I read a bunch of books and cookbooks, but so many of the ingredients were unknown to me (umeboshi paste, burdock root, daikon radish) that I found myself tied in knots. There was just too much to take in, and I found myself looking up again and again little things like, “When rinsing brown rice, should I stir the water clockwise or counter-clockwise.”

So I invited a friend, Nancy, who happened to be a macrobiotic chef, to come over and give me a lesson in simple macrobiotic fundamentals.

What I learned

Cliffhanger? Keep reading…

What Tina Fey Can Teach You About AdWords

A 50-year-old comedy and improv school/theater in Chicago called The Second City has produced an alumni list consisting of many of the world’s most talented and successful comics.

A short list would include Tina Fey, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell, Amy Poehler, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, John Candy, Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Joan Rivers, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, and Dan Castellaneta. Doh!

The Second City: Testing Ground and Launch Pad

Tina Fey wrote about her experiences with The Second City in her book Bossypants:

“[Second City] was like a cult. People ate, slept, and definitely drank improv. They worked at crappy jobs just to hand over their money for improv classes… In the touring company we were paid seventy-five dollars per show plus twenty-five dollars per diem…”

The touring companies play for post-high-school prom shows, drunken college audiences, charity auctions, corporate meetings devoted to telling employees that their health benefits have just been slashed, and lots of other rough crowds. After months of this, the best performers are invited to join one of the main companies and earn a living wage and get noticed.

From there, the best writers, directors and actors get snatched up by Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show, Conan, or they go to Hollywood to make funny movies. It’s understood that anyone who survives The Second City gauntlet is just THAT GOOD.

So what can The Second City teach us about AdWords?

Three things:

1. Just as The Second City touring gigs were the hardest places to get laughs, AdWords is one of the hardest places to compete for customers.
2. The Second City and AdWords are both the best places to develop your A game.
3. Once you’ve made it with The Second City and AdWords, your success is virtually guaranteed in every other relevant medium.

The Second City, like AdWords, is a testing ground and launch pad. Nobody aspired to a career whose pinnacle was Second City’s Mainstage Company. For that matter, Saturday Night Live was itself considered a launching pad for movie careers and not an end in itself.

AdWords is also a Testing Ground and Launch Pad

But here’s the crazy thing: most people treat AdWords as if that’s all there is. Readers ask me all the time, “How can I make enough money with AdWords to make a million dollars a year?” Or whatever number fits their vision of having “made it.”

Yes, it’s possible to make a lot of money using AdWords. But two things are true for every business that does that successfully:

1. They use AdWords traffic to systematically and obsessively test, refine, and improve their marketing.
2. They can multiple their AdWords profits by 1000-100,000% by leveraging their AdWords experience into other media.

And those two things are true of many successful businesses that don’t make their fortune on AdWords, but by leveraging their AdWords tests into a marketing machine everywhere else.

In marketing and in comedy, creative improv plus rigorous testing is an unstoppable formula. In a future blog post, I’ll share how to map the improv process onto AdWords. Right now, I’ll leave you with this video of Tina Fey’s early years at The Second City. See how many correlations you can make between comedy and AdWords:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvOUoYZhoU

The Power of Being Foolish

In honor of April Fool’s Day, I made rather a serious video about the Fool archetype in business.

(Warning: during the course of the video, I display and describe a Tarot card. If you are offended by such representations, please do not watch.)

Please share your thoughts below.

Breathtakingly Brilliant AdWords Campaign

Wish I’d thought of this one:

(Thanks to Shane Keller of ThePPCAgency.com for pointing this out.)
Let’s keep the creativity flowing. What’s your off-the-cuff, crazy-brilliant AdWords idea? No judgment, just some public brainstorming.
Ready, set, go!

What your marketing can learn from a pooping sloth

My latest Fast Company article (and hopefully not my last, given the title and subject matter) has just been published.

I hope you’ll check it out, and leave a comment, question, kudo, or criticism.

Read: What Your Marketing Can Learn From a Pooping Sloth.

How to track phone calls on a budget

A reader wonders:

“How do I track conversions for a service where the only way people can opt in is by phoning? My client does not want a separate phone number for ads. I don’t know how to increase CTR (click through rate) and QS (quality score) because conversions are not being recorded.”

My reply:

Don’t get me started about clients who don’t do everything that us marketers tell them to do. That used to happen to me too, and it was so very sad ;)

So I’ll deal with the question assuming the problem is the expense of setting up call tracking (although Google Voice is available for click to call in certain accounts, with more to roll out at some point, and my friend and NC neighbor Ryan Pitz has a very reasonably priced call tracking solution for US-based businesses).

What’s the most old school, duck tape and baling wire, McGiver sort of way to track calls off of AdWords ads?

The old standby, the secret phrase.

As in, on landing page number one, you instruct your visitor:

“Call 1-800-555-1212 now to schedule an appointment to get your legs waxed. Make sure you mention the magic word ‘Agony’ to get your free cuticle bronzing as well.”

And on all the other landing pages, you substitute a different word.

Now all you have to do is convince the person answering the phone to tally the magic words, and if possible, link the source to the customer and their spend.

Semi-snooty final word:

For the record, conversion tracking will not help you with either CTR or QS. It will help you with another reasonably important metric, WYMMON (“Whether You Make Money Or Not”).

How to write a “cut through the clutter” ad

In most markets, the Google search results page is a confusing Sea of Sameness (SOS). The advertisers all following “best practices” end up looking and sounding more or less identical.

Maybe it seems impossible to write a breakthrough ad – after all, if everyone’s saying the same thing, it’s probably the right thing to say, right?

In an article published yesterday in Fast Company, I share a quick and powerful method for creating “Cut through the Clutter” ads, so you become the obvious choice amid that Sea of Sameness:

Read it here.

A favor: if you like the article, please log in or register with Fast Company online so you can leave a comment. Agree, disagree, have a question, tell your own story of a breakthrough ad; it’s all good.

A New Strategy for Description Line #1?

In the AdWords ad, description line 1 has traditionally contained the big benefit. The headline attracts the eye, description line 1 makes the promise, and description line 2 includes a feature and/or a call to action.

Now AdWords is experimenting with a new format for the ads that appear above the organic results: adding description line 1 to the headline.

In the AdWords blog, Google paints the difference this way:

Old:

New:

A New Description Line 1 Strategy?

If your ad consistently shows in the high-profile positions above the organic results, you need to keep an eye on the ad format for the next few weeks.

If Google includes your ad in the new format test, then you might want to rethink the way you use that first line of description. It’s now, essentially, part of the headline, and can be used to draw the eye towards your ad and away from others.

It’s impossible, of course, to give a “one size fits all” directive on the best way to do that. But in general, I’d think about using that first description line to point out the “point of difference benefit” (thanks, Dr. Glenn Livingston) between your ad and your competitors on the search results page.

So instead of “Find Exactly the Widgets You Need,” an advertiser might say, “Titanium Widgets only – No Brass.” or whatever else would make the prospect think, “This is the one.”

John Withers of The PPC Agency points out that if you want to take advantage of this new feature, make sure your description line 1 is a distinct sentence that ends with a period. Therefore, make sure your “point of difference benefit” is punctuated as a sentence, and does not run into line 2.

Request for Crowdsourced Feedback

Are you seeing this new ad format for your search results pages? If so, please share the keywords in the comments below.

Membership Has Its Privileges – Members Wanted

The Ring of Fire is my online coaching and networking club for AdWords users and professionals. It’s the first place I turn when I have questions. It’s where newbies post their ads and screen shots of the accounts and get advice from some of the highest paid AdWords consultants and managers on the planet.

The Ring includes monthly live coaching calls, a 24/7 forum, monthly interviews with experts, and most excellent networking opportunities.

The Ring costs $47 a month, which is ridiculously low for what amounts to personal coaching and consulting from me and others. Try it free for a month and see what you think…

Fantastic Technique I’m SO Going to Steal

From Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, comes 6 minutes of audio brilliance:

http://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/newsletters/listen/1910

If you want to know what bald dogs and plumbers, farts and wedding chapels, and coffins and Florida tourism have in common, this is a must-listen.

Also, if you’re a fan of the novelist Tom Robbins, you’ll get an extra jolt of inspiration.

Thanks, Lester, for the link!

Paid Search without Keywords? What the…?

2010 was the most volatile year for paid search since Google introduced AdWords Select in 2002.

The changes have been so fast and furious, and so all-encompassing, that most advertisers have taken refuge in one of three strategies:

1. Ignore them and keep soldiering on

2. Catch snippets of the changes and wonder what they mean

3. Jump onto a new platform or feature without really grokking the implications

I want to suggest a fourth way (thanks, Gurdjieff ;) – pay attention to the few folks out there who are able to see the big picture and translate it into actionable priorities (or, if you prefer, prioritized actions).

Alex Cohen of ClickEquations is one of those rare fellows. While I was reading his January 18, 2011 article on The Dawn of Paid Search without Keywords in Search Engine Watch, I kept getting the feeling, “I better tell my students and clients about this.”

I got Alex on the phone this week, and interviewed him about the article, and much more. We got into a rollicking discussion of AdWords complexity, advertisers competing against Google for listings, how Szechuan restaurants in Narbeth, PA can compete in the new AdWords, why the 2003 Oakland A’s were twice as smart as the 2003 New York Yankees, and why AdWords 2011 is now a game of subtraction rather than addition.

I learned a lot. You will too.

Download the audio here, then come back to this blog post and add your comments and questions.

As I mention in the interview, my agency, ThePPCAgency.com, uses the advanced reporting features of ClickEquations, as well as our natural charm, rugged good looks, and marketing expertise, to redistribute wealth to our clients from their competitors and from Google.

If you’re spending more than $1000 a month on AdWords and you’re still doing it all yourself, you’re probably leaving a lot more money on the table than we’ll cost you. Give us a shout for a free account audit followed by a zero-pressure sales call.