Two noteworthy pieces of mail today, both of which rocked my self-image:

1. My AARP card (for gosh sake, I’m not even 44 yet - where do these people get their mailing list?)

It would have to be a pretty big discount for me to whip that thing out at Whole Foods or Costco or Priscilla’s! Talk to me in 7 years, AARP!

2. Three copies of AdWords Für Dummies - the long-awaited German translation of AdWords For Dummies. I heard a rumor that in Bad Godesberg, the line at the DBH bookstore stretched all the way from the checkout counter to the little rack of Godiva chocolates and greeting cards right next to the checkout counter.

It’s a weird feeling, looking at this book I supposedly wrote, not being able to understand a word. I haven’t felt this way since I found my PhD dissertation while cleaning the house looking for my squash racquet. 

The other thing is, the Google gift card on this book is 25 Euro, which is like $7000 post Lehman and AIG. That makes AdWords Für Dummies an attractive investment instrument. Plus a great baby shower item, graduation present, and Bar Mitzvah and communion gift.

Me, I’m opening a Swiss bank account and filling it with AdWords Für Dummies and Godiva chocolate. When that AARP card kicks in, I’ll be sitting pretty.

Last week I appeared (sonically, anyway) on the Internet Radio show, Online Marketing with RSS Ray.

Through the miracle of JavaScript, you can listen to it here:

Holy cow, I thought I was pretty savvy about the Internet. And then I go and click a link in an email that looks like it comes straight from Google AdWords, but actually is trying to get my credit card info and suck my account dry.

Check out the email and see if you can blame me:

Looks real, doesn’t it?

But when I checked out the source code, I discovered that the live link actually went to a fake website, not AdWords. Had I looked closely, I would have noticed the typo on the last line: "any your ads and campaigns…" And the repetition of the second and third lines. And maybe half a dozen other clues. But as Paul Simon sings, "A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest."

So please be smarter and more deliberate than me when clicking links in emails supposedly coming from AdWords.

I use a lot of Google tools. Google Docs. Gmail. Google Calendar. Google Earth. Picasa. Google EarWax Remover. (OK, I made that one up.)

And of course AdWords.

So don’t get me wrong - I think Google makes some of the best stuff on the Internet. And most of it’s free (actually, subsidized by AdWords). So I’m sharing the screenshot below in amused fondness.

Get it? Google email service, Gmail, decided that the official Google AdWords Blog email, to which I subscribe, is SPAM!

That’s pretty hilarious, for my money.

The moral, if there is one: don’t feel too bad when your business does stupid things. You have good company. It’s more important to be personable than perfect. It’s more important to connect with your customers on an emotional level than to execute flawlessly.

I couldn’t resist sharing this one, literally a case of apples and oranges. Or, more precisely, an apple case among the oranges. Can you spot the one ad that doesn’t belong here?

Did you see it? If not, here’s the solution: Ultimate iPhone Cases, fourth ad down on the right. (Some day I’ll learn how to annotate my screen shots…)

Here’s how I generated this search result:

I’m working on updating the online DVD that I give away for trying my Ring of Fire AdWords Success Club. I was working on a short video expaining how to look at the search results page before writing your ad. First I searched for "iphone cases," but I couldn’t get inspired to talk about the differences between the ads. So I next typed "florida oranges," expecting that high end fruit delivery would provide more grist for my commentary.

Did it ever! I’ve never seen that kind of artifact before, a search result lingering into another search. Unless… cases.com is actually advertising under the broad phrase "florida oranges." Too coincidental, I think.

If anyone has an explanation for this result other than Google hiccup, please post it to comments. I’m intrigued…

A reader wonders: Can you tell me what the harm is in putting in more key words than less key words since a person only gets charged for the clicks on Google when someone actually clicks on your ad?

Howie answers the wondering:

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A reader wonders:

In my "broad" keywords list of about 150 words, Google is giving me the message:
 
Overlapping Terms
If your keyword list has two or more similar keywords, the Traffic Estimator will divide the potential traffic between the overlapping terms. Estimates for such keywords may be less accurate due to this overlap. 
 
My question is:  Are broad "Overlapping Terms" ok to use or will I waste $ in the long run?

Here’s what I think:

The "Overlapping Terms" message is not a terrible thing, but in the long run your goal is to figure out what the phrase and exact match keywords are, and get more traffic from them and less traffic from broad match keywords. Google is just telling you that sometimes two different keywords may be triggered by the same search, so it can’t predict in advance where to send the traffic.

You definitely will waste money if you can’t, ultimately, pinpoint your profitable keywords and eliminate the rest, or at least adjust their bids to bring them into the positive ROI range.

And here’s your horoscope, if you’re a Leo:

A stranger you meet on top of a mountain will compliment your dog. Despite this, you will still burn dinner.

I’ve never really been cool, not until yesterday. Elementary school and Junior High were a nightmare cool-wise. I used to wear shirts with the top button closed, blue jeans with zippered rear pockets, and I chewed pencils.

I guess my entire adult life has been one long search for the shallow approval of strangers.

And now, thanks to AdWords For Dummies, it’s happened!

When you click the above button, you’ll see that AdWords For Dummies has been honored as the Cool Book of the Day by Dan Janal, of PR Leads. If you know Dan, you will understand what an honor this is for me. Dan wrote the second or third book ever on Internet Marketing. This is like when the rookie makes it to the majors and his childhood hero compliments his swing.

So what does this mean? Two things:

1. You should definitely buy the book, if you haven’t yet.

2. I’m going to go out and buy some designer clothes. Here’s a webcam rendition of the new me, with a cool, jaunty expression and a new hat.

Thanks, Dan!

Today’s AdWords Color Tip: Red for Attention.

Every night when I go to bed, I write a todo list for the following day. I put little things ("Iron and fold the underwear") and big things ("Save the cheerleader, save the world") on the list. I include errands ("Buy more of those things you’re almost out of") and decisions ("Pay Visa bill or move to Siberia"). And the first item on the list is always the same: "Read the list."

You get where I’m going, right? If I don’t read the list, how will I know to read the list? It turns out the most important thing about the list isn’t what’s on it, but that it gets read in the first place.

That’s true of this email as well.

You, wise reader, are reading this email - Relax, I’m not psychic, it’s just a parlor trick - but some other subscriber to my email list is not.

Why? Maybe the subject line didn’t appeal to them. Perhaps they haven’t emptied their inbox since 1997 and can’t bear to log in and see eight years of junk. Maybe they chose to open the boss’s email instead of mine. Whatever.

I could be writing the one secret that will change their life utterly and completely, and it doesn’t matter. Because they aren’t going to read this. Because I couldn’t get their attention.

The primary currency of marketing is attention. No eyes or ears, no sales. And attention is harder and harder to get these days. More stimuli, less time; more hype, less trust; more ADD, less focus.

Speaking of ADD (I used to be a school teacher, so I’ve seen quite a bit of diagnosed Attention Deficits in my day), we’re all ADD online. The medium demands it. How many windows are open on your desktop right now? How long are you willing to wait for a web page to load? Can you imagine calling a movie theater box office to find out the showtimes when you can just type "Movies 27712" into Google and get the complete listings for every local cinema, including reviews and trailers and online ticket sales, within 3 seconds? (I used to veg out so completely during those recordings, that I’d have to listen to the message repeat three or four times to catch the showtimes for the movie I was interested in. Now I get to daydream all I want, and when I come back to earth, the web page with the info I want is still waiting for me.)

The primary task of your ad is to compel attention. As the 11th century Talmudic scholar Rashi might have said were he alive today, "No lookie, no clickie."

Just as stop signs, online error messages, and immediate attention triage tags are red, your ad must wave a red flag in front of your prospect that says, "Stop for a second and consider this."

How do you get their attention? My marketing mentor Ken McCarthy has a very handy three-word response that he strives for in his ads:

"That’s for Me!"

How can you get your prospect to glance at your ad and immediately think, "That’s for me"? By naming them, talking about things that matter to them, and making them hungry for more.

Chapter 6 of AdWords For Dummies includes seven specific headline strategies for grabbing attention. I’m going to reveal three of the strategies here. Want the other four? Then go down to Barnes & Noble, buy your coffee and raisin-nut bar, and turn to page 141. (Or, just buy the book, if that’s not too self-serving a suggestion. http://askhowie.com/afd will take you to the amazon product page.)

Attention Grabbing Strategy #1: Name Them

• Considering a Unicycle
• Mind Maps for Teachers
• Actor’s Disability Insur.

Attention Grabbing Strategy #2: Mirror Their Itch

• Suffering from Gout?
• Rotten-Egg Water Odors?
• Disorganized?

Attention Grabbing Strategy #4: Arouse Curiosity

• Are You Right-Brained?
• Are You a Slacker Mom?
• Copywriting Secret #19

Get the other four attention grabbing headline strategies - and so much more! - in AdWords For Dummies.

This one time, in 1978, I tried to get a date for the 8th grade Valentine’s Day Dance at my junior high school. Acting like the marketer I would become, I first selected my target market of girls I was interested in, based mainly on their demonstrated ability to spend twenty minutes in my company without getting grossed out or offended.

Have narrowed my market, I next chose my medium. Face to face was out of the question, as the only way to get one of these girls alone would be to shove her in a janitor’s closet and wait until passing time was over. And obviously I didn’t want gaggles of girls talking about me in school (that’s probably why I wore the paper bag over my head for all those years, come to think of it).

So the medium would be the telephone. One night, about two weeks before the dance, I purloined the corded phone in my parents bedroom, locked myself in my room with a phone book, and prepared to begin my first foray into outbound telemarketing.

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