No Kudos Here! (#1): Poor Ad Copy

Written by Bill Saturday, 22 May 2010 10:27

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(From time to time I'll post an example of good and bad Internet marketing practices I've encountered)

Yesterday evening I participated in a small group bull session with Perry Marshall and the discussion covered a wide range of  Internet marketing topics.

There was one topic in particular I found myself pondering on my drive home afterwards...

One of the participants has a business creating landing pages and managing Google campaigns for veternarians, and his clients are all in the same metro area - sometimes within a few miles of each other. So that poses some particular challenges for him in avoiding conflict with certain Google rules that apply in this situation.

The "Don't Do This" bad practice stems from his attempt to create unique Google ad display URLs for his different clients. Here's one of the resulting ads:

I'm not a fan of the copy he wrote for the second and third lines of this ad, but I realize he was attempting to reflect commonly searched phrases. However, I believe it is better to write the ad for the human reader rather than for Google.

But the bigger problem with this ad is the display URL. While it succeeds in being a format that is easily made unique for each different client, it fails in all attempts to attract a click from the person who is reading the ad. Honestly, would you do business with a company whose website was http://AAAC60031.VetInZip.com???  Perry challenged this guy to come up with a better URL and, shockingly, the feedback wasn't welcomed. (If the feedback had been embraced then this whole blog posting would have been recast from a "Don't Do This!" to a "Do This!".)

This example is a great reminder that display URLs are part of the precious real estate in a Google ad, and should be used to attract clicks from the right prospects. And also, when you get a suggestion from a guru, it's worth listening!