Many of our most important day to day negative expressions might not be as powerful as they are if they were said in positive. Let’s see some cases of expressions related to high risks: “NO RIGHT TURN,” are all difficult to say in a few words and strongly in any positive construct.

It’s interesting that for years incendiary materials were marked “INFLAMMABLE” or “HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE,” perhaps because the wrong negative prefix actually sounded more dire.

“Don’t tell me” means tell me everything. “You don’t say!” means I really want you to say it, even though I can’t believe what you’re saying. As in, “Well, I never.”

The beauty of our language is the way you can stretch it. Two negatives can be joined to make a positive: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The reverse is also true.

Why are newspapers full of bad news? Because people are much more concerned in bad news; perhaps because it helps reassure them of traffic crawls past car accident. It’s also notable how in matters of romance or passion, the negative is often so vivid. I don’t mean in the sense of the obvious: “Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop” … etc. I mean in many of the words we share with our beloved, often captured in popular music. “Never will leave you,” sounds more committed than “I will always stay,” and “The 12^th of Never” looks an even longer undertaking than the absolute “forever.”

“Don’t Worry Baby”, from the mouths of the Beach Boys is quite cheering. Greshwin ain’t necessarily so negative in one of the anthems of porgy and best. And when 10cc sing the haunting, “I’m being in love (and don’t forget it) because I’m really so badly in love with you, I’ll try any tactic to hang in there.

Googling around for references on “negative words”, there are, of course, a hundred well-intentioned yet predictable passages on how to do away with negativity from your writing, etc. (One earnest polemic on positivism carries the straight – faced headline: “Stop Being So Negative!”).

Cognitive psychology research conducted by Tufts University professor Salvator Scoraci has made advancements in understanding learning and “false memory” – mistaken recall of test words. It was previously thought that memory was improved by “generative learning; that people remember better when actively involved in forming an idea around, say a particular word they’re asked to memorize; the theory being that positive collaboration helped it stick.

Scoraci has found people are actually more likely to remember such words when given a negative reminder than when given a positive one. This method of learning, using negative cues, is similar to how we find our way when we’re driving our cars, explains Scoraci. If we make a wrong turn, we’re much more likely to remember the correct path next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong direction again.

However to circle this back to advertising, my research has also revealed a fellow-sufferer and copywriter, Michael Gebert, in the US. In his online newsletter, shameless Self-Promotion, Gebert repeats our frustrations: No COPYWRITER WILL ESCAPE THIS FATE. YOU write a nice, punchy headline – “Nothing Fights stains like spam O.” Then the comment comes back: “Nothing” is negative. Can’t we turn it into a positive? (Like what? “Spam-O fights stains Better Than Things”?)

Gebert goes on to say: put a sentence with a “not” a “don’t” in it in front of those people, and unexpectedly, they’ll be impressed by the magical power of that one single word to keep away all customers, regardless of the actual meaning of the sentence. That’s not grammar. It’s voodoo.

What’s most confounding to me about this whole topic is that some of the most negative expressions have long been the very stock-in-trade of the world of hard sell. How many products have declared themselves “Not your ordinary …” or “Not for everybody” to make better their desirability to many?

“Accept no substitute,” “Don’t buy till you try our …,” “Will not be undersold”. “Nobody comes close to our …”. Just as the much-imitated “Drive away, no more to pay” has recently become.

There are also plenty of specific brands with eminent and boomimg campaigns based on seemingly negative thoughts: “Lemon” or “It’s ugly, but it gets you there” were never going to be taken literally about Volkswagen, nevertheless said a lot about their cleverly self-effacing attitude. That, along with “You don’t have to be Jewish” for Levy’s bread, more or less started modern, more candid advertising.

More recently, “I never read the Economist. (Management trainee, aged 42)” has helped put that magazine high up the racks. The Wallpaper Institute of America declares. Nothing gets your attention like wallpaper,” along with whimsical visuals. The Village Vice has been honest and successful by declaring its individuality with “Not America’s favorite paper” (and thus yours).

When Everyday Batteries themes their ads “Never say die,” it’s far more declarative than “Always stay ALIVE.” Heineken, in the UK, sold a lot of beer that “Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.” And there’s no other line like David Jones’, at least in Australian retail. As Michael Gebert states, the arguments against the yea-sayers are apparent: “So obvious that they always get the same response:’Yeab, I know. But change it, would ja? It’s just one word.”’

Anti-negativity, he says, “deprives a writer of one of the most effective rhetorical devices in the English language, for no good reason. Would GM still own the car market if only they’d said, “You Would Really Rather Drive a Buick?

I couldn’t agree more. Or should I say, I agree as much as possible. I’ve always thought that Sara Lee’s long-running campaign in the US, “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee” was so much more amiable and amenable than the overblown self-congratulation of it’s underlying sentiment, “Everybody Loves Sara Lee.”

It’s a tradition that goes back to “Nothin’ says lovin’ like something’ from the oven” for Duncan Hines cake mixes. Or was it Pillsbury? And what could’ve been more persuasive than the theme that carried American Express to world fame, “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

Would it have expressed the same indispensability expressed as” Always take it with you when you leave home”? I think not. But then, maybe I’m just being negative.

Report This Post

If you don’t track where your visitors are going on your website, how many visitors came to your site through a particular ad campaign, how many visitors convert into buyers, your ROI, and so on, you cannot be certain if a particular ad campaign is worth continuing or not.

If you are using comparison ad campaigns to see which is most effective, the most important point to remember is to make only one change each time you run a test of the ad.

For example, if you are testing to see which landing page works better, do not test any other aspect at the same time.

If you test more than one aspect at a time, you and your tracking tools will not be able to differentiate between the two and give you a definitive answer on which change led to more effective performance of file ad.

One unforgettable example is from an individual who had a PPC account with one of the major PPC search engines for which he paid almost $1,000 per month for all the various keywords he used.

His sales revenues were quite acceptable, so he knew he was making money from his website.

Naturally, he assumed that most of the sales were coming from his ad campaign on a major search engine, because he believed that lower-cost ads placed on smaller search engines would produce lower results.

It wasn’t until he became aware of ad trackers and ad tracking software that the decided to find out exactly where his sales were coming from.

Using a simple ad tracker, he discovered that the vast majority of his sales were not coming from the major search engine, but instead were coming from the niche search engines, where his product had more appeal to their visitors.

He also discovered that he could drop that campaign altogether because the sales he was getting from the larger search engine equaled the amount of money lie was paying for that ad campaign.

Without a relatively simple form of ad tracking, this individual would have continued believing that “bigger is better,” and that his sales were coming from the larger search engine.

This case also emphasizes, again, the importance of using the tools that are available.

Although this case occurred before search engines provided much data on account activity, and certainly didn’t offer any form of conversion tracking, this individual may have become suspicious a lot sooner if he had investigated the statistics that were available from his search engines.

This example also reiterates the importance at looking at your statistics critically and in person, not just accepting that things are proceeding as they should.

Close scrutiny will allow you to tweak an ad or cancel it before clicks on it drain your account completely.

Luckily, with both PPC search engines and third-party tracking tools competing for the market, the advertiser comes out a winner.

Each side is adding more and more features, many of them free, as they compete for market share among advertisers.

Keywords: Tracking, ad campaign, ad trackers, ad tracking software,

Report This Post

However, you must actively work to brand your product. Remember that you are trying to some extent to be in the same league as commercial giants, such as Nike, whose phrase “just do it” immediately brings the word “Nike” to mind for almost any consumer interested in quality athletic footwear.

One good way to test the waters to see if you can make branding work in your pay-per-click advertising is to set up a separate ad campaign with branding as its ultimate goal.

This is not necessarily going to be all easy process, given that to some extent you are prevented by the search engines from using precisely the type of terminology that tends to build brand awareness.

Wording such as “the world’s best” or “number one in the United States” in a PPC ad description is quite often banned.

Therefore, you must craft your ad so that the description includes, at the very least, the name of your company (prominently displayed).

The addition of a logo (if allowed) is also a good idea. At this point in time, only a few pay-per-click search engines allow you to include a logo in ads.

There is a fair amount of discussion currently about whether or not a unique selling point (USP) is a significant factor in helping to brand online.

Some analysts feel it is essential to draw visitors to your website by stating in your ad’s description area that you offer something that no one else does.

Other analysts, however, think that a unique selling point is not critical to branding, because consumers are looking for an overall satisfactory consumer experience, not just being thrilled by the fact that you are the only company that gives away a free magazine subscription with every order over $100.

A study just completed by Millward Brown using 600 researchers in 16 countries used the rather extreme question of, “Which company’s brand name would you be willing to have tattooed on your body?”

Although the first three answers are not too surprising (Harley Davidson, Disney, and Coca-Cola), the surprise fourth finisher was Google (at 6.6%, just one percent lower than Coca-Cola).

Given that there are other online markets as large and prominent as Google (e.g., Yahoo, AOI, Netscape, eBay, Hotmail), the researchers speculate that people included Google in the list because they felt that Google, of all the online entities, has been the most responsive to customer needs.

Further, it has been the most open to revealing future plans via beta versions of a number of imaginative tools.

Again, this goes to prove something that can’t be emphasized enough-customer service is key, especially online, where your potential customer cannot visit your location in person and must rely on what you reveal of yourselves to them.

Google was perceived as being very open with consumers-their goals, their works in progress, their plans to go public-well before they were required to.

All of this worked to their favor and increased their brand awareness beyond the Google partner network.

Keywords: branding, ad campaign, ads,

Report This Post

Tip 1: Constantly evaluate which keywords work better than others and disable or delete those that arc not performing well before they drain your budget.

Tip 2: Keeping a close eye on your budget. You should have a rough idea of how much is left in your PPC account at any given time.

As soon as your funds are used up, all advertising stops-whether you know it or not Most PPC search engines will notify you when you arc close to depleting your account, but the lag time between you receiving the notice and replenishing the account can cost you sales.

This is where it becomes very apparent that, even if you use third-party tools to bid for you and to manage your campaigns, you must have methods in place to keep track of how fast any given keyword is draining your account.

You really do need to investigate your campaign statistics personally, and on a regular basis, to mitigate the danger of a quick turnaround in the marketplace.

If you are not keeping track of your campaign’s budget properly, it could also be drained by one or more of the following:

•        Click fraud

•        An error made when setting up the ad

•        The automated bidding tool is keeping your bids artificially high

Clever marketers have been known to manipulate the bidding in such a way that you are paying more than you should to maintain the position you want.

Unfortunately, there are dishonest people out there who will bypass the general rules governing pay per click and manipulate the underlying structure of the advertising model to their advantage.

This leads naturally to a discussion of whether outside firms arc a good choice for managing your ad campaign, if you don’t want to put forth the time and effort to handle it yourself.

The answer is different for each advertiser and each product, their location, who the Outside firms are, and the general online advertising marketplace at the time.

Basically, the answer comes down to a consideration of what makes most economic sense in your particular situation.

If nobody in your company really understands the PPC market or has the time to take care of your ad campaigns, at a minimum keeping an active eye on the automated tools, then you should probably consider outsourcing your PPC ad campaigns.

To protect your interests, choose a firm that you have thoroughly investigated and that you are sure sees the long-term goals of your PPC program in the same light as you do.

Typically, the ad budget of small-to-mid-sized companies will not stretch to include management of your online advertising by an outside firm.

As a rule, these firms charge up to 20% of your monthly spending and have a minimum fee of $300-$500 per month.

In this case, you will probably need to rely on your web people to work with marketing to create, maintain, and decide when to end a particular PPC ad campaign.

Even if you can afford an outside firm, the nature of PPC ads is such that personal involvement by someone who knows the company inside and out and has a stake in ensuring that the ads perform well is the best road to take.

PPC advertising is not as complicated to understand as it may first appear, and most people can quickly learn how to tell if a PPC ad campaign is progressing as it should, or if certain areas need to be changed or removed altogether.

The key component to getting the most out of whatever your pay-per-click advertising budget is tracking.

Keywords: budget, campaign’s budget, bid, pay per click, ad campaign, advertiser, marketer, ad budget, PPC ads, ppc strategy.

Report This Post