Important Bulletin: Google’s New Automatic Matching

I received this from Perry Marshall the other day and I though that I would share…

Google is phasing a MAJOR feature into the AdWords program. If you log into your account you’ll see a notice that says,

“New! Automatic matching has been enabled in your account. Your ads will now show for additional relevant search queries based on the keywords, ad text, and landing
pages in your ad groups. You can opt out by visiting a keyword-targeted campaign, and then clicking on edit campaign settings.”

If you edit your campaign settings, you’ll see a check box that says:

“Automatic matching: Show ads on more search queries without adding keywords.”

And in your ad groups at the bottom of your keyword list, you’ll see a new column labeled “Automatic matching total.”

What this means is, if you’re bidding on a keyword like “dog grooming”, Google may show your ad for a keyword like “pet grooming brush” even though you’re not bidding on it at all.

The question is, do you want this?

First of all, there’s no way to know for sure unless you’re using conversion tracking.

In fact, you should disable this feature immediately unless you have conversion tracking enabled and hold Google accountable for the quality of traffic they’re sending you.

***DO NOT USE THIS FEATURE UNLESS YOU TRACK THE CONVERSIONS FROM ‘AUTOMATIC MATCHING’ TRAFFIC.***

Now, if you do use this feature, I’m OK with that… it’s not terribly different from using the Content Network. Hang with me for a minute so I can explain.

When the Content Network (traffic from AdSense) was new, it was lousy. The quality of clicks was normally very poor. But over time it improved and now content traffic, for
SOME people, is really great traffic.

Automatic Matching traffic will seldom be better traffic, except maybe for people who simply do not know what they’re doing in AdWords.

AdWords advertisers who learn this game from me are always control freaks. They don’t want to just take what Google gives ‘em. (Hey, that’s how you gain an advantage that Google doesn’t have.) The ideal way to do this would be to use the bootstrapping technique I’ve taught for years, which is:

-Campaign 1 has bids set at, say, $1.00 with Automatic Matching OFF
-Campaign 2 has bids set at, say, $0.75, with Automatic Matching ON

This will shift all the Automatic Matching traffic into Campaign 2 and you’ll have complete control of it.

One thing I do not see is an opportunity to adjust bid prices for Automatic Matching. Maybe someday…

You will be able to see performance reports on automatic-matched keywords by running a ’search query performance’ report.

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120 and The Power of Five

I just received this from my colleague Perry Marshall today, very interesting…

Ever been frustrated at the size limit of those tiny Google ads?

25 characters for the headline and 35 characters for each of the other three lines.

Not enough room to say very much, is it?

120 characters, that’s all you get.

But there’s a story behind the size of that ad. Yahoo/Overture originally had more room than that. Google tested a number of sizes themselves… some of my customers were beta testers for other sizes, including 200 character ads… but Google eventually settled on 120.

Later, Yahoo settled on the exact same format. 120 characters.

Why is that?

Because experiments proved that 120 is the optimal size for text message ads on the Internet. If you have something good to say, that’s enough space to say it - to say just enough to get a person to go to the next step.

If you can’t say it in 120 characters, you ain’t got nuthin’ to say.

Isn’t it interesting, 120 characters is also about the same amount of text that fits on a highway billboard?

Isn’t it interesting, most classified ads in most newspapers and magazines are about the same size?

The classified ad at the top of this email is about that size.

Isn’t it interesting, cell phone text messages are 160 characters - nearly the same size?

It’s a good size. Plenty of room if you choose your words carefully.

Now then… one of the things I talked about at my 80/20 Seminar in Chicago is that 5 is a magic number. That if you want to segment peoples’ level of interest, multiples of 5 are a great way to build your funnel.

Step 1: 120 characters in a Google ad
Step 2: 120 words on your landing page (1 word = 5 characters)
Step 3: 120 sentences (1 sentence = 5 words)
Step 4: 120 paragraphs (1 paragraph = 5 sentences)

…eventually you end up with a group of people who will read an entire 120 page book… at each step you’ve got a smaller number of incredibly interested people. Years go by and you might end up with an even smaller number of devout students who own 120 books on one topic.

To me, THIS is the answer to that old “long copy - short copy” debate. You start with a little and you take people through the steps until they’re sold. Some drop out and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Once the interested ones are sold, some of ‘em still want more.

Give them more… and more… and more…

…until they’re satisfied.

The best customer is the one who keeps coming back and wants more, more, more.

Design your business for THAT customer, scratch HER itch, and she’ll stick with you through thick and thin. You’ll be immune to the ups and downs of interest rates and economies and all that surface level stuff.

Go deep - in multiples of 5.

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Telltale Signs Of The Marketing Maniac

All the best marketers I know are obsessive.

I call them “Marketing Maniacs.”

You’re a Marketing Maniac when you naturally see good marketing in action everywhere you go.

Newspaper headlines, billboards, interesting TV commercials…

If you’re going to crawl inside this thing and live it and breathe it… if you’re going to have a feeling for it, then you need to be marketing obsessed.

The marketing obsessed person looks for vital clues about human psychology everywhere.

When you’re a Marketing Maniac you find stuff on the airplane, at restaurants, in fundraising campaigns, in today’s mail…

You know you’re a Marketing Maniac when:

Your relatives and friends start giving you their junk mail because they “thought you might be interested.” And you find, oddly, that you ARE interested. “Thank you, Frank. I mean, really Frank. Thank you very much for thinking of me.”

When you’ve got a swipe file of cool stuff you’ve gotten in the mail, that you steal ideas from… when you’ve got a folder on your computer where you save cool email messages and sales pages… when you go to Borders or Barnes & Noble and grab 5 magazines you know nothing about and study their “niche market” content…

…Congratulations, sir, you have been inducted into the Marketing Maniac Hall of Fame.

Today, we raise a toast to Marketing Maniacs everywhere.

Be one!

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