The Difference is in the Details
So you’ve coined a great headline that is catching their attention. After your headline, you’ve still got a second chance to convince your customer even further that you’ve got what he wants, and get more clicks. This is where your inner salesman comes alive.
Compare these two ads and take note of the number of click thrus that each received with the same amount of views:
Popular Ethernet Terms
3 Page Guide—Free PDF Download
Complex Words—Simple Definitions
www.bb-elec.com
0.1% CTR
Popular Ethernet Terms
Complex Words—Simple Definitions
3 Page Guide—Free PDF Download
www.bb-elec.com
3.6% CTR
The second ad got 36 times the number of clicks as the first! What happened? How can two ads that have basically identical wording get such different click thrus? What was the secret? Look closely at the two ads. Can you spot the only difference between them? What is it?
The second ad, receiving the most click thrus, listed the benefits of the PDF first. While the first ad listed the features and the free PDF offer first. This secret of PPC management is just as true in long-copy print advertising as in those little thumbnail Google ads.
Features and offers tell what your product is or what you’re going to do. They describe it, what it includes, and how big or small or powerful or thorough it is. Benefits, on the other hand, are what those features do for you — the emotional payoffs one gets from using your product or service.
A list of features for an e-book you sell may include wording like this:
• 12 timeless principles
• 24 chapters, 222 pages of rock-solid content
• 64 full-color photos
• Helpful, easy-to-read charts and graphs
• Step-by-step tips and instructions
• Fascinating stories, anecdotes, and personal experiences
• Introduction by Bill Gates
• Etc.
But your list of benefits will tell your customer how they’ll actually be helped by what you’ve written. Sometimes there’s a little bit of crossover between these and the features:
• Achieve a 46 percent improvement in less than 30 minutes.
• You can apply any one of these 12 techniques immediately, and see instant results.
• Catapult Energy Levels, Convert Fat into Muscle, Develop Strength, Endurance, and Flexibility all at the same time.
• Discover how making more mistakes along the way becomes a strategy in itself that will grow your skill level even faster.
• Get compliments from your friends as they ask you again and again (jealously), “What has happened to you?”
There’s no way to pack all of this kind of content into a Google ad, granted. But the principle of dividing benefits from features is universal. Your Google ad is about benefits (emotional payoffs) more than anything else. And when you describe benefits and features both, it virtually always serves you to put benefits first.
In the world of PPC management you don’t have to be a poet or a master copywriter to convince your customer that he or she will get something of value. State your case simply and clearly, and test to see if putting the benefits up front and the features second will boost your response.
