Search engine copywriting is an art. It may not seem possible to pack creativity and strategy into such short headlines and descriptions, but copy is a tool you need to win the search marketing wars.

Yes, it does feel like a war out there. You and your competition have nearly identical customer profiles. How will you differentiate yourself from the very instant prospects (or customers) make contact?

Your other marketing and media expenditures lay a foundation for your search campaign. When starting a search, prospects need your help, whether it’s your services or the products you sell. If prospects suddenly realize they have a problem and they remember your other advertising and type your company name into a search engine, then your other marketing worked. The only bug in the process is consumers didn’t use the browser address bar to find your company. Instead, they chose a search portal. So, search copy must be an extension of your marketing.

Regardless of whether the prospect’s search was for your brand or a keyword in your campaign, that instant when search results are displayed is when you cash in on the marketing and brand momentum you built. All the messaging, education, PR, and media you worked so hard to strategize and execute won’t matter if your organic listing or paid ad isn’t in the search results, or isn’t noticed and clicked on. If you’ve gone to the trouble of building a reputation and a strong brand, don’t screw up now.

Perhaps the preceding is a bit dramatic; perhaps not. However, there’s no denying your headline and description may be your last chance to capture a prospect’s attention before he becomes the competition’s paying customer.

It’s important to understand copywriting best practices vary by engine and sometimes by industry. Today, I’ll stick to best practices that most often hold true. First, some ad copy rules that hold true almost all the time.

Keywords in the Title
In most engines, if the keyword searched is in the ad’s title or description, the keyword is bolded. According to an Overture study conducted by AC Nielsen, “Users were nearly 50 percent more likely to click on listings in which the keyword was included in both the title and description.”

You may feel you have to give up too much space to use the keyword in the title, especially if the keyword is a lengthy phrase. If it’s a long phrase and you don’t have room or you want to include more in the title, at least distil the phrase’s essence and include it in the title. If you have room for the full search phrase, trade off a portion of that phrase to get across a marketing message. For example, if your search term is “Olympus stylus 410 digital camera,” the title could include key search term elements that help the ad pop for searchers.

In Google:
Stylus 410 digital camera
or
Olympus Digital Camera

In Overture:
Buy an Olympus stylus 410 digital camera
or
Olympus stylus 410 digital camera review

Keywords in the Description
Compared to the title, description copy length seems almost spacious in both Overture and Google. If you used the search keywords in the title, you have the option of reusing them again. A description works well when it contains one or more of the following elements:

• It reads like a sentence
• It has an embedded benefit statement.
• It differentiates you or your offer.
• It includes additional information.
• It isn’t too “sales-y.”

Inverted Pyramids
In journalistic writing, one starts with the conclusion, then follows with the strongest statements supporting that conclusion. If an editor must cut, she can cut from the bottom without losing much impact. Similarly, a reader can come away with a solid idea of the story thesis from the first paragraph. Pay-per-click (PPC) search ads should also be top-loaded for immediate effect. Some venues that display PPC search results truncate listings. This means you may lose part of the title and description you just perfected.

By Kevin Lee

A recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project discovered over 53 million Americans use IM on a regular basis. Out of these, 46 percent of Gen-Yers (18-27 year olds) use IM more than e-mail, while only 18 percent of Gen-Xers (28-39) and even fewer older users report using IM more than e-mail. Twenty-one percent of IMers (11 million) use it at work and a whopping 77 percent use it at home.

Clearly, there are a lot of IM users out there, especially among the younger set. If you have a teenager in the house (or work with recent college grads), you don’t need a survey to tell you that; you’ve probably seen it yourself repeatedly. But seeing the numbers really does have a way of putting things in perspective.

If you’re a marketer who targets younger consumers, you’re probably salivating right now and trying to figure out how you can use IM to reach those younger prospects. After all, if almost half are using it more than e-mail now, the trend’s bound to pick up, right?

It’s safe to assume the answer is yes. Recent estimates say nearly 77 percent of all e-mail is spam and nearly 97 percent violates the CAN-SPAM act. With those kinds of percentages, people are clearly going to look for alternative ways to talk to their friends unencumbered by the junk they have to wade through in their inboxes.

What does this mean for marketers? The answer is still up for grabs, but if you look at IM’s characteristics compared to e-mail’s, it seems pretty safe to say swapping IM direct marketing for e-mail direct marketing isn’t necessarily the way to go.

IM isn’t instantaneous e-mail. It’s probably more like mobile phone communications than anything else. Contact is personal, one-to-one and usually among trusted parties. And unlike e-mail, a fairly asynchronous communications medium where users are in total control of what and when they read, IM is intrusive. It pops up unannounced and requires users to make an instant decision about what they’re going to do about the intrusion. Simply buying lists of IM handles and sending messages to them is a sure way to draw ire.

By now, most of us who legitimately use e-mail to market to our customers have bought into the simple notion that unsolicited e-mail isn’t a brand-building tactic. In fact, users are so irritated by unsolicited e-mail even legitimate uses (such as e-mail newsletters) have become suspect. A recent ReleMail survey found 87 percent of e-mail users feel that by subscribing to any newsletter, they open themselves up to spam, regardless of any stated privacy policy of the company offering the newsletter.

This isn’t really surprising. Look at your own behaviour; even if you want a newsletter from a company or publication you trust, don’t you hesitate to subscribe just a smidgen more now than you did in the past? Of course you do — we all do.

When looking for the right marketing tactics to reach customers in an increasingly noisy media space, it’s important to step back and consider how different modes of communication work and how consumers use them. E-mail has been effective because it’s a good way to reach people in a relatively unobtrusive way (compared to IM and the phone) and present them with information that can range from text to video. It’s a good way to send timely offers to a large group of consumers and then have the ability to measure the results. Basically, e-mail is a push medium with a built-in feedback mechanism.

IM, on the other hand, is a lot more personal. It’s an instantaneous communications tool. The expectation is communicating in real time with another human being. It’s intrusive and immediate and demands attention. You can’t put IMs away for later. You can’t scan a list of subject lines and decide what to respond to. The buddy list is king: It’s a list of trusted correspondents with whom you wish to converse. Breaking into that circle is the equivalent of showing up uninvited to a party and insinuating yourself into a group of friends having a conversation. Not a good way to get to know people.

When reading surveys about the growing importance of IM, realize how it’s being used. Don’t make the classic mistake of thinking it’s “just like [insert medium here], only different.” In the early days, the Web was seen as “just like” TV or print, only “kinda different.” Most of the initial mistakes in everything from dot-coms (remember the big push for online video services?), advertising (static banners), and Web sites (Time Warner’s Pathfinder) had problems because we didn’t consider the unique aspects of the medium in our zeal to cash in.

IM can be a powerful marketing tool, but only if we consider what it’s good for. It’s becoming relatively ubiquitous (you can be sure usage will grow); it’s good for short, one-on-one communications; and it’s very personal, used for communicating among a trusted circle. Users have a fair amount of control over who does and doesn’t IM them (via buddy lists or blocking features). They resent anyone who tries to circumvent that control. IM spam is worse than junk mail. It feels like stalking.

How do you use IM as a marketing tool? Take advantage of its unique properties to provide one-to-one communications with customers, effectively opening up your company and making yourself available to those interested in your products and services. Capture their interest immediately, when they are ready. Building a brand through superior customer service is another excellent use of IM, as is providing a feedback mechanism to answer questions. Any personalized communication that must happen on an instantaneous basis is fair game.

There’s obviously a lot of work to do, but if you’re not thinking about using IM now as an integral part of your corporate communications mix, you’ll miss out. Today’s Gen-Yers are your future high-value customers. If they don’t use e-mail, you may miss a big opportunity.

By Sean Carton

Your e-mail list has a large number of older addresses. How can you minimize list atrophy and restore your list to its former glory? Reconfirmation can help separate the wheat from the chaff on your list. The following presumes all the recipients on your list opted in at some point. Any addresses that didn’t should never have been on the list and should be removed straightaway.

Approaches to Reconfirmation
To reconfirm addresses, send a message to recipients informing them they’re on your list. They can either remain on the list or unsubscribe. Some mailing list software can be configured to do this automatically periodically, but most can’t. Reconfirmation is an excellent tool for those list segments that aren’t at either end of the spectrum. They’re not so old they should be entirely discarded, and they’re not so new they can be used without concern.

There are two approaches to reconfirmation: opt-in and opt-out. The opt-in approach requires recipients to take a specific action to remain on the list (usually clicking on a URL). Opt-out requires them to take action to be removed from the list (usually clicking on a link or sending a removal request).

The opt-out approach is generally more attractive to marketers, as it loses fewer addresses. However, it doesn’t clean the list as effectively. Recipients of messages that are black-holed or quarantined aren’t removed by opt-out. Further, users have long been advised not to unsubscribe from spam. Some recipients will complain or take no action rather than opt-out. A few believe since they hadn’t opted in before they shouldn’t need to opt out now.

Selecting the Recipients
Though many factors may be considered and precise determination depends on circumstances, there are two key dimensions to think about:

• Recency. How recently was the segment contacted by e-mail? Within the last six months? Within the last year? Never?
• Provenance. How good is the record and evidence of their opt-in? Full source, date, and IP address? A flag indicating the source of the subscription? No record?

Writing the Message
Craft a clear, concise reconfirmation message. You can provide an example of what the recipient will receive, but avoid making the message look like a marketing solicitation. This will only confuse recipients about the message’s purpose. The message should:

• Inform recipients why they’re receiving the message
• Remind them when, where, and how they originally signed up
• Tell them what they can expect to receive from you in the future
• Tell them what they should do to continue or stop receiving messages from you

Sending the Message
ISPs and recipients generally react favourably to these kinds of reconfirmation messages. However, many run automated blocking systems. A high bounce rate could block your message, at least temporarily. And some recipients may complain about an opt-in reconfirmation.

To minimize the effect of this, send the message in batches and monitor bounce rates and complaints. If a particular segment proves troublesome, switch it from opt-out to opt-in (if it’s not already) or discard it completely. If you’re experiencing deliverability issues with a particular ISP, talk with it about what you’re doing and why. ISPs are generally very receptive to people trying to do the right thing. Hold off on sending more messages until the issue is resolved. With a well-crafted reconfirmation message, you can effectively clean up an otherwise problematic list. Once it’s clean, keep it that way with regular communications and good list hygiene practices.

By Derek Harding