A Quick Tip: Including Made Up Data in Ads

[charlie.simm]

I used to make some nice interwebz monies with AdWords a while back (atm I'm raking in a sweet $0/day...), so I thought I'd share something with ya. Not sure if it's been covered before, but here it is anyway:

Whenever possible, include some random/bogus/made up data in your ads. So basically, instead of "Thousands of Customers Can't Be Wrong", try "8,729 Customers Can't Be Wrong" and stuff like that. But be careful with something: avoid numbers which would make it obvious that they were made up. I mean seriously, if you're going to try this, at least be a little creative.

If you try to get away with something like "8,888 Customers Can't Be Wrong" or "8,765 Customers Can't Be Wrong", it's gonna backfire and instead of increasing your CTR, you'd only end up making people think twice before clicking.

So "8,729 Customers Can't Be Wrong" might work because:

1) It sounds pretty believable (obviously, saying that you have a gazillion customers ain't gonna work)

2) 8,792 isn't a figure which clearly seems made up (as opposed to 8,888 or 8,765)

Alright, that's it: try it yourself if you want to and see how it works for your campaigns. From what I've tested, the CTR seems to go up and the conversion rates aren't affected, but the best way to find out if it works for your stuff is to do your own testing.

 

[d03boy]

You could try really low numbers like 14 so people think that it's a live counter or something and if they sign up they'll be the first to know about it, etc.

 

[charlie.simm]

You could try really low numbers like 14 so people think that it's a live counter or something and if they sign up they'll be the first to know about it, etc.

Yeah, something similar to "Selling Like Crazy - Only 25 Left" might work as well. Haven't tried this, but I see no reason why it shouldn't. The same principle applies: you shouldn't use numbers which make it clear that something is fishy, so claims such as "Selling Like Crazy - Only 2 Left" would probably do more harm than good.

 

[ROIShareTeam]

Or:

Only 4 free trials remain.

Works well for trial offers for me.

 

[charlie.simm]

Or:

Only 4 free trials remain.

Works well for trial offers for me.

I guess the best approach (aside from testing obviously) would be asking some friends/relatives what they think, since they're probably not Internet savvy. I'd say that "Selling Like Crazy - Only 1 Left" would sound pretty hard to believe, even for a person who has just found out about teh interwebz. Since I don't have any data for "Selling Like Crazy - Only [whatever] Left", testing is the only way to find out for sure.