One of the most fascinating ideas that has appeared in recent years is the Swiss Army Knife innovation for PPC copywriting from Perry Marshall.
Swiss Army Knife Seminar DVDs - affiliate link
The PPC Ad Copywriting Problem
If you've used Google Adwords, you'll know that it can be a nightmare to come up with a compelling PPC advertisement.
The space is so limited.
You've only got...
25 characters for the first line that is clickable
35 characters for the second line
35 characters for the third line
That's 95 characters in total including spaces and that's assuming you can use them all.
But that's not all.
Your little ad is competing with nine other competitors who have the same restriction as you because they're using PPC...
And ten other competitors that have the added advantages through the natural listing from:
- Implied credibility from Google of being worthy of a place on page 1
- More characters to sell the click - the average organic listing can have about 65 characters in the title tag and 150 characters in the displayed meta description - a total of 215 characters or 126% than available to Adword users.
Given that the average searcher may only click three or four links from the twenty on the page and there's a strong bias towards those links at the top of the page, your PPC advertisement has to work hard to earn a click.
No wonder average click through rates are 1 to 2% with only the first position as high as 3%.
But what if you could find a way to give a big boost to the pulling power of your PPC advertisements?
Well for one thing, your cost per click would fall very quickly because of Google's bidding system which rewards successful marketers.
That would be nice - more clicks and paying less for them.
And that's where the Swiss Army Knife Concepts from Perry Marshall come in.
The Swiss Army Knife For PPC Copywriting
To borrow from a blog I wrote back in February 2010
Perry has founded a new way to get out of the Google Ad-writing rut and get great click through rates. He calls it "The Swiss Army Knife."
This is how Perry Marshall describes the idea:
"It's systematic, it's scientific, and endlessly creative. Bionic Google ads are tractor beams that drag peoples' eyeballs away from the center of the page to YOUR ad. They push your ads up in the rankings so you get more traffic or cut your bids. They bring new people who would've never clicked before."
Sounds good doesn't it.
Perry Marshall originally presented the Swiss Army Knife concept at his own conference in Maui in Hawaii.
It was very popular and people wanted to know more about how these concepts could be applied.
He held a one day event where people could step into the hotseat and Perry Marshall would rework their marketing based on the Swiss Army Knife ideas.
You've missed the event but you can still get the DVDs
Swiss Army Knife - affiliate link
What is Increasing Your PPC Click Through Rate Worth To You?
The Swiss Army Knife method for improving your PPC copywriting is going to appeal to two types of people:
- If you're responsible for a big PPC advertising budget as the owner or marketing VP, director or manager of a business
- If you're a marketing consultant with clients who in total have a big PPC budget.
If you have a high visitor value, you want all the clicks you can get because you earn much more than you pay Google.





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