There are a number of reasons why you’d do this:

• It’s a great way to drive traffic to your website
• It’s a chance for you to gain excellent exposure for your brand
• It’s a way to build relationships with people in your industry
• It’s a long trusted method of giving your site’s Domain Rating/Domain Authority a helping hand in the form of backlinks

We here at Adzooma have been putting guest blogging into practice for a while now and we’ve seen some great results:

However, these results aren’t all that easy to come by. The seas of guest blogging can be a little choppy, it’s certainly not plain sailing. There are rules to abide by, best practices to follow, and a long list of things you need to know before you start.

In this article I’m going to guide you through all that along with helping you outline your guest blogging goals, what to pitch, how to pitch and where to pitch.

Now let’s get started.

Where should you start?

When you start considering guest blogging for your business you firstly need to define what you actually want from it.

We pointed out the main four reasons for doing so at the top, but I just want to expand on that a little:

1. Increasing your brand’s exposure

Writing guest posts simply puts your brand’s name in front of people. Some sites won’t allow you to sell your services in the article, nor even mention your brand in the article, however you will always be able to feature yourself in the bio and on highly viewed sites this is great exposure – hopefully it’ll culminate in an uptick in brand searches too.

2. Driving traffic to your website

This may come directly or indirectly. Not every site will allow you a link back so that’s where you’ll rely on brand searches to do the job. However most will, and with smart in-post links you may see those referral metrics in Google Analytics skyrocket.

3. Building relationships with people in your industry

It’s always important to be on good terms with those in your industry and those in your industry’s press – I scratch your back, you scratch my back is important in business. Guest posting gives you an excuse to make contact with people and from there who knows what it’ll lead to.

4. Boosting your website authority

Now in 2021, this is a little more difficult than it used to be. Google have recently said that all guest posts should be no follow links, therefore the “link equity” you gain from no follow backlinks is lessened and won’t have as much of an impact on your website’s authority in the eyes of Google – ignoring this can result in manual penalties. However, contrary to what some people say, no follow links are a signal and will still have some impact, so don’t discount them entirely.

You don’t have to just kill one bird with one stone, though. You can go for all four. This may dilute your offering so have a think about it, but once you’ve decided what your goals are (note: it may be hard to put a number by these goals to begin with), it’s important to dig a little deeper if you really want to see the fruits of your labour down the line.

For example, if you want to increase your brand’s exposure, you need to ask yourself questions like:

• “In what way do I want to increase my brand’s exposure?”
• “How do I want to be perceived when people see my brand associated with this content?”

If you don’t define and scope this out properly, your brand may be seen and forgotten, or seen and associated with something entirely different from what you want to be associated with.

The same with driving traffic. Ask questions like:

• “Do you just want people to land onto your website?
• “Do you want people to land on to your website and then buy your product?”

There is no right or wrong answer here, conversions are great but not the be all and end all.

Everything is dependent on what you want to gain.

So start by asking yourself as many questions as you can, like some of the examples provided above. From there you can really drill down into what you want to achieve and why.

This is such a vital step and needs to be in your mind throughout the whole process, because it will make everything else so much easier.

What should I post?

Relevant content, of course. If you’re running a surveying company, you don’t want to write about the intricate details of Tom Brady’s career just because it’s the only way you can get a backlink on a high domain site. This won’t move any of your needles.

It also doesn’t make you look like an expert. Instead, if you’re a design agency and you’re writing an article about UX laws and you’re wowing the reader, that reader is going to go, “Wow, this person really knows what they’re talking about, who are they?!” Then you’ve automatically made yourself look like a thought leader in someone’s eyes.

But more than relevancy and your expertise you need to think a bit wider too, like for example evergreen content. Evergreen content is essentially timeless content, the Pink Floyd or Miles Davis of content, content that won’t go out of date.

Because essentially, if you’ve got a chance of guest posting, you want your article to always be out there so you’re still getting readers, clicks and potentially conversions five years down the line.

This isn’t easy, especially in some industries where things change all the time, plus it’s not a hard and fast rule either. Some sites will only accept newsworthy content, which is fine and newsworthy content has the potential to create great noise on social and via Google News too. But it’s important to get the balance right.

It’s also really important to soft sell your expertise too. Some sites you can overtly sell yourself within the copy, but you’ve got to be smooth with it. If all of a sudden you post a pretty much CTA in the copy, people are going to be wise to what you’re doing and be put off.

Instead, be subtle and make it part of your article. Here’s an example we did for PPC Hero for an article on the Best APIs for SEO & PPC Managers:

We listed all the best solutions, then featured ourselves in the list. This is a great way to make yourself look great while not drawing attention to the fact you’re selling to them in the process.

However, some sites you’ll have to be even more subtle. So when we wrote an article on How to Get National PR Coverage When Starting From Zero for Jeff Bullas it was crucial for us to give context around who Adzooma are so the reader could relate our method to our PR goals. And there was the crucial place to soft sell and bring attention to the Adzooma product:

It’s also important to create content that will resonate with the site’s audience too, but I’m slightly stepping on the toes of the next section so I’ll move on to that now.

How to pitch

This will differ enormously from site to site. Some sites have really strict guidelines when it comes to pitching like Wired for example. While others want you to give them the blog straight off the bat like PPC Hubbub.

Of course, always follow the pitching guidelines where possible, but if there are no pitching guidelines, here are a few tips:

• Thoroughly scout the website you’re pitching to. To create a successful pitch you need to make sure what you’re pitching fits in what they currently publish
• Make your pitch personal. I know sending out mass emails saves time, but people see straight through it in 2021
• Provide more than one topic and include a two, three sentence explainer of what it will consist of and why it will be a great fit for their site
• Be informal, but not over friendly. We’ve received some awful, sickly pitches down the years and there’s nothing more off putting
• Give a little bit of background of who you are and why you’re an expert on the topic that you’re pitching – a link to recently published work or LinkedIn page works here
• Tell them you will follow SEO best practice and include a target keyword. Every site loves it if you can offer them a potential to see growth in the SERPs

All these tips aren’t just a good way of getting published. They will also make your content perform better once it’s live too, especially the scouting of the previous articles. This gives you an idea of what tone to use and what you can include in your content like images, screenshots, stats, infographics, case studies, etc.

You won’t get replies to every pitch you send out, so reach out to people who know you or have mentioned you online to begin with.

Also, this is a long term tactic, but it will pay off. Try to personally interact with journalists, thought leaders and colleagues within your industry through social media. It sounds almost too simple in practice, but what you’re doing is moving from unknown emailer to, “Hey, that person I converse with semi-often on social media emailed me. I like the way they think, I’ll give this a read.”

Because no matter how great your idea, until they know who you are, you’re outside the circle of trust. But by treating these people like actual real human beings and interacting with them online, you’re striking up a genuine personal relationship that could help in a professional capacity too.

It’s important to always have your emotional intelligence dialed up so as not to come across creepy or weird, obviously, and I’m not saying you should start faking being someone’s friend. But just treat them like a real human being, offer them your personality and your insight, then see what happens when you start offering them your work later down the line.

Where should I post and where can I post?

This of course depends on your starting plan, but whatever you’ve decided upon, that word relevancy again is the key for this section.

So when you’re searching for places to post, make sure it relates in some way to your business. It doesn’t have to be a like for like site, say you run a plumbing business you could look to websites who write about small businesses, or maybe go a little bit more out there and go to a site who write about environmental sustainability.

As long as there is something there that fits naturally in with your business and your goals, then that’s the place for you.

But don’t forget to look at traffic and Domain Rating (DR) / Domain Authority (DA) too. If you’re wanting clicks to your site and to build your brand, posting on a site that doesn’t receive any traffic isn’t going to move any needles, and if you’re looking to improve your website’s authority by getting a link on a low DR / DA site, neither will that.

Moz’s SEO toolbar is a free easy way to keep an eye on site DA – you can just add it as an extension to your Chrome browser and everytime you land on a website it will tell you the site’s DA. While adding the free Keyword Surfer to Chrome will give you the estimated monthly traffic for every URL that appears in the SERPs. They’re two great tools that don’t add any time to your research process.

There are no benchmarks you should look out for, it’s best to just judge for yourself by comparing your site’s DR / DA and monthly traffic to a potential guest posting spot. However I’d avoid going for sites with spam scores over 30 (Moz’s toolbar comes equipped with a Spam Score indicator too). These sites can hurt the health of your site so should be avoided.

So where do you find sites that will house your blogs? Here’s a few places you should look and few techniques to finding more:

Adzooma

Of course I had to put this first. I’ll keep it short, but we here at Adzooma are currently open to guest posts across a whole array of marketing disciplines. As long as your piece has some kind of marketing element to it, we’re all ears.

You can find more information here or get in touch today.

Websites to guest post

There are some great resources out there if you’re looking to find loads of sites to contact in one place.

This piece from Solvid features over 300 websites that accept guest posts, including specific categories for business, digital marketing, lifestyle and technology, while they’ve also inserted a column for DA, Alexa (site popularity), and “difficulty” to get published.

Advanced Web Ranking have also created a similar resource, featuring over 150 sites, including specific categories for digital marketing, travel & tourism, finance, sports & fitness, health, home & garden, family & community, business, and much more. They’ve also included the DA beside each one too.

And there is a website called AllTop.com too which is intensely comprehensive, though it is a little bit of a mad site and not quite as structured and neat as the other two, but if you’re willing to dig it’s a great resource.

I must say, some on these sites are outdated (which isn’t surprising given how many sites they’ve collated), but there are certainly more hits than misses, and they definitely give you a head start in your search for publication.

Utilise the search engines

Google is a big friend here, as is Twitter. You’ll find loads of potential opportunities by just using the following search strings on both sites. Let’s say you’re in the finance industry, for ease:

• Finance “guest post”
• Finance “write for us”
• Finance “guest article”
• Finance “contributing writer”
• Finance “submit blog post”
• Finance “articles wanted”
• Finance “contribute to our site”
• Finance “contributors”
• Finance “guest column”
• Finance “submit content”
• Finance “articles wanted”

Then have a think about prolific guest bloggers in your space. You may not know any off the top of your head, so this may require a little bit of searching to find someone

My recommendation would be to have a click around on some authors on your industry’s most well known blogs and then give them a Google search.

I’m going to show you the example of what I found off the bat with Kirk Williams here, he’s a big player in the paid search industry:

These are just the first results that came up, and 4 of the 6 results are guest posts. There are loads more further down and on the following pages.

Analyse your competitors

So, this one you will have to find a paid solution for. Two great ones are SEMRush and SEO PowerSuite.

Once you’ve signed up, though, it’s really easy. Say you’re using SEMrush, you just have to head to the backlinks analytics tab, type in the domain and you’ll get a list like so:

I’ve filtered these by Follow links, initially. Then the process is just clicking each link to try and find the guest posts. Once you’ve found them, head to the contact page and send your pitch over.

Another tool you can use is Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report which will allow you to get ahead of your competitors by finding keywords they’re missing. You can also compare your client’s performance with a competitor, showing how they compare with the competition.

The report is available to all Adzooma users, try the basic version for free to get a taste of what this report can offer. Not an Adzooma user? Sign up for free, here.

How to know if you’re successful

Like I said earlier in the article, it’s hard to put a specific number beside goals you want to achieve when you’re starting out but this will become easier once you have a benchmark to compare yourself to.

But knowing whether you’re successful or not comes down to two things really: being published and an uptick in analytics.

Yes, being published is a success. It’s not always easy to do, especially when you’re starting out and you’re unknown. Don’t let me put you off by saying that, but I don’t want you to think this is an easy process because it’s not.

However, it does get easier. Just like in every aspect of the world, once you’ve got that initial foot in the door, other doors will open.

Then from there, it’s important to keep an eye on analytics. Have a look at those referral stats in Google Analytics and brand searches in Google Search Console, see if your guest posts are making an impact or not.

If they’re not, maybe the site you posted on isn’t great or maybe you didn’t soft sell yourself well in the article.

Whatever it may be, don’t give up. Finesse the formula and get straight back to it.

Or just get a digital PR agency to do it for you.

There’s no absolute recipe for success when it comes to ad copywriting but I’ve come up with 14 tips to improve your PPC ads.

1. Know your target audience

Learn to take your target audience’s needs into consideration by really putting yourself in their shoes. Demographic data is important to help shape your ads. If you can figure out a bit more about what problems they go through daily, then you can explain how your product or service solves these problems.

Examples of demographic data include:

• Age
• Location
• Language
• Interests
• Income

It’s also vital to consider the PPC networks you use. We’ve written plenty of pieces on how it’s vital for business success to diversify your marketing channels and we’ve also dug into the data about what the likes of Google, Microsoft and Facebook are able to give you that other networks won’t. Here’s a couple of good ones for you to look over:

• How To Choose The Best Digital Marketing Channel
  • In collaboration with the University of Cambridge, we analysed a sample of data to determine whether Microsoft, Google and/or Facebook ads is the best marketing channel for SMBs
• Microsoft Ads vs Google Ads: Measuring Conversions, Clicks & Cost
  • We took a look at two identical campaign’s worth of data to see just how different the results across both the networks look.

2. Address users directly

Using the words “you” and “your” creates a friendlier relationship from the start and makes them feel like you’re speaking to them personally. This will make your audience feel more important and as if you were speaking to them personally. Attracting potential customers with a conversational tone can also help with the growing popularity of voice search.

3. Use PPC data to shape your copy

It’s really important to look at your PPC account and see what is converting well. But also, you need to cast the net wider and analyse external data.

Previously you had to perform a search query report or use external tools to find this kind of information, but these days with new technology like Adzooma, once you’ve connected your account to the platform, your ad copy is constantly analysed against the data to provide you with best practice Opportunities you can apply with just a few clicks. You can see an example just below.

4. Use SEO data to shape your copy

Use SEO data to create a copywriting strategy that will meet your audience’s demands. Identify what information or advice they are currently seeking, and position your brand at every touchpoint along the way. Analyse search trends to discover what you need to include to make your PPC copywriting richer and more appealing. Here are some SEO tools you can use to help:

• SEMrush
• Answer the Public
• Checkbot
• Advanced Web Ranking
• SEO PowerSuite
• Dashword

5. Emotional triggers

Using emotional triggers in your PPC copywriting is very effective. The most memorable ads are the ones that move or intrigue us. Appealing to both positive or negative emotions can work.

Simon Hall’s The Science of Emotions: What’s Behind PPC Ad Copy outlined the different emotions that could drive ad copy, including fear, trust, guilt, community, value, pleasure. Simon also suggested using persuasive language to elicit a response from users:

Your ad copy not only should elicit an emotional response from your audience, it should also encourage them to act on it. Once you’ve struck the right nerve and captured your audience’s attention, encouraging them to click is all about using persuasive language.

Simon Hall, The Science of Emotions: What’s Behind PPC Ad Copy

6. Maximise your space

Include as much information as possible in your allocated ad space. Create a custom URL using keywords, and ad extensions where possible. Fill any space leftover with detail and make the most of it.

Don’t forget your character limits. For Google Ads, they are:

Read: Is Writer’s Block Real?

7. Showcase your USP

Use PPC copywriting to set yourself apart from the rest. What is your unique selling point (USP)? Throw in detail about special offers as well, or anything that will grab attention. Try to highlight what makes you different or better than the competition. Marketing Donut has a great guide on developing your USP including some of the following tips:

• List of all the needs that your product or service could meet and compare them to trends and competitors.
• Ask how these criteria compare to your business’s strengths.
• Carry out market research within your target audience.
• Confirm you can truly offer the USP with conviction.
• Build your marketing strategy around it.
• Monitor trends and new competitors that may offer similar features.

And if you’re stuck, spice up your PPC copywriting with some inspiringly creative ads.

8. Use powerful CTAs

Ensure your call to action (CTA) is strong and clear. A good tip is to use time constraints like “Buy now, offer ends Monday”. Encourage users to get in touch and make the text really stand out with clever design techniques. Use strong verbs and avoid cliches where possible. Your potential customers need to be explicitly aware of what’s going to happen when they click that button.

But, again, don’t forget character limits. You can work this out using Excel or Google Sheets and the LEN formula or you could use Adzooma which comes with a character limit checker as standard.

9. Test, test, test!

Run regular split tests on your PPC ads. Try out different CTAs in different locations, for example, see what works best. Highlight various benefits of your product or service and see which draws the most attention. The data you collate from testing will help you to improve your marketing strategy in the future.

Split testing isn’t reserved for Google or Microsoft Ads. Kass Botts’s article Facebook Split Testing 101 gave some tips on what to use for split testing and when not to split test:

Split testing is a way to use a dedicated budget for a specified time period to gather learnings about your marketing initiatives. They are best utilized when you have a specific, measurable question for which you need a data-driven answer. Best practice, especially for creative split testing, is to test conceptual differences rather than minor variations. For these smaller tweaks, your resources might be better used by running multiple ads in the same ad set and analyzing performance, or utilizing more than one ad set in a campaign.

Kass Botts, Facebook Split Testing 101

Adzooma’s Automation feature is also great sidekick for your testing endeavours too – we have a list of templates for this exact reason.

Once you’ve created the ad you want to test, head to Automations tab in your Adzooma account, click “New Automation Rule”, then “Choose Template”, and go to “Pause Ads With Low CTR”.

This automation rule runs every 30 minutes to check whether your ads are performing, and if they’re not up to the standard you expect, they’ll stop. You can also do the same by using the template “Ad Pausing on Scale” or “Pause Advert” if the CTR is fine but the conversion rate is low.

This gives you complete peace of mind and means you won’t waste any spend on those ads you’re looking to test.

10. Include numbers (but don’t stuff them in where they don’t fit)

Ask any PPC expert and they’ll tell you figures and statistics can help to increase click-through rate (CTR). If it makes sense to use a number, add one in. But don’t use numbers that don’t make sense.

Example: You wouldn’t need to say something is 100% guaranteed, because if it’s not totally guaranteed, you shouldn’t mention it at all.

11. Write keyword-rich display URLs

Including keywords about your product or service in your display URL is an easy way to let potential customers know what your business is. You can modify your display URL to make it different from your final URL. Relate lead generation strategies to your PPC copywriting and make the most of those keywords.

12. Handle objections

Brainstorm any initial objections potential customers might have to your ad, and address them. By bringing up any possible reasons to reject your business, you can foster a sense of trust and legitimacy, which leads to customer loyalty and longevity.

The advantage of handling objections in your ad copy, where applicable, is it answers questions straight away and gives a user clarification about your product, service, and overall brand.

13. Avoid too much repetition

Keep your PPC copywriting concise, relevant, and specific – don’t repeat yourself. It wastes time and valuable ad space. Try to think of new and interesting information to support your main selling point. You’ll be given an allowance for ad titles and text, display, and final URLs, so try and use it wisely. Use single words instead of descriptions where you can, and lone verbs instead of verb phrases. Although it’s best to maximise your character limits, less can be more if you find yourself running out of space.

So don’t repeat yourself.

14. Enhance your ad extensions

Make the most of your ad extensions. These are little bits of information strategically attached to your ad when it appears in search results. Ad extensions can include:

• Sitelink extensions
• Callout extensions
• Call extensions
• Location extensions
• Message extensions
• App extensions
• Price extensions
• Promotion extensions

And that doesn’t include automated ad extensions either. We have a longer piece on ad extensions for you to read over to get a full understanding if they’re new to you.

Plus, through the Opportunities feature in the free Adzooma platform, you will also get regular reminders to include ad extensions so you can keep your ads optimised at all times.

Conclusion

Remember how everything is connected. The goal of your PPC ad is to ultimately lead people to your site and generate conversions. It’s important to be consistent and maintain the same level of trust and customer engagement from the first click to the final destination.

To put this into perspective, five times as many people read the headline than the body copy. If it doesn’t grab their attention, they will keep scrolling until they find one that does. It’s the ultimate decision-maker between them visiting your website or not.

Ready to get started? Here’s everything you need to know about creating red-hot headlines that are guaranteed to increase your click-through rate (CTR).

The basics

PPC ads have similar layouts and restrictions on all search engines.

For this example, we’ll look at the one that receives a massive 3.8 million searches per minute – Google.

Google Ads are made up of three elements:

• Your headline. This is where you captivate your audience with the most engaging benefits of your business. You’re allowed up to 3 headlines of 30 characters, all of which can display a different perk or offer.
• Your description. This is the small text that goes underneath your headline, giving you more space to highlight the best parts of your product or service. Here, you’re allowed two descriptions of 90 characters.
• Your display URL. This isn’t as important as the first two but can be used as an opportunity to clean up any odd numbers or words and show that you’re a real business. For instance, https://www.adzooma.com/offer/today12345?=clicktoday/ could become https://www.adzooma.com/Free_Offer.

To put your headlines into perspective, I’ve already used 38 characters at the beginning of this sentence. It’s not a lot – but it won’t be long before you’re an expert in writing short and snappy copy.

While you spend time doing this, the Adzooma platform can take care of the rest of your advertising campaigns. It will analyse your accounts 24/7, flagging underperforming ads and generating suggested improvements you can action in seconds.

Better yet, it’s free.

5 steps to writing killer PPC headlines

1. Choose your keywords

Your keywords are the foundation of your ads.

They determine where your ads will show up when somebody searches for something. Selling high top trainers? Then choosing “buy high top trainers” as a keyword might be something to go for. Keywords are the first step to making your PPC ads work – before we focus on the smaller details.

If you aren’t sure which keywords are best for you to use, Google’s Keyword Planner does the research for you. It’s a way of uncovering data about potential keywords before you use them so they’re more likely to gain better results.

You can also find useful metrics such as:

• Average monthly searches
• Competition
• Bid estimates
• Related keywords
• Projected clicks
• Projected impressions
• Projected clickthrough rate

Using this data, you will be able to narrow down your keywords for each campaign and write more straight-forward, relevant headlines.

2. Think about your USP

If you want people to click on your ads, you need to think about the unique selling point of your business.

This is the thing that sets you apart from your competitors and makes your product or service better than theirs. What do you offer that they don’t?

Whatever it is, put it in your headline. Use as few characters as possible to make it exciting and memorable, focusing on the benefits of your business rather than the features.

Take a look at these two examples.

A:

B:

At first glance, the headline in option B doesn’t tell you anything.

Option A is much more benefit-driven and gives the user a reason to click. It outlines their amazing delivery loud and clear, showing that their service is faster and more convenient than their competitors.

But, even this one can be improved. If you carefully pick and arrange beautifully hand-tied bouquets, don’t just say ‘Flowers Nottingham’. Yes, it’s a keyword, but adding the word ‘beautiful’ in front will earn you more clicks.

3. Focus on emotion

Emotion is the driving force behind everything. Your ads aren’t an exception, and won’t perform without it.

Make your audience care by telling them how much you can help them, how impressive or beautiful your product is, or even how fast and stress-relieving your service is. Assure them that you can solve one of their problems. They won’t click on your ad if they aren’t convinced.

One of the best ways to do this is by asking a question. If it’s strong enough, you won’t need to include anything else – it will do all the talking for you. It’s basically a matter of the strongest question wins.

This works particularly well for services in the insurance and divorce industries, as the situations you’re solving are much more personal to the user.

For example:

Headlines like this often perform much better than ones with more traditional language such as ‘take control of your claim’ as they make people think about their personal circumstances.

On the other hand, you should also make the most of descriptive text by including powerful and captivating adjectives. Remove dead words like ‘the’ and ‘and’ to make room for words and phrases like:

• ‘freshly handmade’
• ‘expertly crafted’
• ‘super-fast delivery’

Don’t be afraid to write with full stops to save characters. This will help you to remain concise and include as many benefits as possible.

Something as simple as ‘Freshly Made. Expertly Crafted. Buy Today’ will make your headline clickable.

4. Use simple language

Use simple language to get your message across clearly.

Why? Because people like to know exactly what they’re getting. They aren’t going to trust your website if your PPC headlines are full of buzzwords.

In addition, if you write your headlines as if you’re speaking to an expert, you will never get to the core benefits of your business. You’ve got to be nuanced.

For instance, take this example:

This headline tells us everything we need to know.

Now, take this one:

This headline assumes the audience knows what a ticketing tool is, which instantly discards the people who don’t. Something more universal would have worked better, such as ‘Highly Rated IT Tech Support’.

If you aren’t sure how to get the balance right, do a quick Google search for the products or services you offer and see what your competitors are doing.

Or, if you think you’ve gone a little overboard or lost the essence of your ad, there are opportunities within the Adzooma platform to help you make fast improvements.

For example, you might be alerted to ‘Try New Advert Headlines’, where you input some text and Adzooma will generate the ad for you. It will also spot any spelling or grammatical errors in your ads, which saves a lot of time when you’re adding a ton of new headlines.

5. Include specific numbers or statistics

Using numbers and statistics is a great way to stand out on Google. They add credibility to your brand, help to build trust, and make people want to find out more.

In fact, headlines with numbers tend to generate 73% more social shares and engagement.

It’s the reason ads like this do so well:

The more specific you are, the more clicks you’ll receive. It’s the easiest way of getting more traffic to your site.

If you’re a hairdresser with 6 years’ experience, put that in your headline. An arts and crafts business offering 25% off any handmade prints over £33? Shout it from the rooftops.

Boost your profits through PPC ads

By following these simple steps, you should be on your way to creating excellent PPC headlines in no time.

If you’re in doubt, remember to keep it simple. Figure out your USP by thinking about the things that would impress you the most, and stick to the keywords and phrases that you know your audience wants.

Better yet, use your competitors’ headlines as inspiration – particularly if yours aren’t performing. It’s all about testing.

“Usually a temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.”

The debate

Is ‘writer’s block’ a real psychological condition or are ‘stuck’ days just a natural part of the writing process? How has a global pandemic impacted writers who now find themselves sat at home, looking for inspiration in a bleaker world?

Through digging into psychological experiments, looking at its origins and speaking to writers of note, let’s take a look at how the landscape of this regularly debated topic is shaping up, particularly during COVID-19.

“Are you kidding me, this lockdown has put a rocket up my derriere… Having time to absorb social media, marketing blogs and even read a few books my mind has been exposed to so much info and this has helped me come up with an abundance of ideas.”

Brett Downes, Haro Helpers

The history of writer’s block

If we read the work of some early 19th century writers, they frequently mention struggling with invisible influences that control their creativity or their inabilities to think of fresh ideas.

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge declared: “Yesterday was my Birth Day. So completely has a whole year passed, with scarcely the fruits of a month. O Sorrow and Shame… I have done nothing!”

Not only is Coleridge highly relatable, but he shines a light on the earliest mention of writer’s block… in 1804. When asked by his friends why he couldn’t simply snap out of it, he quipped “You bid me rouse myself. Go, bid a man paralytic in both arms rub them briskly together, and that will cure him.”

Despite being a problem centuries earlier, the term ‘writer’s block’ wasn’t coined until 1947 by psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler. The first description in the Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis states “its earliest manifestation may be feelings of insecurity regarding one’s creativity, the development of a certain terseness of style, and looking to others for ideas for future projects.”

“When I get writer’s block, I first ask myself why. Sometimes I’m just creatively exhausted, because I have written everything out of my system; in that case, I just leave my desk, go out and meet new people and read new work, and replenish the well of ideas.

If I’m scared, then I write directly about the thing I am most afraid about, getting up early and typing straightaway so that my mind is uncluttered and free from doubt. So often, the key to my best writing is not certainty but vulnerability. The more open I am, the better the work, and the more freely it comes.”

Musa Okwonga, poet, journalist and musician

A cognitive process which can’t be helped

The primary defence of writer’s block is that it’s not something you can control: it happens to you. You get no say. In this sense, it’s like the common cold – you just have to work through it.

“Covid-19 has absolutely affected my writing. Between working from home, home-schooling and chasing a baby, we are all home so much that I am needing much more time to keep things clean and running! By the time the baby settles and the 7yr old nods off to sleep after extra hugs, I really don’t have the mental energy to start writing seriously on any project.

Trying to keep track of zoom schedules and book fairs, day job and side hustle, I find that it’s impacted me because I spend my free time trying to get some quiet solitude to restore my spirit. It’s hard to hear the writing muse whispering in one’s ear when Elmo is constantly playing between a hundred other things!”

Carrie Aulenbacher

The counterargument to this is that you can defend yourself from germs with the right precautions… But then can you impact your susceptibility psychological conditions?

Notable authors who have suffered with it include Stephen King, Harper Lee and, of course, George R. R. Martin (yes, we are still waiting). If professional writers experience this phenomenon, does this add or detract weight from the argument that it exists? In one respect, they have a lot of experience so are more qualified to answer. However, they also have tremendous pressure to perform; often their fan bases demand sequels, not only quickly, but one’s that are bigger and better than the last.

“It must be a psychological process where your brain is processing it in the background. It’s also why sleep is so good for it, and a new morning especially productive. If under time pressure, I’ve developed this thing where I literally just put down the most basic way of writing. You then look at it and think “I can do better than that” and that gets your brain whirring. You at least won’t be offering the worst possible stuff, and that is mentally helpful.”

Miguel Delaney, Chief Football Writer for The Independent

Backed up by science

There have been a few experiments which offer some insight into what writer’s block may be.

The ‘Thinking Can Cause Forgetting’ experiment:

• Though the experiment was conducted back in 2011, it explored the concept of mental fixation in relation to creative problem solving – one of the closest things to writer’s block.
• Participants were asked to solve Remote Association Tests e.g. they were given the words ‘square’, ‘cardboard’ and ‘open’ and had to find the word that links them – in this case ‘box’.
• As decoy words were introduced, they caused the mind to trip over itself.
• Those that were successful had the ability to block out the decoy words and background noise.

Key takeaway: They concluded that the ability to filter out ‘the noise’ – whether that’s literal or your own mind telling you what you’re writing is terrible – is imperative to overcoming creative obstacles.

Filtering out ‘the noise’ is evermore difficult now as our social media, news channels and conversations are all filled with the same topic. Stepping away from continuous consumption of the latest updates will not only do wonders for your writing but your mental health too.

The ‘Creative Constraints’ experiment:

• This study in 2017 conducted a similar test but this time used functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to see what physical neural activity was taking place.
• Researchers discovered that memory plays a big part in our ability to be creative suggesting creativity is based on the ability to draw upon previous ideas.
• But this also means memory hinders our creativity as we get stuck in old ideas easily which causes us to feel blocked from any form of inspiration.

Key takeaway: The findings determined that the mind gets stuck in a place where memory recall inhibits the creative process.

On the rare occasion we can distract ourself from the pandemic, once we recall what is happening around us, it can feel even more shocking. The absurdity that we are no longer free to go where we wish and with whomever, is an alien concept. And so more of our brainpower is dedicated to dealing with our new, smaller environments. Expecting the same levels of productivity amongst this is optimistic at best.

An excuse for sub-par writing

“For me, when it comes down to it, I don’t believe in Writer’s Block. I saw Neil Gaiman speak a few years ago, and one of the topics he discussed was Writer’s Block. I’m paraphrasing what he said, but basically it was this: “I don’t believe in Writer’s Block, but I believe in getting stuck. One is beyond your control, and the other is your own damn fault.

And over the years, I’ve come to agree with him more and more. We can imagine reasons for being stuck, but we can dig ourselves out, too. It can help to have multiple projects to work on, to give yourself a break from the existing one. I find that to be the most helpful. Even if you’re just outlining a new story or article, refocusing yourself can be a huge relief from that pressure.”

Darren, Shop LC

There’s an argument to be made for writer’s block being a collection of factors that impact creativity. For example, fatigue, loss of interest, lack of inspiration and too high expectations often collide, making it hard for even the best writers to produce a masterpiece. We can also add enforced lockdowns to this list, although they are admittedly far less frequent. But there’s a difference between struggling in an overwhelming way to write and suffering from a psychological condition which physically stops you from writing.

For Polly Courtney, it’s about knowing the bigger picture:

“Working out right at the start what this book (or script) is about, it’s big theme, the main arc, the depth of the character(s)… and then when you know all that, when it comes to writing a chapter (/scene), it just flows, like real life, because you know exactly what that sort of a person would do or say, and where you need them to get to in that part of the story.

I have actually never had writer’s block… I definitely have bad writing days, when a scene just doesn’t feel right… but invariably that’s when (I later realise) one of the big-picture pieces isn’t right – like a character’s motivation doesn’t ring true, or I’ve put her/him on an unrealistic trajectory.”

Polly Courtney, Author of “Golden Handcuffs” & “An Unsuitable Game”

Alternatively, while some people believe writer’s block does exist, they don’t necessarily think it’s a psychological condition. Whatever its cause, it is not unexplained or uncontrollable – it’s just inconvenient.

The lines between writer’s block and other mental issues such as depression and anxiety may also become blurred.

Both types of condition share similar symptoms:

• Feeling shame, guilt, worthlessness, or powerlessness
• Loss of interest in activities or hobbies
• Short term memory loss

If this is the case, then ‘writer’s block’ is part of a bigger problem. Worse still, the treatments are not the same so it’s important to be able to make the distinction. Treating your depression like writer’s block isn’t going to do you any favours.

Whilst people don’t explicitly say writer’s block is depression, this argument does open up the possibility that in some cases it is a psychological condition – just not under the name ‘writer’s block’ – and that in others it’s just a stemmed flow of creativity.

“What has been falsely labeled as “writer’s block,” in my opinion, is, in many cases, actually anhedonia, a symptom of depression that I observe repeatedly and treat, in my patients, through psychotherapy. Anhedonia is a marked loss of interest in those activities that were once passionately sought after, for the sheer pleasure they once afforded the participant. 

This tendency to avoid one’s passion, like writing, for example, due to lack of interest and motivation can be addressed by teaching my patients (whom I actually prefer to regard as mental health athletes), to make lemonade out of lemonade.”

Bruce L. Thiessen, Ph.D., aka Dr BLT, Licensed Clinical Psychologist 

How to overcome writer’s block

Amongst the debate, there are voices offering helpful tips on how to overcome the problem, whether it is labelled as ‘writer’s block’ or not. These will apply both now, during this crisis, and when we head back to our normal lives. It is likely we will struggle again as writers to put words to document as the world shifts once more.

The most popular one is to take a break from technology. After all, there’s a lot to be said about how technology impacts the imagination. This can be difficult when many of us sit at computers every day but giving yourself ‘thinking’ time is really important.

“One productivity booster that seems to be working is deleting Twitter and Facebook apps from my phone, and trying to stick to a short time only per day for browsing those sites.”

Peter Murphy, AFP Journalist

“I found that listening to classical music in sound-canceling headphones while writing helps with creating content for work. It helps me flush out the outside noise and calms my mind so I can just focus on the words I am typing.”

Imani Francies, Health and Wellness Expert 

For some, “writing through it” works. Just get anything out on the page. Put that inner critic that pipes up after every word telling you it’s crap in the corner for a while. Tell yourself that no one on the planet is going to read it, so it doesn’t matter.

“I think the most important thing is to force yourself just to write something. So if you’re in the middle of trying to write a novel, then write an article, write a diary entry, write anything. But there should always be something you can write – just keep writing and write through it.”

Darren Richman, Journalist for The Independent

Time-box what you are doing and come to an agreement with yourself regarding when certain tasks will be completed. It always helps me get things done faster and more efficiently.

Kevin Miller, CEO of The Word Counter

COVID-19 has impacted everything, so it’s not difficult to see why many of us will be struggling. We should make allowances for ourselves.

For some, we’re used to writing in different environments which cannot recreate in the home.

“I’m used to writing at my favourite cafe. I do it for the ambience but mostly because my blog site is about all things coffee. During this lockdown, it’s been harder to focus. I work outside the house and now that I’m home 24/7, I feel sluggish and in no mood to write at all.”

James Bullard, Founder of Sound Fro

And we’re not going to get that back until the world returns to normal. So for now, writer’s block or not, we just need to find a way to cope.

A favourite phrase of mine is: “you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

Because it’s true: if you have something to work with, you can start to shape it into something better. If your page is a barren wasteland, you’ve got no hope really. At least if you produce a turd you can roll it in glitter.

TL;DR

• Don’t assume you’re talking to the rational mind; a lot of decisions are made automatically.
• Carl Jung’s theory of the collective conscious helps understand even the widest demographics.
• The Milgram experiment highlights how much sway authority has over the mind.
• Inate desires are hard to overrule so playing on them can work to your brand’s advantage.
• Marketing to pre-defined behaviours means your audience are more susceptible to your brand.

Advertising often feels like screaming into a void, just hoping for the right person to come along. As trends and audience’s desires change, advertising has to adapt its approach. This evolving industry is expanding so rapidly that we now see over 5,000 ads each day.

One constant through it all is how people think. Behavioural marketing is something that once you understand, you can apply to any product, service or audience. So understanding it is worth your time.

The best way to see behavioural marketing’s value is to see it in action; a good example of advertising that has worked hard to tap into people’s behaviours is cigarette advertising.

Moving from adverts that promoted smoking with doctor’s testimonials to those warning of cancer, tobacco advertisers have had to adjust their approach as new laws and Public Health guidelines have emerged.

With huge barriers to overcome at every stage, they provide great insights into how understanding how people think can be the key to a successful campaign. Let’s unpick some of the methods used, the theory behind it and how you can adopt the same processes into your branding.

Establishing authority

Early cigarette adverts are comical today. This ad for Camels features testimonials from a doctor to explain why Camel cigarettes are great, which seems ludicrous now.

But there’s a lot to be learnt from the way they built trust with their audience.

This ad cleverly combines the trust of not just one testimonial, but three, with an authority figure. All of these elements, enforced by the headline statement “more doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette” work to convince you that this isn’t an ad, but rather an article. It’s not trying to convince you that something is true, it’s saying it already is.

Taking a strong stance often pays off. All too often marketing these days sits on the fence as to avoid rocking the boat.

But you won’t be trusted for what you stand for if you never say it.

Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion, dives into why authority is such a pillar of persuasion. He references the Milgram experiment which asked participants to carry out different memory tests on another person. If they got the answer wrong, the participant was instructed to give the subject an electric shock. The shocks were imaginary, and the people were actors, but the people delivering the shocks didn’t know that.

For every wrong answer, the voltage was increased, all the way up to levels labelled ‘severe’. The participants could stop the experiment at any time. But, if they asked to do so, the person in charge (dressed in a white coat) encouraged them to continue.

The results showed that 65% of participants complied all the way to the highest shock level. The key takeaway was “the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority.”

It’s demonstrated that authority overrules rational thought. We can take this principle and apply it to marketing today. If you want people to believe what you’re saying, you need to earn their trust. The easiest way to do this is to include testimonials where appropriate; people put a lot of trust in other people’s opinions.

Better yet, build a relationship with your audience whereby they naturally trust you. Big brands do this very well – look at the growth of Apple. Their ‘Think different’ campaign was literally just black and white photos of famous people with their logo plonked on top. That’s it.

The strength of their idea was based entirely on the authority of the people in the photographs. They included famous people such as Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and Muhammad Ali, none of which have any association with the Apple brand. But, just by putting ‘Think different’ next to their face, they were able to piggyback on their reputations.

Here, the use of pop icons is a shortcut to familiarity; the campaign takes ownership of the trust these famous figures evoke in people’s minds. So, whilst these people aren’t in white coats, they hold the same kind of power.

By creating a bond of trust, you open up a channel between you and people who will be more receptive to your ads.

Harnessing instinct

This advert is from 1970, but the campaign ran in the US from 1954 to 1999. At this point, all cigarette billboard advertisements were replaced with anti-smoking ads.

Early Marlboro ads faced one main problem: filtered cigarettes were seen as very feminine.

To popularise them amongst men, the campaign was built around the theme of labour: men on horses, working outdoors, surrounded by ropes, cars, tools etc. By showing the audience who’s using their cigarettes (assumed to be true as they must know their own brand) the brain subconsciously goes “well I want to be like that”.

It might sound like too much of a leap. Surely we don’t think we’d become like the person in an ad just because you use the same brand?

Well, ads today prove this still is and always has been, true. Take a look at Chanel’s print ad. Perfume is notoriously difficult to sell because how do you sell a scent? The audience can’t smell it. They’re likely to struggle to imagine it even if you use flowery, descriptive language. No, you sell perfume through making people want to be the person in the ad.

Companies in every industry pour money into celebrities, influencers and models to sell their products. So why does it work?

Let’s unpick the image the Marlboro man portrays. The use of the Outlaw figure promotes someone who is strongly independent, masculine, determined, radical and disruptive – not your average man.

The ad itself works hard to invite you to join the ‘Outlaw club’ as such. The single line of “Come to Marlboro Country” creates a world in which you’re invited. The imperative word “come” pushes you away from consideration into doing.

All these factors are at play at one time and emulate what smoking is to a lot of people: an escape.

But why does the cowboy figure appeal to so many different types of men?

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung developed a theory based on a “collective conscious” which ties us all together and is identical in all individuals.

By understanding the collective conscious, you can speak to any demographic.

Jung’s work features something called archetypes; these are universal myths which live within the unconscious mind.

You come programmed with them already in your brain, but you’re not aware. Basically, you can think of them as precursors to conscious thought or the psychic counterpart of instinct.

Archetypes are broken down into 12 categories. Examples include:

• Hero
• Lover
• Caregiver
• Everyman
• Explorer

They all represent different types of people, mindsets and desires.

This chart highlights which archetype correlates to which behaviour and which principal human desire. It’s helpful because it simplifies human desires and gives you insight into how to align your brand with an archetypal figure that people will instinctively connect with.

In the case of the Marlboro ad, the Outlaw archetype represents liberation and a desire to leave a mark on the world. Marlboro knows the type of consumer they want to target, so have worked backwards to associate themselves with an existing archetype. The benefits of this are that they tap into the existing subconscious aspirations of an audience, and shortcut to achieving a connection with them.

If you’re unsure which archetypes best fit your brand, then use your data to dig deeper into your customer personas. You can use this understanding of your audience’s psychology and incorporate it into your brand storytelling.

By tapping into pre-existing thoughts, you’re already halfway into your audience’s minds.

Playing on emotion with marketing and consumer behaviour

How do you make someone care about what you’re saying? Get their emotions involved.

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow provides a contemporary model of the psyche. Kahneman divides things into two different modes of thought:

• System 1 which is fast, automatic and emotion-driven. Problem is, it’s error-prone.
• System 2 is slower and conscious, and so more reliable, but requires a lot more effort.

It takes a lot for System 2 to become engaged; anything that can be dealt with by System 1 will be. It’s why you can get from your house to work and not even remember driving the car.

Most marketers would think to target System 2; after all, they want people to put deliberate thought into what they’re saying. But decisions aren’t always made rationally.

The experiment titled ‘The Linda Problem’ proves it. When asked ‘is it more probable that Linda is a bank teller or a bank teller and feminist?’ System 1 shortcuts the problem to ‘is Linda a feminist?’

This method of substitution creates an easier question to answer. But, the problem with this is that it means that, more often than not, the question is answered incorrectly; there is a higher chance of Linda just being a bank teller than both a bank teller and a feminist (since both probabilities are independent.)

The key takeaway from this is that System 1 makes mistakes. System 2 is supposed to check System 1’s decisions, but it’s lazy. So by assuming all decisions are rational, you’re missing a trick.

A good example of an ad that rides purely on appealing to System 1 is Cadbury’s 2007 Dairy Milk ad – you know the one. Phil Collins. Gorilla. Drums.

The reason this works so well, even though it has absolutely nothing to with the product or brand, is that it makes people feel good. Which they’ve then linked to how chocolate makes you feel. It’s all about emotion.

By conveying one simple message which appeals primarily to the audience’s emotions, Cadbury’s message slips into the psyche’s automatic system. Before the conscious mind realises, emotion makes people look favourably on the brand. So, however they’ve done it, they’re in people’s minds.

The art of subtlety

As the research into the effects of tobacco accelerated, the guidelines on cigarette advertising became stricter. Marketers had to work harder. For starters, they now had to display bold warnings about the damage of smoking under anything they showed.

Then, in 1986, they were banned from even showing people smoking. So how do you sell a product when you’re so restricted? Psychology.

This Silk Cut print ad from Saatchi and Saatchi is of a piece of silk with a cut in it. It shows the limitations of what the brand could show, but how it uses established connotations to get around limits.

Take the colour of the silk: the purple feels very royal and helps to establish the cigarettes as a luxury brand. Because the ad doesn’t have much to work with, it milks every symbolic meaning it can out of every aspect.

The subtlety of the ad creates this sense of exclusivity – it’s not immediately obvious what the ad is for, but fans of the brand will find it instantly recognisable. The limitations of advertising make Silk Cut feel like a secret club which you have to be invited into.

Making people listen

Looking into the behaviours of your customers will help you determine the reasons for what motivates them to act.

Finding the right combination of authority, emotion and subtlety that appeals to their instinct will not only help your brand stick in their mind but create a sense of familiarity that keeps them coming back.

Remember: you have to get through people’s fast, automatic System 1 before they’ll listen to what you’re saying. Don’t assume you’re talking to someone making rational decisions as most are made on instinct and emotion. And laziness. If people can discount what you’re saying to make less work for themselves, they will do. It’s up to you to understand how the human mind works and slip beneath its defences.

Take Amazon as an example. If you’ve logged in to Amazon recently you may have noticed sections entitled ‘Related to items you’ve viewed recently’ or ‘Inspired by your shopping trends’. That’s a perfect example of machine learning making personalised suggestions based on your past behaviour.

Spotify does it too. They’ll make song and artist suggestions based on tracks that you’ve listened to previously.

But, is that as far as the technology can go?

I’m sure we’ve all been staring at a blank screen, fully into writer’s block and wishing that there was something that uses machine learning to write the words for us.

In the case of content creation, machine learning should work like this:

1. We give it data.
2. The program analyses this data and “learns” it, using it to predict what to write.
3. We get content!

Note the emphasis on should there. The point is that machine learning is growing at an incredible rate, but we don’t know if it’s quite there yet.

To see what’s out there, we tested some of the available options on the market to see how good they are – and whether the content they made was good enough to publish or not.

What is machine learning?

Machine learning is the science of computers improving themselves through repeated tasks and algorithms. It’s one of the most well-known forms of AI and powers a lot of the systems used in digital marketing. A significant benefit of machine learning is allowing systems to “learn” from its data, to find patterns, and make better decisions that humans may have missed.

However, it’s important to note that the data it learns from is dependent on who inputs it and what the data contains. If you input biased data into a system, the output will be biased too. Bias in machine learning is something data scientists attempt to remove to avoid harm society.

No – machine learning is not a threat

Machine learning and AI as a whole get mixed responses. Some people don’t trust it, preferring to rely on humans, who obviously never make a mistake.

Others are threatened by it. They think that if a robot can do their job better and more accurately than them, then what is the use for them now?

And this clearly isn’t helped by headlines like ‘technology has already taken over 90% of the jobs humans used to do’. But you can’t just skim the headlines. When you look deeper, you’ll actually start to notice the jobs that technology has taken over.

Firstly, there are things that we often forget. Take NASA for example. In the days before calculators were invented, they employed people to do the maths by hand. This is how they calculated space trajectories – yet today it would be unheard of to not trust a machine to help out.

It’s more accurate. It’s faster. It’s how we’ve gone from the moon to landing rovers on other planets.

The point is: technology and AI may have closed some doors. But they’re opening others that didn’t exist before. 20 years ago you wouldn’t have dreamed of someone’s job role to be creating online videos on YouTube.

Things change. It’s up to you to embrace it and get on the winning side of AI. Done right, it can simplify tasks, remove inaccuracies and save you time every single week.

Content generators hitting it out of the park

There are some cases that this works a treat. A great example of this is The Associated Press (AP) use of machine learning to automatically create write up posts of minor league games. 

How? With data. It uses game statistics from official minor-league statisticians at MLB Advanced Media and Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology to create legible posts that accurately run through the game.

This is great for building local interest and gives them more coverage – as these games were too minor to typically be covered by a real-life human journalist.

You can read some on AP, or the Minor League Baseball website.

These posts are factual. They’re accurate. They do the job they were supposed to. But they lack one critical thing that we might never be able to replace: creativity and emotion.

So, can machine learning create awesome content?

Here’s what we found using these 4 different machine learning generators:

Talk to Transformer

Talk to Transformer is a free content generator tool that tried to finish a piece of text from a snippet.

‘One of the hardest digital marketing challenges small businesses face is getting noticed online.’

Hitting go, this is what we got back:

And yeah, this isn’t publishable.

This story (obviously) never happened, and even though the words sound right, they make no sense.

I mean, in this story, something wasn’t working, so they took their entire website down. Bit of an overreaction, but okay. The consequence of that? Their website might be taken down.

Although saying that, I love the sentence “if you don’t know your market and your industry, you will probably not know much about it”. Brilliant.

Our takeaway

This tool is nowhere near ready to replace actual humans yet.

But, it can be used to spark ideas for you to write yourself. Just don’t spend hours using the bot to create fake stories. That’s not saving you time, that’s procrastinating.

Article Generator

Article Generator is a little more in-depth. You supply the keyword you want your content to rank for and select options from the drop-down menu.

Once you’re ready, it will generate complete, fully-fledged articles. This surprisingly also included images to illustrate the point it was making.

For this test, we went for a generic and broad keyword of SEO. The three articles we got back were:

• The Business of Enterprise SEO: Mastering People, Process & Platforms
• SEO: How Google Reads and Renders JavaScript
• Video: Rand Fishkin on the early days of SEO and starting and leaving Moz

Generally, these sound like regular topics you would see on a blog. The third one about Rand Fishkin is more specific and works more as a PR piece, rather than generic content about SEO.

It was an odd coincidence that we got his name supplied back after we just discussed Rand’s fictional collaboration album with Beyoncé [PDF]. Confused? Keep reading to the end and you’ll totally get why this was on our minds.

Ignoring this one, for now, we had a closer look at the other two.

Generally, they all made sense. It included stats, which was incredible. Such as “according to Google Consumer Insights, 84% of Americans are shopping in any given 48-hour period, in up to six different categories.”

Unfortunately, the writing wasn’t perfect. 

Some parts are a bit clunky that don’t flow. It’s like someone copied and pasted bits and pieces from all over the internet without any real thought about the article as a whole.

Which is exactly what it is. There’s an option to create unique content on the homepage, but you’ll need to pay for this option. But considering what we got from the free version, we wouldn’t rush to get our wallets out just yet.

There’s no real clear goal or point from each article. They give you stats and figures and pieces of information. But, they don’t tell you what it means, why it’s important or what you can do with it.

Our takeaway

This tool is good for generating content ideas and making a start with your posts. But it shouldn’t be used as the final picture.

The information needs to be understood and rewritten in a way to give value to your customers. It needs to be something they will actually want to read, rather than just a cut and pasted piece of text that does nothing for your business.

Articoolo

Next up on the list is Articoolo.

To use this, you need to first sign in and register for an account. Once you do, you’re prompted to describe the topic you want your article on and choose a maximum word count. This only goes up to 500 words though, so it can’t be used for longer form blogs.

You only have 2-5 words to put into the box, so you can’t get too specific either. For this test, we used “Small business SEO”.

It also takes quite a while to generate. But strangely, this filled us with more confidence. After all, good things are supposed to come to those who wait, right?

Once it’s ready, it will give you snippets of what it’s created. But to unlock it, you need to pay.

To see if it was worth it or not, we unlocked this test article.

Unfortunately, the results were incredibly disappointing. It was hard to read, difficult to follow and didn’t make a great deal of sense. In fact, we put into the Hemingway app to test readability, and the whole thing was lit up in red.

That’s a really bad sign. An ‘avoid at all costs’ type of warning signal there.

Nothing in the writing works together. There’s one sentence that promises points below that will “help out with fostering the user experience.”

But does it deliver them? No.

If you want further proof that this article is unusable, just take a look at this conclusion sentence:

“The visitors who’re intrigued in your products or services, where you must grab an opportunity to get your website optimised at reasonable prices, making it anchors for your requirements and needs.”

Yikes.

Our takeaway

It’s not worth paying for. The writing is substandard and certainly not good enough to publish.

On the plus side, the website did promise 100% unique content. So, we also ran it through a plagiarism checker just to make sure. And yeah, it held up.

It’s just a shame that the writing didn’t do so well.

Article Forge

Next up on the testing front was Article Forge, which requires a paid monthly subscription to use. It doesn’t just create content either. It also integrates with your WordPress blog, allowing you to schedule and publish right from the same place.

As a paid platform, the options when creating an article are much more advanced and in-depth. Giving you the ability to really customise what content you need before it’s generated.

Unfortunately, some of these options require you to connect to different platforms. Such as the ‘Guarantee article uniqueness’, which requires a Copyscape login.

After playing with a few of the settings, we tested this using SEO’ for the main keyword, following the same route as others.

For sub-keywords, we used broad terms like ‘small business’, ‘website’ and ‘eCommerce’.

At $47 a month, Article Forge was the most expensive option that we tested. And a great reminder that paying more doesn’t guarantee great quality. 

Like the other platforms we tested, the content was a letdown.

It made sense. But it lacks structure and value and any real engagement to make it an interesting read.

Halfway through, it mentions a search engine DuckDuckGo, with no context. In a section titled ‘The 5-Minute Rule for SEO’, it changes the focus to Atlanta businesses for no reason. And more importantly, it doesn’t actually give you a 5-minute rule for SEO.

There were stand-alone moments that were good. Like explaining that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation at the start of a sentence. Unfortunately, this came after the 8th use of the word, making it too late to make a difference to this article.

And again, it passed the plagiarism checks, but that’s just not enough.

Our takeaway

Don’t get fooled into thinking that just because you need to pay for this service, that it’s any good at writing content. You’d be better off with user-generated content if you were looking for an external solution.

Like the others, it’s got a long way to go before you can use it to generate articles that are ready to be published.

One thing we did like about it was the headlines and the ideas that you can generate using a main and sub-keywords. But it’s a lot to pay per month just for ideas, so we’d avoid this for now.

Can robots take over content creation?

From our experiments, we’ve determined that these content generators are useful in places that are based on plain stats and data, such as baseball. But content-wise? They’re not there yet.

They’re lacking personality. They’re lacking emotion and spirit and that one, clear vision that makes content truly great. 

Until we get feeling robots with fully loaded personalities, we don’t think you’ll be able to replace content writing any time soon.

But, that doesn’t mean you need to avoid them. Used right, these tools can be pretty good for generating ideas when you’re stuck staring at a blank page.

We’re not the only ones who have been questioning what machine learning can do for us.

Earlier this year, our team attended SearchLeeds to see Britney Muller’s talk on Machine Learning for SEO. She used a Shakespeare generator tool, feeding it Beyoncé albums and SEO articles by Moz’s Rand Fishkin.

The result was his collaboration album (we warned you about this earlier!), which didn’t really pan out in a way that makes sense.

To be fair to her, this was putting data from two widely different sources. It was never going to be perfect. But it’s a good reminder that machine learning needs data. The more data you feed it, the smarter it gets.

It’s the same logic that our very own machine learning advertising platform uses. We call it the Opportunity Engine. Analysing your account 24/7, it uses data to suggest smart opportunities to improve the performance of your campaigns.

That’s not all though. Our powerful automation feature is also built to take hours off your workweek by eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. This means you have more time to focus on the bigger picture.

Want to see how it works? Try Adzooma for free today.

Further resources about machine learning

• Machine Learning Basics (video) by Simplilearn
• This is how AI bias really happens—and why it’s so hard to fix by MIT Technology Review
• A Tour of Machine Learning Algorithms by Machine Learning Mastery
• Machine Learning: What it is and why it matters by SAS UK
• How to Learn Machine Learning, The Self-Starter Way by Elite Data Science
• Use of AI in online content moderation [PDF] by Cambridge Consultants (2.7MB)
• How to Achieve Personalization at Scale with Machine Learning (video) by Raj Ramesh
• Machine Learning in Action for Search Engine Optimization by Andrea Volpini

TL;DR

• Use your headline and subheads to push major benefits to grab attention.
• Make your layout easy to read.
• Write in a conversational tone so that your audience is immediately engaged.
• Tell them in simple terms what’s in it for them. Don’t beat around the bush.
• Include a strong call to action.

You might think that because you have a website, you’re guaranteed to sell your product or service.

Sadly, that’s not the case.

Anyone can create a website, write about their services and pop their number at the top of the page. But that won’t roll in the sales. Getting your business online simply isn’t enough. Even if you’re getting loads of potential customers visiting your website, it’s more about the tactics you use to make people want to spend their money.

Ready to get started?

Here are the top 6 techniques you need to master persuasive writing and convert those visitors into leads and customers.

1. Perfect Your Headline

As famous copywriter David Ogilvy once said, on average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. Headlines draw people in and encourage them to read on, which is why you need to begin by pushing the benefits.

Plus, people are only interested in what you can do for them.

The most important principle is “What’s in it for me?” Show them how it can make them happier, slimmer, richer, less stressed, save them time, money and you’re guaranteed to sell more.

Do this the whole way through your website, but make sure to include the strongest benefit in your headline. Benefit-based headlines are the best way to boost your conversions, not “Welcome to my site.” That’s one of the top headline mistakes you need to avoid. 25 years’ experience… multi-award-winning business… same-day delivery. Whatever it is, put it at the top of your page.

Events host? How about “Experience The Latest Adrenaline-Fueled Activity To Hit XX!”

High-end travel agents? “Save Up To £1,855 A Year On Luxury Holidays” is bound to draw your potential customers in.

See how specific that one is?

You’re probably even wondering how much you could do with a luxury holiday! That’s because headlines with numbers tend to generate 73% more social shares and engagement. How? Specific numbers are more believable. They seem less likely to be fake and add credibility, which helps convince customers stay with you and trust your business.

Think About Your Mobile Users

You must also consider advertising on mobile.

Nearly 60% of all Google searches come from mobile. In fact, 82% of smartphone users turn to a search engine when looking for a local business.

What does that mean for you?

It means your headline needs to be snappy and get the point across quickly. If it’s too long and looks cluttered on smaller devices, you could lose potential customers.

2. Craft A Compelling Subhead

Use your subhead to push another major benefit of your product or service.

Obviously, you’ve already included a benefit in your headline, but the more you add, the more likely you are to draw people in. Don’t just use any though. Use one that stands out to you and chances are it’ll also stand out for your customers. Saying you’re reliable is good, but it’s not as strong as an amazing offer or saying you’ve worked with some huge organisations. That’s the sort of stuff that’ll make your users want to buy.

If you’re an aesthetics clinic, mention the fact you’ve been making people feel flawless for 10 years or that your treatments can really help to boost their confidence. Finance company? You could mention the fact that businesses can save 40-50% by letting your certified accountants take care of their finances.

These things will help to engage your visitors, not “reliable and friendly.” You can mention those later on, but you need to encourage people to stay on your page first. Your subhead can also be a good place to mention where your business is based. But don’t just state the facts with a bland subhead like “Based In Halifax.” Add emotion, excitement and a little pizzazz for extra impact.

How much better does “Get Your Dream Look & Feel Flawless At Our Halifax Salon” sound?

3. Mini Subheads That Hook Your Reader

Most people don’t realise how effective mini subheads are.

Probably because in the grand scheme of things, a single subhead might not seem very important. But they actually invite ‘skimmers’ and people who usually avoid long articles to read your content. Subheads ‘sell’, which is why they should always be benefit-driven rather than act as a standard title. ‘My services’ or ‘My experience’ won’t do the job.

Look at all the information you’ve got in front of you. Whatever stands out the most, highlight it in your subhead and be creative. Got a dry cleaning business? One of your subheads could say something like “Bring Your Clothing Back To Life” or “Ensure Your Belongings Look Immaculate.” Carpet and flooring business? How about “Transform Every Room The Way You’ve Imagined” or “Flawless Flooring Completed Within Days”?

You can do this with every business — no matter how niche. Electrician, transport and courier service, a graphic designer… you name it.

Make Your Copy Easy To Read

Mini subheads make reading easier (like the one above).

People are typically put off by long blocks of text, either because they think it’s unappealing or it just seems like too much effort. Think about it — how do you decide what to read when you pick up a newspaper or magazine? Or when you’re scrolling through Facebook? You read the bits that stand out and usually ignore the rest, which is probably what the majority of your users will do.

So you need to make sure the bits they do read, count.

4. Make Your Body Copy Conversational

No matter what you’re selling, you should always write in a conversational tone. It’s the key to successful copywriting. Nobody wants to read paragraphs and paragraphs of long, boring jargon. They just want the exciting stuff. Not only that, the National Literacy Trust said 16.4% of adults in England can be described as having ‘very poor literacy skills.’

That’s 7.1 million people who’d struggle to read a complex article. And even worse, 7.1 million people you’d immediately exclude from buying your product or service.

Avoid Complicated Words & Phrases

Imagine you’re trying to sell a product to your friends or family.

You wouldn’t say “My spectacular domestic and commercial cleaning service will allow you to achieve maximum productivity in the workplace and make your employees feel more satisfied throughout the working day.”

That’s a copywriters nightmare. And a nightmare for your audience.

You’d probably say something like “Our highly professional cleaning service will make your workplace look spotless. With us, you can always make the best impression on your visitors.”

So simple. So straight forward. So effective.

See what we’re getting at?

5. Features Vs. Benefits

We touched on this slightly at the beginning, but it’s not just important for your headline and subhead. It’s important for your entire website. If you don’t know the difference between features and benefits, let me explain.

Features are emotionless. They’re what your business has, or is, such as leading barbering equipment, new printing technology, etc etc. Benefits are the results your customer will experience from using your product or service — the reason they become an actual customer in the first place. Barbering equipment from a leading brand? Great, but don’t just write about your shiny scissors, your brand new clippers, metallic razors, etc.

Of course, you can mention those things, but you need to follow up with a benefit afterwards. Sell the fact your customers will leave your barbers with the neatest, sharpest haircut they’ve ever had. The fact their confidence will be sky high and they’ll never visit another barber again. New printing technology? Again, great, but don’t sell the actual machinery. Your customers don’t care how big and flashy and expensive it is.

Remember the “What’s in it for me?” principle?

Tell them how your printing services are so fast that their customised clothing can be delivered the very next day. How your printing is so high quality their logos will be more eye-catching than ever before. That’s what will make them choose you.

6. Don’t Forget To Tell Them To Buy!

There’s no point in doing all of the above if you aren’t going to tell them what to do next. That’s like persuading someone to buy your product and not taking their money.

You need to include a strong call to action (CTA).

A CTA is meant to entice your visitors to take a specific action that’ll essentially benefit your business. It’s usually a button at the bottom of the page, but you can add CTA’s anywhere on the page where someone reading may want to take an action. There are hundreds of different types of call to action, including filling out a form, adding something to your basket, placing an order, downloading a PDF, etc, etc.

They have a major impact on conversion rates, especially if you include multiple ones throughout your website. You can’t just stick a CTA anywhere though. You need to make sure they’re relevant to your copy.

If you just use the one, it needs to relate to your entire page and if you use several, each one needs to relate to the section it’s in.

Need Some Inspiration?

To get your creativity flowing…

If you’re a tutoring business, your CTA could be something like “Enrol Your Child Today”, “Start Your First Month” or “Book Your Free Assessment.” Cleaning business? How about “Book My Flawless Clean”, “Make My House Sparkle” or “Wow My Visitors.” Or, all of them!

The more you include, the better. Obviously, don’t go overboard but you can, and should, use more than one if necessary. Keep in mind your CTA’s will vary depending on the type of page you’re writing. CTA’s for a beauty clinic, aesthetician or hairdressers will be much more emotion-based than those for contractors.

That’s because a new roof or a plumbing issue are things you have to pay for but never want to. So the motivation is different for buying something you’ll enjoy — such as a beauty treatment or new hairstyle.

More importantly, don’t forget your contact details. It’s a mistake many small businesses make.

Potential customers might want to contact you before they make a commitment. You don’t want to put them off by making your contact details impossible to find. Just like your CTA’s, make them clear-cut, visible and easy-to-read.

If you want to outsource your copywriting, FatJoe and StoryChief are two content marketing agencies who will write quick and quality content for you.

Feel Like An Expert?

By following our tips and tricks to sell more with your website, you’re bound to see an increase in your conversions.

Don’t get us wrong — there are other sales elements you should include to attract customers, such as images, opt-in forms and testimonials. But you need to master the basics first.

Sound like too much effort? You could always leave it to the experts—Adzooma.

Our award-winning software lets you sit back and relax while we get to work finding you relevant, high-quality leads.

Adzooma is on hand to explain some common online advertising terms, as well as clear up some of the more complicated industry terminology.

Ready? Good. Let’s do this!

A

A/B Testing – Also known as “split testing”, this involves analysing the performance of two different landing pages to see which converts better. Changes between them are often subtle, like different CTAs or page design elements like colours or slight copy variations.

Ad Copy – if content truly is king, then the importance of your ad copy cannot be understated. The writing you use in your ad is one of the first things that a potential new customer will see.

Ad Extensions – Features on Google Ads that provide extra forms of information on an ad such as links to other landing pages, contact details, and shop ratings. Because ad extensions take up more space on the SERPs, they result in higher CTRs compared to ads without extensions.

Ad Groups – A collection of one or more ads with the same target, containing a set of related keywords, often grouped by a single theme.

Ad Rank – A value that determines your ad position based on your bid amount and Quality Score.

Ad Serving – Via an ad-management system, ad serving is the delivery of online ads to a consumer’s computer. This is a system that allows different ads to be viewed by different audiences simultaneously as well as across multiple sites.

API – Standing for application programming interface, an API is a set of functions and instructions for developers to create applications. Ad publishers like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads have a variety of APIs to help with bidding, reporting, and data management.

B

Bid – The highest amount you are willing to pay for an ad click.

Bing – A search engine created by Microsoft.

Bounce Rate – The overall percentage of visitors to your website who navigate away without viewing another page.

Button – A squared online advertisement usually embedded within a web page.

C

Call-to-Action – Asking a customer or visitor to do perform an action. Often in the form of a clickable button that navigates elsewhere.

Click fraud – The fraudulent clicking of ads to waste a competitors ad budget.

Clickthrough – When a user clicks through to the advertiser’s site via an ad.

Conversion – When a consumer clicks on your ad and takes an action that you deem to be important to your business. Whether it be a sale, sign-up or lead, a conversion is a positive for you.

Conversion rate – The total number of conversions per ad interactions (displayed as a percentage).

CPA – CPA or Cost Per Acquisition equates to the price you pay for a lead or specified action. You can set this to whatever you choose, from impressions or clicks to sales or form submissions.

CPC – The average amount you have paid for one click (cost per click). With the value of clicks having the potential to change between campaigns, it makes it important to take an average.

CPM – Also known as the cost per mile or cost per thousand, online advertising can be purchased on the basis of what it costs to show the ad to 1,000 viewers. CPM is used to calculate the cost of a campaign.

CTR – A click-through-rate is one of the more common advertising terms. It represents the number of users who click on a link, compared with the number who saw it. Its primary function is to see how your ads and keywords are performing.

D

Display ads – Graphical ads that appear on a display network like Google Display Network. They often come in the form of banners.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion – The process of automatically updating text in an ad to include a keyword that matches a user’s search query.

E

Engagement Rate – Used to ascertain the percentage of people who acted upon viewing a social media post. It is worked out by dividing their interactions by the number of people who saw the post.

F

Facebook Ads – An advertising platform created by Facebook which serves ads through its social media network and Instagram.

G

Geotargeting – The ability to target specific locations and countries in ads. Also known as location targeting.

Google Ads – An online advertising platform developed by Google. It offers advertisers the ability to pay to display ads across different networks, such as the Google Search Network and the Google Display Network.

Google Analytics – Google’s free web analytics tool used for data analysis on websites and paid ads.

H

Headline – In PPC, this is the top line of a text ad, consisting of 30 characters and ideally including your target keyword. Each advert can have up to 3 different headlines on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. In SEO, a headline can be another name for a page’s meta title.

I

Impression – When your ad is shown to a user on a search results page (SERP) or via an ad publisher’s display network. In SEO, an impression is whenever your page shows up on a SERP.

Impression Share – Ratio of the percentage of impressions that an ad receives versus the total number of impressions the ad could receive.

Instagram Ads – An advertising platform which services ads from Facebook.

K

Keywords – A particular word or phrase that describes the contents of the page in question. Also the words that a company bids on for their adverts to appear against.

KPI – In order to measure the success of any campaign, a key performance indicator must be put in place. KPI’s are the key indicators for success and should serve to influence which campaigns best align with your goals.

L

Landing Page – Designed for customers who click on your ad. A landing page should be the point and include a clear call-to-action.

M

Microsite – A small website designed to function as a supplement to a primary website.

Microsoft Ads – An online advertising platform developed by Microsoft. It offers advertisers the ability to pay to display ads across different networks, such as the Microsoft Search Network and the Microsoft Audience Network.

N

Native Advertising – In basic advertising terminology, native advertising is used by publisher websites where the content is meant to look like the articles it usually publishes.

O

Overlay – Online advertising content that appears over the top of a page.

P

PPC – Pay-per-click is a form of marketing where advertisers pay every time a user clicks on their ad. When bidding against other marketers for the use of a phrase, the more you pay per click the more likely your ad is to appear in the search results.

PPC optimisation – The act of improving PPC campaigns at varying scales. Optimisation can involve restructuring a whole Google Ads account or converting a single keyword ad group into a single theme ad group.

PPC software – A paid marketing tool or set of tools that manage PPC campaigns. Adzooma is an example of PPC software.

Q

Quality Score – Simply put, the score that Google awards a page depending on its relevance to a particular topic.

R

Remarketing – When a customer has previously expressed an interest in your company or product, remarketing is the action of displaying related ads while such customers browse the internet.

ROI – Otherwise known as return on investment, ROI measures your performance by taking your profit and investment amount and working out if your money has been well spent.

S

Search engine – A system that carries out searches on the Internet and returns relevant information based on the search query.

Search query – A keyword or phrase used in a search, e.g. “rockets”, “dog food” and “best ppc software” are all search queries.

SEM – Search engine marketing, a form of marketing specifically for search engines. This includes SEO and PPC.

SEO – Search engine optimisation, a strategy used to boost the organic visibility of websites on search engines.

Skyscraper – A vertical online ad usually positioned down the side of a page.

T

Tracking code – A snippet of HTML code added to a page which tracks the behaviour of a user. A web analytics tool can use this data to track conversions and analyse metrics such as bounce rate, page views, and session duration.

V

Viral Marketing – The sharing of online content, such as video clips and imagery, in order to build brand awareness.

W

Web Analytics – The analysis of Web data to review the performance of various aspects of your website, PPC campaigns, customer behaviour and much more. Tools like Google Analytics allow users to do this with an intuitive UI.

So, there you have it. A comprehensive advertising jargon buster that should serve to assist you for all of your advertising needs.