Google's Poster-Marketer + A Sherpa Pal in Need

Next Sunday at 6pm ET, The Biography Channel will be airing their special on Google. Ray Allen, CEO American Meadows, who is the officially profiled AdWords client on Google's site, told me Biography sent a video crew out to interview him for the show.

I asked him what made his campaigns so successful beyond the fact that he relentlessly measures conversion rates and ROI.

"Copywriting is my big thing. I've been doing it since the beginning of time," he said. "Everybody talks about ad rank. They don't talk about the words. If your ad is at #1 or #2 and it says 'Wildflower Seeds', I'm going to kill you by saying 'Wildflower Seeds on Sale'. It doesn't matter if you're #1, if the guy at #3 is a copywriter, he's killing you."

His advice for hiring creatives to conduct search campaigns for you -- get a copywriter with an old fashioned mail order background. Someone who has years of writing high-impact copy that grabs the sale in 10-12 words.

Another note....

You may have noticed that normally I never recommend any agency, vendor or consultant because I don't think it's fair to everyone else. But a friend of Sherpa just got laid off, and I think he's so wonderful that I can't help but give him a quick mention.

His name is Thom Pharmakis and we profiled his work in our past Case Study on Land's End's exceptional email newsletter copywriting. Now, he's one of hundreds let go since Sears acquired Land's End.

Thom loves Wisconsin (and often rhapsodized about the area in the Land's End newsletter) but he figures the chances of landing a new full-time newsletter job there are fairly slim. So he's decided to become a copywriter-for-hire and is hoping to land a few clients looking for great newsletters.

If you're interested, Thom can send you a link to some clips:
thompharmakis@yahoo.com

Sponsor: New! Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006
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