eVentureBiz Web Hosting Services Ad Feedback

Published by John Hoff on 11 Oct 2008 at 05:31 pm

eVentureBiz Web Hosting Services Ad Feedback

eVentureBiz Web Hosting We here at eVentureBiz are asking for help from our blog readers and visitors.

We currently are running multiple pay-per-click campaigns on both MSN.com and Google and would like some feedback from you.

Here are a few sample ads we are running for our web hosting services on our Google campaign. Please let us know what you think.

Which ad catches your attention best and why?
What about these ads might make you not click on them?
What would you type into a search box to find a web hosting company?
Can you suggest a better worded ad than we currently have? The title can only be 25 characters long (including white space) and the first and second line of text description can only be 35 characters each (also including white space).
Lastly, if you were looking for web hosting, what would convince you to click on one ad opposed to another?

The image at the top of this article is the image visitors to our hosting page see when they first arrive on that part of our site. It might be helpful to know we offer the following 3 primary services: web hosting, web design, and incorporation services.

The challenge is, how do you create an ad which immediately captures someone’s attention, tells them who you are, what you offer, and the benefits of using your company over another all in 70 characters of description text.

If you can provide some feedback for us we here at eVentureBiz would be very grateful and if you’re thinking of starting a pay-per-click campaign of your own, please feel free to ask us questions as well.

We’re all here to help each other learn and grow.

Share And Enjoy

General Discussion

11 Comments

11 Responses to “eVentureBiz Web Hosting Services Ad Feedback”

Cath Lawson
on 11 Oct 2008 at 6:46 pm #
Hi John - I prefer the bottom two, as you mention SEO. Then again, will someone looking to start a website even know what SEO is?

If it was me, I’d test them all. Have you ran an Adwords campaign before? I assumed it would be easy but it can actually be quite complicated - especially if you want to pay a low amount per click and have your ad seen at the top. I used an Adwords ebook which helped a lot. It’s on my other computer but I think it was the John Reece one.

I actually found Adwords more complicated to get right than SEO. So much for spending money to save time.

Have you tried using the Google Adwords keyword tool, or wordtracker to see what folk are searching for? If you have a lot of ads with less competitive keyphrases, it will be a lot cheaper for each click. Also using the exact keywords in the title and in the ad will really help you to get listed higher for a lower amount. And using that keyphrase a lot in your landing page will help also.

Definitely use different ads for your other services such as incorporating and have a seperate landing page.

For my plumbing business, I needed to make a different landing page for each nearby town, just to get well placed ads for less money.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Thanks For Reading With Your Mouth Shut
John Hoff
on 11 Oct 2008 at 7:09 pm #

Hi Cath, thanks for the insights.

Actually, you’ve picked the two best performing ads thus far. All the ads above are cycled at times and there will only be one used at a time (for testing purposes).

We are definitely working on targeted landing pages. I plan to develop a “WordPress Web Hosting” landing page which highlights the benefits of using our hosting company if you plan to run a blog using WordPress (largest benefit being my help for free or extremely low cost if you’re a customer of ours).

Both MSN and Google have keyword research tools which we use. They’ve given some great ideas and from there we really should create special landing pages for each. I also hear you about placing keyword phrases in the website’s content. Now that you’ve mentioned it, tomorrow I’ll go over the hosting page and check into that.

Thanks again.
Cath Lawson
on 13 Oct 2008 at 4:45 pm #
Hi John - I hope I’m not too late but the book was Definitive Adwords by John Reece - I just found it on my clutter of a hard drive now.

I’m pleased I picked the ads that seemed best. Definitely - the keywords in the homepage and title will help you get the ads cheaper. It does take a lot of fiddling and messing around with but it’s well worth it. You’ll get the clicks cheaper and you won’t be paying for irrelevant ones.

One last thing - test all your links. I set up a campaign and went to bed. Luckily I only slept for four hours - my affiliate link was not working properly and I’d lost around $180. Luckily I’d set a maximum spend but it still stung.

By the way - I found a great blog by a woman who owned a web hosting company and sold for 1.1 million. She gives some great advice. Her site is at http://www.erica.biz You might want to talk to her. Eventually she decided to go after the clients who were willing to pay more and it really paid off for her.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Making Money From A Blog: Mistakes To Avoid
John Hoff
on 13 Oct 2008 at 7:29 pm #

Hi Cath. Not too late. I’m always looking for valuable information and recommendations. I’ll check that book out.

Question: Are you saying that the more relevant (seo’d) my landing page is for say, “WordPress Web Hosting”, that my ad will be placed higher on Google Sponsored Search and I’ll pay less per click?

Isn’t it the Max Bid you’re willing to pay for each keyword what really dictates where your ad appears and the competition for keyword bid prices what dictates how much you will pay? If I’m wrong, please set me straight.

I hear you about testing links. Thanks for the heads up and I’ll be sure to do that. And I’ll check out Erica’s site. That idea has been on the table since the writing of our business plan. I don’t know though, I think I’ve actually found something I really like doing and it might be hard to give up. We’ll see, if the time ever comes that is.
Barbara Swafford
on 13 Oct 2008 at 8:53 pm #
Hi John - The ads that include SEO do stand out. Plus, anytime you offer something for free, people are more apt to click.

When I signed up for my web host, it was because of a “recommendation” on the WordPress blog site. Might it be possible to get your name added there? Or get some testimonials from current clients?

Since most hosts are competing for the same keywords, it might be worth your while to target less popular search strings. Just a thought!

Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..A.S.K. Darren Rowse of Proglogger - How Do We Increase Our Readership
John Hoff
on 13 Oct 2008 at 9:08 pm #

Hi Barbara! Welcome back from vacation. Ok, so is it my turn? Hope you had a good time.

Yeah I’m getting good feedback about using SEO, I’ll continue working with it. It’s funny you mentioned it, I actually checked the WordPress site today to see about advertising there. I’ll have to figure out a cost analysis and contact them to see what their terms are.

Re: targeting less popular searches
Again funny you mentioned it, today we were working on a WordPress hosting landing page for our PPC campaign with “WordPress web hosting” as the keyword search.

Here it is, I’d appreciate any feedback you ladies might have:

http://eventurebiz.com/webhosting/services/wordpress-web-hosting.htm

Again, welcome back!
Cath Lawson
on 14 Oct 2008 at 1:49 pm #
Hi John - you got it. The more relevant your landing page is for a keyphrase - the higher up adwords you’ll appear for less money. But that is a good thing - as it stops huge companies bidding ridiculous amounts and pushing your cost up.

I didn’t realise all that at first and I was bidding huge amounts against a big national company. You don’t need to. It’s really worth building a different ad and landing page for each keyphrase and monitor them. I found it best to be the number 2 slot, rather than the number one slot.

It’s great because if the other advertisers aren’t as relevant as you, you can keep bringing your max bid price down and still rank higher.

I went from paying over $2.00 for some clicks to 20 cents.

That’s another thing. If folk from the UK want to do this, they’ll get better prices by joining the American site - even if they’re not targeting American people.

I know it sounds a bit complicated and time consuming but it is so worth persevering.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Making Money From A Blog: Mistakes To Avoid
Cath Lawson
on 14 Oct 2008 at 1:57 pm #
Hi John - I like it but I would include your keywords a bit more - especially in the first and last paragraph. In the first paragraph, I would have something like web hosting company and also mention the word “WordPress” again.

It looks like a pretty impressive landing page.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Making Money From A Blog: Mistakes To Avoid
John Hoff
on 14 Oct 2008 at 8:21 pm #

@ Cath - Thanks for all the info. Anything worthwhile, even if it’s time consuming, is worth time invested into it. The other positive side of what you’re saying is not only will it help our ads get closer to the top of searches for less money, but fine tuning the landing page will convert better as well.

I’ll take a look at the keywords on that page. I think your ideas are good and I’ll implement them! Thanks for the feedback.
Bruce
on 16 Oct 2008 at 6:04 am #
John,

I am very impressed with your site and may engage you for hosting. I found you through a simple Google search for “Word Press Hosting”. I was most impressed by two things: 1) your personality comes through your postings; and 2) the information content (e.g., security). I think the SEO term is important and most will find it familiar. I would also emphasize community and help in learning how to have a successful enterprise. That’s what brought me back anyway. Good luck.

Bruce, noderanger @ Blogger
John Hoff
on 16 Oct 2008 at 10:55 am #

Hello Bruce, thanks for comment - I really appreciate it and glad you like our site.

I replied to your email and mentioned how we found other hosting sites boring and our answer was to create someone (me) as the leader of the band over here for a personal touch and voice to our site.

Thank you for the feedback in #2 and I’ll take those notes down in my feedback file. I’m hearing good things about putting SEO in the description. Those paid ads are just so damn limiting! You really only have enough space to either describe a benefit or a couple features, it’s hard to do both.

SEO is obviously a benefit and not a feature of our web hosting. Our customers can email me or post here or in our forums any time to get some feedback on SEO for their site. I’ve even done a few tweaks to our customer’s websites for them.

But for those small ads, whatever captures attention is a good thing.