The Overlooked Power of Negative Keywords

Before I get into today's topic, a word or two about Overture's Keyword Selector Tool at inventory.overture.com.

Rumor has it that Yahoo is taking this site down. Lately it's been rather unreliable, sometimes available, sometimes not.

First, a plea for sanity to our friends at Yahoo Search Marketing: Guys, I know and you know that most people come to your site and take your handy keywords and go dump them into Google. I know that makes ya mad. 'Cuz Google passed you by 3 years ago and you've been trying to catch up ever since.

Yahoo, I submit to you that taking this keyword tool away can only drop your stock price even lower, because then Google advertisers will have one less reason to even know who you are, much less advertise on the Yahoo/Overture network. (When analysts at giant mutual funds who own $500 million of Yahoo stock call me on the phone and ask, that's what I tell 'em.)

Yahoo, the most strategic thing you can do is make your tool even better, and perhaps even put a link on this tool to some videos or something that explain how to use your own PPC system.

Oh, and just in case Yahoo decides to can this thing for good, there's a handy alternative available now at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ My thanks to Mike and Mindy Mindel for providing that.

Onward to the topic at hand.

Most people don't pay near enough attention to negative keywords. Or maybe they stick in words like "free" or "cheap" but usually that's not enough. Sometimes the total success or failure of your PPC campaign hinges on the proper use of negative keywords.

Here's an example - the keyword "soap." Here are the results you get from the Overture inventory tool:

Searches done in December 2006
Count Search Term
91393 soap opera
63090 soap
41891 soap opera digest
34895 soap central
21779 soap opera central
17220 soap making
13494 soap opera update
13439 cbs soap
12595 abc soap
7271 soap digest
6977 soap city
6794 soap dispenser
5608 soap opera weekly
5178 daytime soap
4974 handmade soap
4778 cbs daytime soap opera
4685 soap making supply
4629 soap dish
4525 daily soap opera update
4344 passions soap opera
4234 soap opera spoiler
4136 all my child soap opera
4099 young and the restless soap opera
3787 soap spoiler

If you're bidding on the keyword 'soap' and using anything other than exact match [soap] it's gonna be real, real hard to make this keyword work. If you sell soap related products, then the list you see here is actually more valuable in terms of the negative keywords it gives you (opera, digest, cbs, daytime) than the positive keywords (handmade, dispenser, dish).

So what you should do is bid this way:

[soap]
"soap"
soap

with negative keywords

-opera
-digest
-central
-cbs
-abc
-daytime
-passions
-children

....and you should go all the way down the list, plucking out as many negative keywords as you possibly can.

When you do that, your CTR on broad match and phrase match will go up, sometimes even double or triple. On a term like 'soap', broad and phrase match will probably not work AT ALL unless you have a very extensive list of negative keywords.

2-3 years ago on PPC, the name of the game was slinging a lot of mud against the wall and seeing what sticks. Today, less is more, and negative keywords are just the kind of 'less' that will sharpen your saw and make you effective.

One last thing: My bookstore book is out on the shelves now. If you give Amazon $16.47 and commit 10 minutes a day to reading The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, then 30 days from now you'll be smarter than 98% of all Google Advertisers. Not only about AdWords, but all essential online marketing skills.

For a blow-by-blow explanation of the book, why we wrote it (hint: I'm a self-aggrandizing egomaniac) and what's in it, go here:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/google/ultimateguide.htm

To your success,

Perry Marshall

Seven Deadly Sins & The Art Of Persuasion

Seven Deadly Sins & The Art Of Persuasion

Once someone sent me a glib little marketing article with a list of the Seven Deadly Sins. It explained that the more you appeal to your customers' Pride, Envy, Wrath, Gluttony, Lust, Sloth and Greed, the more you'll sell.

I knew the guy was right... but I also knew that when you brazenly pander to the lowest common denominator, you infect your customers with a bunch of diseases that you too will catch... and eventually you suffer a wretched, miserable death.

One must be careful what one succumbs to.

I've always thought I should write something about this, and then copywriter Tony Ostian sent me a piece about the late Martin Conroy. Martin is the man who wrote the Wall Street Journal subscription letter, a 780 word masterpiece of persuasion that has now sold over $1 Billion of subscriptions (!). The very most successful sales letter of all time.

Martin, too, suggested applying the Seven Deadly Sins. But he had a different take on it.

Listen up... this is brilliant:


"If you're trying to find out what makes people tick, you might take a look at the Seven Deadly Sins from the old Baltimore Catechism. Remember them? Pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. Of course, the deadly sins are all bad and all extreme and all no-nos.

"But there's an unsinful, unextreme side to every one of them where you can see how good and honest people act and react. On the sunny side of sinful pride, for example, nice people still take normal, unsinful satisfaction in what they are and what they have.

"Short of deadly covetousness, people have an understandable desire to possess some of the good things in life. Instead of sinful lust, there's good old love that makes the world go 'round. Without raging in anger, good people can still feel a reasonable annoyance with bad people and bad things. Without getting into gross gluttony, normal men and women can have a normal appetite for good food and drink. Short of envy, there's a very human yen to do as well as the next guy. And as for sloth, who isn't happy to learn an easier way to do things?

"The Seven Deadly Sins. If you want to know what makes people act like people, they're worth a look."


Whether you're advertising a new business opportunity or tempting your own taste buds with a steak dinner, the difference between success and self-destruction is the fine line of discernment that keeps you from taking things just a bit too far. Trespass that line and someone starts making promises they can't keep... customers get resentful... suddenly grim guys from the government in black suits show up and freeze your bank accounts.

Or you can build on the unsinful, unextreme side of those desires and have a business that lasts.

Hope your New Year is going full tilt, I know mine is. Keep swingin' that axe,

Perry Marshall

"Something Is Desperately Wrong In America..."

By: Perry Marshall 2007

"Something Is Desperately Wrong In America..."

What's the first thing you think when you read that?

Does it trigger any impulses?

It's just pregnant with possibilities, isn't it? You could
go a thousand directions with it. With an intro like that,
at the very minimum you're guaranteed to start with a
hearty nod of agreement from a whole bunch of people.

Whether you fly high with your next sentence or fall
flat on your face depends entirely on how well you
read your audience. If you know what itch they're
dying to scratch, then you've got the opening shot
of a great fundraising letter... a scintillating email
subject line... a launch pad for your newest manifesto.

This wouldn't have to be about 'obvious' political
items, either. It could be a mailing list broker
ranting about incompetence and waste in the U.S.
Post Office. It could be about the latest security flaw
in Microsoft Windows. It could be about some bankruptcy
judge that just got elected in Rhame, North Dakota -
the one that's about to trigger an avalanche of
financial woes onto our unsuspecting populace.

You can have all kinds of fun with this. If the
person you're talking to agrees, you've formed
an instant bond.

The road to revolution is paved with feelings of
brokenness, rage, lost hope and spoiled ambitions,
and the politicos shamelessly exploit this. When
our very foundations of peace, freedom and prosperity
teeter on the edge of the abyss.... When the enemy
strains every rippling muscle to pull civilization over
the edge, you can't help yourself. You boil with rage,
hang on every word.

On a recent Mastermind call, we discussed the fact
that in spite of what we'd all prefer, most people do
what they do not for stated reasons but because of
anger, fear, insecurity, jealousy, boredom.... he
wants to win the golf game, not to be a
superlative sportsman but to humiliate Bill who's a
constant jerk in staff meetings.

"I can't wait to see that ball neatly fall into the hole
and wipe that smirk off Bill's face... he's gonna pay..."

Whether you sell online or off, it's this level of
understanding that separates the men from the boys.
You're not selling vacation packages or golf clubs or
quality management software, you're selling endorphin
rushes. You're selling antidotes to anger, fear, insecurity,
jealousy, boredom. Antidotes to that Bill guy who frosted
your cookie in a staff meeting.

In personal AdWords coaching we install the moving
parts for an ultra-successful online business, but there's
something much more important, more fundamental than
even that. Because in the Team Action Groups and 1-on-1
calls we explore this gritty, organic, inner psychology.
The stuff that really sets your success on fire.

--------------------------------------
Brought To You By:
Perry Marshall Coaching

First Gear - Second Gear - Third Gear - Fourth

*Add $25,000 minimum to your bottom line in '07, turbo progress in 12 short weeks. Backed by a robust, gutsy guarantee. www.PerryMarshall.com/Adwords/PersonalCoaching.htm

Hello My Internet Friend,

The person who taught me how to drive a stick shift was none other than my wife, Laura.

But she wasn't my wife then. Wasn't quite even my girlfriend yet. (I was falling madly in love with her though.... still am :^> ... but I digress) It was the summer before our senior year, we were both 17 and Laura had this little brown Datsun she drove around in. She took me out to the deserted country roads in rural Nebraska where I hopefully wouldn't do too much damage popping that clutch.

I tell you, letting that clutch out just right, getting smooth acceleration from 0 to 60, tricky tricky tricky. I stalled that engine over and over again.

Those of us who have grown to like manual transmissions - mastered them - know that a skilled driver is smoother than the best automatic transmission. You got snow and ice? Give me a stick shift, baby, and I'm in control.

A savvy guerilla marketer, like the gal who's mastered that stick shift, starts from rest with a barely perceptible nudge from zero - wouldn't wake a sleeping baby - then you feel the seat pressing firmly against your back, excitement rushes through your body as the fence posts speed by faster and faster, and before you know it you're going 90 or 100. She's run through every gear and you didn't even feel the transitions.

Somebody sees that Google ad and it's so close to the conversation inside his head that it's only natural he'd click on that one instead of the others. He doesn't get bruised in the slightest on the squeeze page... it's only natural (there's that phrase again) that he'd exchange his information for yours, and then one step at a time he wises up to your way of doing things, your way of solving problems... pretty soon he's not even searching the web anymore because he's so happily
involved in *your* world.

It doesn't stop. After the first sale is a second and a third and a fourth, because you have a plan for moving those customers up your ladder, from casual drives in rural Nebraska to first date to
engagement to marriage to a beautiful baby girl being born, then....

Oops, I'm digressing again. Can you hit 200 miles an hour? It's possible, on the open road. There's no speed limit on the information super highway.

*Marketing Equivalents of Popping The Clutch & Stalling The Engine

-The #1 disconnect is between the keyword itself and your basic message. You'd be astonished how big the differences are between seemingly similar keywords, how different the visitors can be between, say "guinea pig" and "guinea pigs."

-Overstatement: Amateur copywriters think writing copy is all about bombast and drama. Exaggeration and yellow highlighter.

They say stupid things like "Why you should crawl buck nekked on broken glass to get your hands on these hot new secrets" and the first thing the visitor thinks is "Oh no, not another one
of those yo-yos" and quickly punches the BACK button. Throws it into revers and he's outta there. I think one of the most powerful copywriting tools is....

*Understatement.*

Here's an example: When I was in Nairobi Kenya I met a 7 year old boy who was dying of AIDS for lack of a $1 bus ticket to get a free shot. (No joke.)

A rookie copywriter might have gotten in-your-face about this unfortunate boy. I said: ....

I met another boy named Peter Githiri, 7 years old, who is also HIV positive. Peter is not doing so well. A sponsor has not been found for him yet, and lacking medical attention, he is obviously very sick.

"Not doing so well" got the point across. It left Peter's appearance to the readers' imagination. Hey, you're not dumb. You can fill in the blanks. Right?

-Treating all markets the same, or that all techniques work the same way with everyone. No siree Bob. I was talking to Tellman Knudson the other day, who sells products both to online marketers and to parents of ADHD children. He said, "What entrepreneurs respond to and what parents of children respond to are TOTALLY, ABSOLUTELY DIFFERENT."

My motto is: Talk to people the way they talk to each other and themselves.

-Know what you're going to sell them next. You know what's suicide for a Google AdWords campaign? Trying to sell one product in one shot, having no follow up before the sale and nothing to sell after the sale. You could get away with this 2-3 years ago, but you can't now.

In personal AdWords coaching we make you the master of that silky-smooth clutch, and we make the transitions between the gears seamless. And as you develop the skill to run through those gears, your girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife - or maybe your mom who's put up with you and believed in you for three or four decades now.... well, you do 'em mighty proud.

Show 'em tail lights.

www.PerryMarshall.com/Adwords/PersonalCoaching.htm

Perry Marshall