Successful forumula for Google AdWords

Google AdWords are one of the most simple yet mysterious forms of advertising you'll ever find. On the one hand it's so simple and accessible because anyone can create an AdWord campaign. It's not as if you need to go through an advertising agency or marketing firm to do it. Just visit the site, set up your campaign, and determine what your maximum daily budget will be. It's that easy.

On the other hand, it's a little mysterious how Google determines things like an AdWord quality score (meaning how much you should pay for your AdWords and what position they'll be found in on the search pages) and cost per click. There are some factors that certainly play into things like a high quality score such as a high click thru rate, text relevance between the ad and the page you send people to, and historical keyword performance.

All that being said, there are some things you can do with your AdWords to help your chances. Here's a here is a formula for Google AdWords I've seen work well with several clients:

Headline: Use a descriptive title for your product/service
Line 1: State a benefit or additional description of the product/service
Line 2: State a call to action
URL: Link to a page with text that upholds any claims in the ad

Most people understand the headline and line 1 aspects pretty well but stumble on the call to action. Use words like try, buy, order, find, or browse in that line. A sample call to action line might be "Try a free sample of our product." The only catch here is that if you're going to say this you need to make sure there really is a free sample on the page you send people to or Google will recognize that as a misleading (they refer to it as irrelevant) claim which at best raises your cost per click price and at worst will void your ad altogether.