Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Mastering the Medium and Voice at Haiku U.

After you choose your approach and selected elements that will compel action from the right prospects, you have to fit that content elegantly into 135 characters. Stop thinking sales pitch and start thinking haiku — the Japanese poetic art that paints a compelling mental picture in 17 syllables.

First, forget everything your high-school English teachers taught you about grammar. Your ad must read like a conversation, not an essay. Write like you talk — or better yet, write like your market talks.

Apple Computer has a very effective ad campaign featuring two actors portraying a Mac and a PC. The Mac actor is a hip young dude, whereas the PC actor is a pocket protector–wearing nerd who awkwardly stumbles and bumbles through life. If huge multinational companies develop personalities in the minds of consumers, your business, too, needs a voice. Your ads are the first words in this voice that your prospects will hear.

The best ads work both to attract a certain type of person and to strongly repel everyone else. In some markets (like Internet marketing, for example), your tone can be brash. In others, you must come across as professional and no-nonsense. You can be caring, efficient, funny, angry, matter-of-fact, exasperated, excited, clinical, or poetic. Test different voices to find out which one connects best with your market. But your best voice will most often be your genuine voice — just smoothed and amped a bit to cut through the clutter ...