Directing Buyers and Testing Ads (3/4 and 4/4)

Posted onJuly 31st, 2009 byadministrator

Directing Buyers (Part 3/4)

Directing buyers is one of the easiest things to do when writing ads because you only have so many choices of where to direct them to. When you edit ads, you have your option for destination URL. This is where you will direct your visitors once they click on the ads.

Where you direct them is for the most part, a no-brainer. Most advertisers choose to point them to the landing that has the most relevant information for their buyer. However you might run into a traffic snag here or there if you don’t mind a few things. Just as you review Bounce Rates in the Analytics settings; it is good to contemplate your landing pages if you are seeing higher percentages.

Higher bounce rate percentages doesn’t necessarily mean you have unqualified buyers or have chosen an ineffective landing page. I often find high bounce rates in adgroups where the keywords are very product specific (brands and model types) usually because they point to a very product specific landing pages. This is because all the information they are looking for surrounding that keyword and inquiry is clearly on that product landing page. They get the information they want and they leave without any need to navigate the site any further.

This is inherently dangerous. If they leave your website and they haven’t purchased anything, it might be because they received their information and realized they didn’t want that product after all. So when you see high bounce rates and low sales, you might consider changing the destination URL to something with more options. This could be a product group or category page. This way they see more options and are more likely to buy because of it. You should not always assume because you have an extensive navigation feature that visitors will always use it. Believe it or not, sometimes they don’t even recognize it as an option. You should try putting options in front of them so they are forced to pick one.

This isn’t always the right answer so testing landing pages is always a good idea. In Analytics, go to Traffic Sources> Ad Versions, you will be able to look your ads bounce rates. Remember high bounce rates can be caused by many things; some of which have nothing to do with the ad itself. So look for patterns such as the one I mentioned to decide your best course of action. If it is indeed an outside issue, it will become more apparent when you test your ads’ landing pages this way.

Testing Ad Variations (Part 4/4)

Not only should we test for landing pages, we should test the ads themselves. Writing the most effective ads will always require testing. Some things that you might test for are CTR, bounce rates, conversion rates, conversion cost, and quality score. Advertisers are often very surprised at how much a difference a minor variation in the ad structure can make. When testing ads, you can make larger, more impactful changes or you can make small changes that capitalize on previous ad performance strengths. It really all depends on the feedback you get from historical ad data. If you are getting very poor performance out of an ad, you might consider changing more of the ad’s structure. If you are already getting decent to good performance, you would probably make a minor change to improve it further.

Advertisers always ask me about how to test ads. They want to know how many ads they should run at a time and how long to test before trying new ad variations. My answer will depend on a few variables including overall traffic volume and how much data I have for those ads. The more volume an ad sees, the more impactful a new variation can be on the overall business returns. The less volume an ad sees, the longer it will take to get sufficient data used for making decisions about an ads performance.

If I have a high traffic Adgroup, I will test only 2 variations at a time and continue the test for however long it takes to get reliable information back. I want to get back a large enough population of visits and impressions to justify a change. On a high traffic ad I might wait until I have at least 100 visits.

In lower traffic Adgroups, I might try 3 ad variations so we can get more data about all the ads faster. The reason for only 2 ads is because you can’t get a true assessment of ad performance when you have more than 2.

For instance, if 45% of people prefer or purchase on AD1, 35% on AD2, and 20% on AD3, AD2 could potentially be a better performer than AD1. You would not know that the people who preferred AD3, would have chosen AD2 if AD3 weren’t an option. Less is better. But when it’s going to take a long time to gather performance data, might as well test 3 to get the answers quickly. Plus, there is only a limited effect on the total business performance when the changes are made to an Adgroup that sees little volume. On a slower traffic ad, I might make a decision after 20 accrued clicks because I don’t have weeks to wait for the other 80 clicks.

For Adgroups that see much higher volume, I will test 2 variations but clone out the existing ad 3 or 4 times so to insure the competing ad doesn’t corrupt the account performance by any noticeable standard. So in the Adgroup you will see AD1, AD1, AD1, AD1, and AD2. As you accrue ad performance data, all the AD1s should be relatively even and you can compare the AD2 with all the others. It’s important that you do it this way if there is significant volume. Say you don’t clone the ads and you write an underperforming ad which could be served 50% of the time depending on how you have your serving options set. This underperformer might sabotage the Adgroup especially if it doesn’t qualify the buys well.

I have seen terrible results happen in accounts where the advertiser was doing fine but then added a poor ad in the most important Adgroup. Sales will tank. The phone will stop ringing. And most of the time, the advertiser made several campaign changes so they don’t know what is happening. Protect yourself. Take the insurance and clone existing ads.

Finally, low CTR doesn’t mean you have a bad ad. It could just mean that you have really done a good job of qualifying your visitors. If you turn away a lot of irrelevant traffic because you have a good qualifying ad, then you are saving lots of money but you are also getting lower CTRs. The best way to look at CTR is to simply look at it, be aware of it, and take in all the other performance metrics until you get the entire story. This will lead you to making better informed decisions about your ads. At no time should you make ad decisions solely based on CTR data. It doesn’t always tell the obvious truth.

Speaking about serving options: Optimized Ad Serving vs. Rotating Ad Serving? Rotating will get you a better measurement of performance quicker and Optimized will often give you the same indications by serving certain ads more. So which should we use?

How much time you spend looking at the ads should decide which you use. If you are in the account looking every day, you can rotate them without creating a significant danger to the account. Just don’t wait too long to pull out an underperforming ad. If you are likely to just let ads run without any routine management, then I advise you to put it on the Optimized setting. And if you clone ads, use the Rotating setting to get accurate feedback without creating a risk to the account. The purpose of creating clones is so you don’t have to use Optimized settings.

I hope you enjoyed the series on writing ads. Stay tuned for more valuable lessons in SEM.

Qualifying (Part 2/4) Writing Effective Adwords Ads

Posted onJuly 31st, 2009 byadministrator

Qualifying Buyers (Part 2/4)

The second purpose in writing effective ads is to qualify buyers. There are two reasons why you want to qualify your buyers, 1) to make sure they are actually buyers and 2) to make sure they want something you have. Some of the actions you will take in this part may already be done by virtue of taking action to attract your buyers. Nevertheless, it is important that you make a mental note that you have qualified your visitors as your buyers before letting the ads run.

Make sure they are buyers and not just information hungry visitors. (Writing catchy ads can be very similar in task.) As an advertiser, it seems common knowledge that the sponsored links area of a search results page will hold only ads whose sponsor is looking to sell something. In other words, people searching, who are not advertisers, may not know the sponsored links are there for more than information usually. How can we make sure that people clicking on our ads are really out to buy something?

We have already done this if we inserted some “call-to-action” language or description that implies a purchase. In the example ad, there were 4 things that do this; all of which were in the description.

20% Off All Whole Bean Purchases.
Free Fast Shipping, Order Online!

20% Off means off of a price which implies a purchase. The actual word ‘Purchases’ is more littoral than implied. In case you were wondering, it states, “You will be making a purchase.” Shipping information implies purchasing or buying. And the best way to imply a necessity to buy (especially when you have more product description in the ad) is to put in a call-to-action; Order Online, Order Now, Buy Now, etc. Don’t use “click here.” Google does not allow this call-to-action and it doesn’t imply the necessity to buy.

Make sure they are looking for something you can offer.

I hope by this stage in the game, you have been particular enough to only use specific keywords that describe what you do or what you sell. If not, then look up our article on Keyword Research. Assuming all your chosen keywords are relevant to your business offerings, then there are only 2 things left for you to do. Look at Bounce Rate and Search Query.

Go to Analytics Reporting features and have a look at some keyword Bounce Rates. A bounce rate is a percentage of visitors who come to the site and exit from the exact same page they landed on. Usually if we have a high bounce rate, we would assume we are not meeting the buyer’s needs for some reason or another.

I have a client who sells electric scooters for the physically disabled and elderly. Some of the scooters have 3 wheels and some have 4 wheels. One of the client’s adgroups contains keywords “3 wheel scooter” and “electric scooter.” He had a terrible bounce rate in the beginning. Why? He was attracting buyers for children’s scooters and those scooters that actually have 2 wheels, that go very fast and jump off street curbs. You wouldn’t see a disabled person performing that stunt.

His ads were titled 3 Wheel Scooters and Electric Scooters. By simply adding some qualifying language to make them show as 3 Wheel Senior Scooters and Senior Electric Scooters, we were able to lower the bounce rate and increase his conversion rate on those key terms.

Just because you have a high bounce rate doesn’t mean you have unqualified buyers. However, it is worth investigating. Always ask yourself if you are doing a good job attracting the most relevant shoppers. You might also look at your other things like landing page effectiveness, ease in navigation and checkout process, pricing, or other things that could cause increased bounces.

Search Query Reports in the Reports feature of your Adwords account will tell you a lot about what people actually type into Google to find you. If you find a lot of irrelevant variations of your keywords in there; add and test some language in your ad that would qualify irrelevant queries better. You can also add in negative keywords or test match settings on your keywords to see if that helps. We’ll cover Match Settings and Negative Keywords in a different post.

The better you qualify online visitors, the more likely you are to have a low CTR (click-thru rate). This is okay. It is always be better to have a lower CTR than to have a high CTR and pay for unwanted traffic.

Come back tomorrow to see Qualifying Buyers (Part 3/4) and Testing Ads (Part 4/4)

New Interface Thursday: Bye bye beta

Posted onJuly 30th, 2009 byInside AdWords Group

3 Purposes to Mind when Writing Effective Adwords Ads

Posted onJuly 28th, 2009 byadministrator

When writing effective ads, it’s a keen idea to bear 3 purposes in mind; attracting, qualifying and directing buyers. Most advertisers spend a lot of time concentrating on what would entice a visitor to click on the ad (attraction) paying little or no attention to making sure they are buyers and not just visitors (qualification). Most advertisers will point buyers (direction) to relevant landing pages. However, they might misjudge which the most effective landing pages are. All the purposes of attracting, qualifying, and directing buyers will hold sub-purposes which we will soon formulate into goals. These goals should not only be considered, but closely adhered to when writing ads for your Adwords campaigns.

This is a 4-part series so stay tuned over the next 4 days to get the whole lesson.

Attracting Buyers (Part 1/4)

Initially, when an advertiser is beginning to write his own ads, he might have a narrower focus for their objective. “How do I attract visitors?”, or “How do I get a higher click-thru ratio?” are usually the first instinctual questions he’ll ask himself. If not aware of these next 2 goals, the purpose of attracting buyers is most certain to be fruitless and unrewarding. This is the part of ad writing that gets you higher CTRs. The better you qualify website visitors, the lower your CTR will be.

Write Catchy Ads. Well that was easy. Duh. Of course we want to write catchy ads but how do we write the catchiest ads? Try not to pressure yourself too much. We won’t really know which ads are the most attractive unless we test multiple ones at the same time. I’ll talk more about testing at the end of this article (Part 4/4) but for now, I want to give some key advice which will make the ads catchier. Look at this sample ad about coffee beans.

In the ad description, you will see the offer for “20% Off.” Description lines are where we should include special offers, unique selling points, key features, and supporting description if the ad title is vague in any way, and a call-to-action. Google recommends having the special offers on Line 1 along with features and descriptions etc. and a call-to-action on Line 2.

Studies have been done that show people are highly attracted to numbers (percentages and dollar amounts). When inquiring buyers perform a search, they will get a list of results and then scan the page for information. Typically they are scanning for relevancy (mentioned next) and incentive. Numbers often times imply incentive and if we use them, wandering eyes will be more likely to stray in your direction.

Unique selling points like Free Fast Shipping are always going to grab more attention when product shipping cost might be high or when buyers might be eager to receive their shipment. A good call-to-action like “Order Online!” following the free shipping part will make the buying process seem most effortless and fast.

Relate the Ads to the Buyer. This is actually more responsible for making ads catchy because the relevance takes place most effectively in the ad title. I separated this part out from the previous section because it requires a whole separate set of actions that must be done outside the scope of simply writing the ads.

First, in order to relate ads to the buyers, we have to know what they want. Luckily, we kind of know because they type in these little things called keywords which tell me exactly what they desire. Now that we know what they are looking for, it makes a lot of sense to simply put an ad in front of them that matches this desire. It’s easy, right? Depends…

Too many times I have visited a new Adwords advertiser account and inside the Adgroups I notice that there are all types of different keywords which really have no textual relation to one another. For instance, in an Adgroup that uses the mentioned sample ad, I might see these keywords: Dark Coffee, Coffee Gift Basket, Costa Rican Coffee, and Dark Ground Coffee. These keywords might seem highly relevant to each other as they have the word “coffee” but they don’t all do a good job of relating the ad to the buyer. Let’s review.

Dark Coffee - Although extremely general, this keyword is the best suited for this ad title. All the words in the keyword are in the ad and it is still very relevant overall.
Coffee Gift Basket - Way off the mark. I don’t see gift basket here in the ad at all.
Costa Rican Coffee - All this could be somewhat relevant, it is better if we put it in an Adgroup with the title “Costa Rican Coffee”.
Dark Ground Coffee - Totally irrelevant. This ad says “Coffee Beans” and “Whole Bean Purchases.” Why would we put this in front of someone specifically looking for “ground” coffee?

If you happen to find yourself in a situation where you are guilty of compiling all sorts of keywords into one ad, don’t trip out. It’s not the end of the world. All you have to do is make a list with groups of similar sounding and meaning keywords; all of which describe the exact same product. Once you have this list, just make more Adgroups in the same campaign. And make the ad title most relevant to keywords within that Adgroup.

These keywords might be better suited for the above ad: Dark Roast Coffee, Dark Coffee, Dark Roast Beans, Dark Coffee Beans, and Dark Roast Coffee Beans. When these terms prompt the corresponding ad to show on a search, any actual words the ad possesses will bold up and stand out to the person searching.

So imagine you are the person doing the search. You go to Google. You type in Dark Roast Coffee. An ad appears that says ‘Dark Roast Coffee Beans’ as those keywords in the ad bold up. There are other ads that don’t seem as relevant to your search. This one matches your search exactly. Isn’t this where you want to click and possibly buy?

Come back tomorrow to see Qualifying Buyers (Part 2/4).