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.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Click Through Rate, Writing Ads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.