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)

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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.

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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)

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How to Increase an Ad’s CTR- Click Thru Ratio

Posted onJune 9th, 2008 byadministrator

Getting your ad’s CTR to go higher is another tricky thing. There’s a couple ways to look at it. One is to do A/B split testing of ad variations. This will stairstep your CTR and QS (quality score) to higher levels. Another way to get higher CTR is to keep your ads in the Top Positions. If you increase your quality scores, you won’t have to pay as much to be there. Third, pick keywords that generate traffic. This will also help out your quality scores.

Lastly, the best known way to increase quality scores is to write highly attractive ads as mentioned earlier in the previous email. Create an irristable offer, something catchy, something hard to pass up.

To answer your question about time and how long it takes to build overall total impressions: Yes, it takes time to build impressions.

Remember, we also want to qualify your buyers and make sure that they are qualified to buy from you. By doing this, you will probably lower your CTR and your ad description becomes more specific to your customer but at least you don’t pick up junk traffic. It is more important not to spend money on clicks than it is to have that incremental increase in CTR. CTR shouldn’t mean much to you if its not relavant traffic.

Hope this helps.

I do provide a service to advertisers that is very hands-on. We can go into your account and work our magic? What is your exisiting daily/monthly budget for this campaign?

Write Effective Ad Copy for Ad Groups Using Keywords and Save Money on CPC

Posted onJune 9th, 2008 byadministrator

Dale,

How can you simplify writing ad copy in ad groups? Great question! I’ll answer it and I’ll be happy to show a few examples as well.

But first, let’s start from the top. When we write ad copy, we are trying to increase relevancy between the ad copy and the search queries (or keywords) because it improves the quality score of the keyphrase. Quality Scores determine the lowest CPC you can pay. By pointing the ad to the most appropriate (richest in keyword content) landing page, or destination URL, you are also improving your keyphrases’ quality score. Also, higher CTR’s will boost your quality scores, hence lowering your actual CPC.

As we are writing ads now, we want to make sure we keep these things in mind because it will cost you less later on. So let’s look at the steps in writing an effective ad.

Keep in mind before writing the ad that we want to prioritize our goals we have in writing these ads.

To prioritize in order from highest to lowest, we have:

1) Keyphrase/Ad relevancy (Quality Score)- Make sure you are including the bulk of similar keywords in the ad.
2) Highest Click Thru Ratio (CTR)-Write something catchy that will attract your buyers.
3) Qualify your Customers-Make sure that if you are using your ad to keep particular search querying parties away, that you use the ad to do so.

More than ever, Google and Yahoo! are rewarding advertisers who seem to put the most effort and thought into the careful organization of a search campaign. In other words, the more relative your search findings are to the person searching, the less you pay. Isn’t that great? Everyday, advertisers on Google set up campaigns and overlook much of these techniques because they are unaware of what quality scores do and how they determine the lowest CPC you can pay for a keyphrase.

I am about to tell you one of the most important things advertiser’s overlook when setting up their campaigns. I think I learned this mistake early when setting up an account because I too was receiving CPC’s above $5 for key terms that should have been below $1-$2. It was very costly, and I paid dearly for it. Dale, with all my experience (through trial and error) I hope this save you time and monetary resources. When creating ad groups, make sure you don’t over look this first step you are about to hear…

Earlier, we said that as our first priority in creating ads, we want to make the ad text copy as relevant to the keyphrases or search query as possible. Well, here’s the BIG TRICK behind it…

PUT VERY FEW KEYPHRASES IN EACH AD GROUP! I personally recommend you include less that 5-7 per group. Think about this. The more phrases we put into each ad group, the less relevant the ad becomes to each “individual” keyphrase. The best analogy I can give is that of a classroom. If you have one teacher (the ad) per classroom (the ad group), the fewer students (keyphrases) in the classroom, the better education (quality score) each child will receive individually. Pardon my analogy but I hope it helps make sense of this concept. This is one of the hardest to overcome in Adwords.

So the fewer phrases you have in each group, the better. The best is to put in 1-2 phrases per group. Though if you are trying to utilize a few hundred words, you will have a lot of work cut out for you. Just do the best you can so that it doesn’t take you months to set up a campaign. A good campaign might take a week or longer to get the initial phases implemented. Make sure you aren’t hasty about it. Google only rewards those advertisers that took the time to make these implementations.

Want to write ads now that you know how to organize adgroups? Okay, recall the ad priority list above and here are some givens:

a) Some of Your Keywords: Adwords manager, Adwords management service, Adwords professional, Adwords professional company, Adwords professional help.
b) Who your customers are: People who need help/ consulting with their campaigns.
c) Who your customers are not: People who want to hire an Adwords manager in-house to work for their company.

Let’s get to work.

Step 1) Segment your keywords into as many separate adgroups as necessary.

Adgroup-1
Adwords manager
Adwords management service,

Adgroup-2
Adwords professional,
Adwords professional company,
Adwords professional help

That was easy. See the similarities of phrases between adgroups?

Step 2)

Write Ads. Make sure that you write a catchy ad that qualifies your customers. In this case, we want to make sure the person who clicks this ad wants a service and is not looking to hire a technician inside their office.

Adwords Manager
Adwords Management Service
Free eBook , No Contracts, Live Help.
http://www.RealSearchPros.com/Adwords

Adwords Professional
Adwords Professional Company
Free eBook, No Contracts, Live Help
http://www.RealSearchPros.com/Service

Notice, how the ads contain the search queries and also offer something irresistible to the person searching for this service. Keep a lot of keywords out of these ads and you will create for yourself the winning campaign. Sometimes, high competition pitches the bid prices high above our comfort level. But for those that our determined to get the lowest possible Cost per Click, this will assure that you are doing just that.

Dale, I hope this explanation helps out. I kind of gave you a crash course on how to effective write and create adgroups. In return, if you could simply spread the word around the WA forum, that you received great information from me, I would certainly appreciate that. Let me know if I can assist you any further.