PPC 101 Education

James from Work Industries sent me this article today from OneDegree.ca on six simple tricks to boost your Google Adwords Click Through Rate (CTR). This is a must-read if you are doing a lot of Pay Per Click (PPC) with Adwords.

6 Simple Tricks to Boost your Google Adwords CTR (Click Through Rate):

1. Use title case: Simply switching from proper case “like this sentence” to title case, “Like This Sentence,” regularly improves click-through rates.
2. Add quotes: “Quotes boost clicks,” particularly when you use them in headlines.
3. Tell a secret: Unfair advantages compel attention. Promise inside information or simply use the word “secret” in relation to your product—it’s your secret weapon.
4. Use numbers: Figures such as in “100% guaranteed,” “100 times better” and “1-click solution” draw added attention.
5. Insert symbols: Visual variation draws the eye. Use acceptable symbols—such as (tm)—to stand out.
6. End on ellipses: Research shows that ending on ellipses—“...”—encourages clicks, possibly because it drives home how more information follows the ad.

Why is CTR so Important?
Increasing your CTR is very important because it is part of Google Adwords Quality Score for your ads. If your CTR goes up, you can lower your bids and still maintain your positions. 

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Clients always want to know how much it would cost them to implement a Search Marketing plan involving Pay per Click (PPC) Investment Whereas it is a simple question, it is not as easy to answer it. I usually give them ballpark figures and I hope it makes sense for them. When you think about it, it is the equivalent of asking a web designer or a web developer on how much it would cost to build a website? It varies a lot. In terms of Search Marketing though, we are fortunate enough to have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools that can help us define the search volume for your targeted search terms. The relationship between search volume and your targeted geographic area will help us come up with Cost (investment) estimates. Google Trends is one of them.

Simply put, Google Trends gives us a snapshot of the search volume for a given search term (or terms), over time. It provides seasonality search volume information which help us understand how we should spread your Pay Per Click (PPC) budget over a 12 month period and therefore get the most out of your investment.

For example, as we all know, Whistler is both a winter and a summer destination. More people would go to Whistler in the winter of course, but the question remains: if you would get the traffic during the winter months anyway, when the search volume is at its peak, wouldn’t you get a better return on your PPC advertising investment during the summer months, when the online competition (and average cost per click) is at its lowest? Wouldn’t make more sense? This decision is in relation to your yearly PPC budget. You would be surprised how important it is to run a summer and a winter PPC campaigns year-round in order to capitalize on this seasonality factor. See the graph below, showing the search volume for the search term “whistler”:

As you can see, the search volume drops in summer months but not as much as you might think. Use it for your own search terms and define peaks and valleys to help you spread your PPC budget over time and get the most out of your PPC investment.

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I got informed last week of a new competitive intelligence tool that is worth talking about. It is called KeywordSpy.com. KeywordSpy gives you the opportunity to immediately track down your competitors and gather keywords for the promotional campaign of your online business. I played with it for a few minutes and I found it very helpful and easy to use in order to understand how many keywords your competitors have in their basket, how much they are paying for it and the corresponding rank. Remember, if your competitors only have a few dozens of keywords, they are not capitalizing in the power of The Long Tail. Therefore, if you use this PPC Management Tool , you can beat them with a better Search Marketing plan.

Here is an example on competitive information KeywordSpy can gather on Whistler.com online market place. Feel free to Mouse over the question marks (?) in order to have the definition of what each column means.

Here are some additional informations on KeywordSpy:
KeywordSpy is keyword research technology where you can also earn and even surpass what your competitors are making with Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture). KeywordSpy gives you the key to their success: a good ad-campaign with the right keywords. It also has a ClickBank Affiliates Search Engine where you can see the actual market landscape at ClickBank.

It offers Free trials. For more information, feel free to communicate with Tolits Bana: linksline{at}gmail.com

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You will love this. Read this carefully and it will help you climb the ladder to the top paid search results listings while dropping your cost dramatically. As far as I know, most search marketers fail dramatically at writing great Paid Search Advertising ads (aka. Google Adwords). I was asked a question today by a Client to basically justify the rationale for ad copywriting for a display ad network (ie. non-search). The campaign is basically aimed at people who are about to move and how ACME (fictitious name) can help the move process with all the telecommunication services new arrangements. Here is what I had to say.

First, here is the ad, according to Google Adwords Editorial Guidelines:

Moving? ACME Can Help!
Move Phone & Services in 1 Click.
Save Time on Moving Using ACME
acme.ca/moving

And now, here is the explanation. Apparently, everyone who read this today, including Steve Kellas, online copywriting genius, thought it was pretty bang on so I am glad to share this with you.

Explanation:
In a nutshell, we are using the same kind of copywriting rationale & style as if we were talking to the users through paid search engine results. We first need to establish relevance with the users which is why we use self-selecting expressions such as Moving?. People who are not moving will most likely skip the ad completely which is not a bad thing when we are using a pay per click format that online users are used to deal with.

Once relevance is established, we can then proceed with stating the benefits of ACME’s offer, which is to offer *help* in the moving process. Since we all know how any form of help is appreciated during moving time, we thought this would be the best verb to describe what ACME can do for them. This has also a great branding effect as it conveys a strong and positive emotion. (thanks for helping me out). We can only use the exclamation mark once in the ad. We then decided to put it on the headline as this is where it makes the most sense. We also need to repeat the same word (move, moving) a few times in the ads (4), on each line preferably, as online users may only read the headline or the first line of text or the second and so on. They may also read the ad vertically which is why the strongest word is often at the beginning of each line. Even if you read the ad vertically, you would still understand what the offer is. Clever hey?

We also need to capitalize the first letter of every word as it reads better, in case online users will actually take the time to read the ad completely. On line 1, we use obvious terms such as phone & services since these are the topics we are talking about and the use of the words “in one click” says how quickly we can help solve this problem. On line 2, we decided to actually states the benefit “Save time”, again to reinforce what the offer is and describe what the offer can do for them. The repetition in the ads while using synonyms and playing with images and emotions for each word is a standard practice in online copywriting. Please note that the text ad characters limit is very restrictive which is why we are trying to find words that say a lot in terms of meaning but that are in fact quite short: help, save, time, move, click are good examples. 

Removing www in the display url (acme.ca) is also a great little improvement as it cuts unnecessary elements (www) which does not help understanding the meaning of the ad. Check out how often you see *www* in Google Adwords. Did you know you can take them out? Please do! Nobody says World Wide Web anymore. If you know anyone who still uses this expression, please publish their names in the comment box below.

If you use this methodology for writing your Google text ads, you can be sure your Google text ads will be more relevant to the users. As a result, this will lead to greater qualified visitors and better ROI.

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