Lower Cost & Increase Conversion of Your

By Karon Thackston

Comparison shoppers are the mortal enemy of pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers. When you're paying each time someone clicks your AdWords (or other PPC) ad, the last thing you want is a person determined to visit every site to find the best price, the closest location or the most secure guarantee. But, with many categories of products or services, it's bound to happen. There is a way to eliminate many of the lookers, however.

When you qualify your AdWords leads, you can reduce the click-through rate (CTR) of browsers and help direct only those most interested in your offer to your site. How is it done? By inserting text that will purposely eliminate arbitrary visitors.

Qualifying Your PPC Leads

Purposely eliminating visitors sounds like an awful thing to do, doesn't it? Perhaps, until you consider the fact that - once these visitors got to your site and found out the details of your offer - they'd most likely leave anyway.

Why not save yourself a click (and the money associated with that click!) and prevent the visitor from running up your monthly AdWords bill? This is exactly what Steve Jackson of Conversion Chronicles and I discussed awhile back. Since that discussion, I've come up with a process that will allow you to easily write pre-qualifying ads when you use these simple steps.

Step One

Outline the specifications of your offer. Be precise. List all the details of the offer, the price, length of time, physical location, size, etc. For example, say you have luxury cruise packages available. You'd want to list the details such as: packages depart from New York City and go to several destinations in Mexico including Cozumel, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlᮠfrom December 5-15 for a cost of $2500 per person.

Step Two

Go back and highlight anything that would be a deal breaker. This is a luxury cruise, so the cost of $2500 per person might be too much for most people. Quite often, cruisers are looking for the best deal possible.

Also, the cruise only leaves from New York City. The additional airfare cost might not be something your site visitors want to add to the cost of their trip. Or, it may be inconvenient to depart from New York City.

What about the dates? These cruises are only available on the dates of December 5-15. Your site visitors may not be able to take a holiday during that time.

Does the visitor want to sail to the locations on the itinerary? Maybe they've already been to Cozumel, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlᮠand are looking for a cruise to Cabo San Lucas.

Are there other factors that might force shoppers to decline the offer and move to another site? If so, list them here.

Step Three

Now, decide which bits of information you want to include in your AdWords ads. You'll want to test and track to see which combination of details bring the lowest click-through rates along with the highest conversions. For example, your ad might read:

Luxury Mexico Cruise 12/5
Tour tropical Cozumel, Puerto
Vallarta & more. Leave NYC. $2500pp
www.whatever.com
That would give a lot of information that would keep unqualified visitors from clicking through to your site (and running up your AdWords bill). At the same time, the use of words like "luxury" and "tropical" help the searcher visualize their wonderful vacation.

Another example could be a special shipment of microwave ovens. Let's go through the steps once again.

Step One

The specifications include: convection/microwave combination, built-in with light and vent features, 1200 watts, white, $900, available on the Internet only.

Step Two

Any of these could be used to weed out visitors. Someone may not want the convection feature. They want a countertop microwave rather than a built-in model. Twelve-hundred watts may be more powerful (and larger) than the visitor needs. Their kitchen may have stainless steel or black appliances, not white. Lastly, $900 could be more than they have budgeted for a microwave.

Step Three

Again, you'll want to test and track to see which tidbits of information work best to bring qualified leads, reduce CTR and costs, and improve conversions.

Your ad might look like this:

Powerful Convec/Microwave
Special purchase. Attractive range
built-in with 1200w. Only $900.
www.whatever.com
Rather than using generic terms to describe high cost or frequently compared PPC items, get as specific as you can with "disqualifying" copy. By weeding out those who would likely take one look and leave, you can save yourself a lot of money in AdWords expenses while increasing conversions.

Google AdWords Marketing: Exact Match Bidding

By Richard Ball

Include both broad and exact matches for a primary keyword phrase in your ad group. A primary keyword phrase is a short (usually 1 or 2 keywords) phrase that has a high search volume. Consider this example of the top 10 keyword search counts (data from inventory.overture.com) for the "womens clothing" phrase:

411711 womens clothing
109985 womens clothing shop
17566 plus size womens clothing
12572 womens sports clothing
9042 womens clothing catalog
5992 womens clothing store
5908 tall womens clothing
3906 sexy womens clothing
2945 wholesale womens clothing
2385 womens petite clothing

The keyword phrase "womens clothing" is the primary phrase. Note that if you add up the searches performed for secondary phrases 2-10, combined they don't even equal half the search volume of the primary phrase. Set a higher bid for the exact match on the primary keyword phrase. The exact match gives you greater control over the primary keyword phrase while the broad match draws additional traffic from secondary keyword phrases. Why is this important?

1. The exact phrase is often more valuable than broader phrases.
2. The exact phrase is often more expensive than broader phrases.
3. You can control the position of the ad for the exact search.

Let's look at an example to address these points in detail. We'll use a fictitious ad group with a default bid of 10 cents, populated with these keywords for a company selling clothing for women:

womens clothing
womens clothing shop
womens clothing store
womens clothing catalog

Bidding on the broad phrase "womens clothing" will cause the ad to be seen for broad phrases such as:

wholesale womens clothing
discount womens clothing
tall womens clothing
womens clothing online

If the store has a limited selection of "tall womens clothing" then that phrase is less valuable than the "womens clothing" exact phrase. It would be desirable to pay less for the broader phrases. Note that there will likely be some broader phrases that could be more valuable than the high volume primary phrase, particularly for niche retailers. Those keyword phrases should also be included as both exact and broad matches in the ad group. Since there are hundreds of broad phrases that could trigger this ad, an ideal way to separate the bids is to bid higher for the exact phrase. The ad group could be updated to include this set of keywords:

womens clothing
[womens clothing] ** 0.50
womens clothing shop
womens clothing store
womens clothing catalog

Now, the company's ad will show for both a "tall womens clothing" and a "womens clothing" search, but the company will only pay up to 10 cents for a click on the former and up to 50 cents for a click on the latter. If the company doesn't sell "wholesale womens clothing" then "-wholesale" should be added as a negative keyword.

Other companies will also have figured out that the exact phrase "womens clothing" is more valuable than many of the longer, broader phrases. As evidenced by the high search volume on the "womens clothing" keyword phrase, many shoppers will start their searching with that particular phrase. The company selling womens clothing will want to be visible in those search results. A higher bid will be necessary to maintain the ad's position for this keyword phrase. That's another reason to bid separately on important exact phrases. The person managing the Google advertising account will see this sort of information (this is a fictional example) when logging in to the Google AdWords system and viewing the ad group:

Keyword Status Current Bid Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost Avg. Pos
womens clothing Active $0.10 123 4,321 2.8% $0.08 $9.84 10.2
[womens clothing] Active $0.50 42 1,234 3.4% $0.47 $19.74 3.4
womens clothing shop Active $0.10 11 280 3.9% $0.10 $1.10 8.7
womens clothing store Active $0.10 7 111 6.3% $0.07 $0.49 6.8
womens clothing catalog Active $0.10 3 98 3.1% $0.05 $0.15 4.0

A quick glance at the screen shows them that the ad has an average position of 3.4 for the "womens clothing" exact phrase. If they're not happy with the position, they can increase the bid. For phrases like "womens clothing store" they would have to perform a search on Google to see where the ad stands since that keyword phrase isn't isolated via an exact match. If they changed the bid on the broad match, they'd be changing the ad's position for "chicos womens clothing store" and "womens clothing store in canada" and a huge range of possible broad searches which might not be advantageous. A more realistic ad group keyword list would look something like this:

womens clothing
[womens clothing] ** 0.50
womens clothing shop
[womens clothing shop] ** 0.30
womens clothing store
[womens clothing store] ** 0.30
womens clothing catalog
[womens clothing catalog] ** 0.40
-wholesale

If the impressions are much higher for broad match versus exact match for a particular keyword phrase, use web analytics to see which actual search phrases are being clicked. Then, analyze those keyword phrases to see which phrases are valuable either by tracking the conversions or by guessing what might convert well. The same tactic can be used for keyword phrases deemed less valuable. Set a lower bid for these as exact match. Over time, your ad group's keyword list will grow longer as you separate bids for exact and broad match. Your ad group will become more effective and more profitable. Plus, you'll be able to see at a glance how your important keywords are performing.

How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords

By Kalena Jordan

Like many people who earn their income via the Internet, I use affiliate programs to supplement my income. One of the affiliate products I promote (Proposal Kit) had been performing particularly well for me recently and I decided to help things along by creating a Google AdWords campaign based around my reviews of the product.

After one month, the campaign was going ok, I was getting a few sales here and there and certainly making a good ROI on the promotion. However, although my Click Through Rate (CTR) was pretty good (1.2%), it was starting to slide backwards and I thought I could do better. As you probably know, your ad position in Google relies heavily on your CTR compared to your competitors, so I was keen to turn things around and keep my high ad positions.

Around this time, I bought Nick Usborne's book Net Words and started to read it, taking notes as I went. I realized that according to Nick's philosophy, my AdWords ads were flat and boring. They were just not appealing enough to entice people to click on them. As Nick explains in his book, "Being blah guarantees you'll never be heard".

So I set about re-writing some of my ad text to speak more directly to my audience and ask them a question that required a response. Below is an example of an ad targeting the search query "business proposal before I changed the text:

Business Proposal Kit
Close the sale with a professional
business proposal template kit.

And here is the text I replaced it with:

Need a business proposal?
Create your own professional
proposal with our template kit.

The aim was to get my average CTR for the entire campaign up to around 2% from the existing 1.2% it was sitting at.

I logged off for the evening and went to bed, not expecting too much. The next morning, I had messages in my email in-box advising me that I had made 3 sales overnight! I was quite excited and logged into AdWords to see how things were going. Sure enough, my clicks were way up and two of the three AdGroups I had edited were showing an average 33% CTR! My overall campaign CTR had risen from 1.2% to 2.4%. I had never experienced CTR that high before. The ad I had changed used to show a 2.5% CTR and after a few days the changed ad displayed a 4.3% CTR.

Taking note of the ads that had attracted the most clicks, I created more around related keywords and phrases, using similar headlines to the ads that were performing the best. This time, I incorporated Nick's advice to use short and punchy copy.

Below is an example of an ad I was using to target the search query "seo contract" before I changed the text:

Sample SEO contract
Proposal Kit provides a perfect SEO
contract template. Read our review.

And here is the text I replaced it with:

Need an SEO contract?
Create yours.
Today.

After another week, my average CTR for the whole campaign jumped from 2.4% to 4% and I had a couple of ads showing 100% CTR! You can imagine how excited I was. Of course the high CTR builds on itself because the higher your CTR, the higher your ad position and the higher your ad position, the more clicks it is likely to attract. So my campaign had jumped from 1.3% in the first month, to 2.4% in the second month and after my fine-tuning, it's now showing a 4% CTR consistently. And the sales? Well I now average at least seven sales per week, up from two per week over the past 6 months and my affiliate commission is at an all time record.

The exercise just goes to show that a few thoughtful tweaks to your ad copy can make a HUGE difference to your bottom line. So what are you waiting for? Go tweak that copy in your own campaigns...

AdWords Offers Demographic Selections

By Jennifer Laycock

The big news on the pay-per-click front this week was the introduction of demographic targeting for Google AdWords advertisers. Actually dubbed "demographic site selection" by Google, because the feature is limited to the content syndication network, the program offers many of the same demographic categories that MSN's adCenter does, but serves up the offerings in a completely different way.

AdWords' demographic option is designed to let advertisers select specific sites to advertise on based on the demographics of that site. Advertisers will be able to specify a preference in up to three categories. Google will then examine it's database of content partners and will return a list of sites that it feels are most likely to deliver the types of visitors that the advertiser is looking for.

This option is only available when users that geo-target their campaigns to the United States and that set up a new "site targeted campaign" or while managing an existing site targeted campaign. It's also important to note that advertisers will still have the option of making their selections manually, either from a keyword generated list or by selecting sites that pop up in response to the demographic criteria.

The demographic breakdown options are as follows:

Gender:

male
female
Age

18-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
65+
Annual Household Income (USD)

0-14,999
15,000-24,999
25,000-39,999
40,000-59,999
60,000-74,999
75,000-99,999
100,000+

AdWords will also be offering more advanced targeting options that break things down by ethnicity as well as by whether readers have children or not.

While the option for more targeting, especially targeting of a demographic variety is going to be very attractive to small business owners that rely on pay per click as a part of their marketing strategy, there's still the question of how accurate the data compiled by Google is going to be. Google states that their data comes from comScore Media Metrix, one of the largest companies around when it comes to providing information about web sites.

The problem here is that a large portion of Google's content syndication network is made up of sites that never even create a blip on the comScore Media Metrix map. In fact, one could argue that many of the smaller sites that are capable of returning an excellent level of qualified click-thrus are likely to fall through the cracks in this type of system. I can almost guarantee that most of my own content sites are not going to be large enough for Google to have any sense of the demographics they attract.

Google is aware of this issue and states on their site:

Please remember that demographic site selection cannot guarantee that your ad will reach only the exact audience you select.

They also point out that because most web sites get a variety of visitors, the demographic targeting should simply be viewed as being a best estimate, not as promised reality.

The interesting thing that I'm noting is that most of the press and blog coverage I've read of this launch are lauding it as a direct frontal assault on MSN's adCenter and claiming that it will once again give Google the lead in terms of advertiser experience.

This puzzles me a bit, for several reasons.

First, MSN's adCenter offers up demographic targeting options for the search related pay-per-click ads. Google's demographic targeting applies only to content syndication. Any advertiser that has run pay-per-click campaigns knows that search related PPC advertising tends to outperform content related PPC by quite a bit.

Second, MSN's adCenter relies on their own internal data and on users being logged in during a search to match the ads up with the preferred demographics. Google will be relying on a third party's estimate of the types of traffic that a web site likely receives. In fact, they won't have ANY data for a large portion of the sites in their content syndication network because those sites will simply be too small to even show up on comScore's map.

While I think Google's latest move represents an important step forward in regards to improving pay per click advertising options, I also have to admit to being a little bit skeptical when I read the glowing praises that talk about what an impact this offering will have on the ROI of AdWords advertisers.

Only time will tell...but my brain just keeps thinking about the Emperors's New Clothes...

Google Serves Up "Starter Edition" of AdWords

By Jennifer Laycock
Small Business Owners that have been shying away from running a pay-per-click campaign on Google AdWords because they are afraid of making a mistake in setting up their campaigns may wish to rethink their avoidance. Google AdWords is now offering a streamlined "starter edition" of their AdWords setup that's designed to make it easier for new PPC advertisers to get a small campaign up and running in record time.

When new advertisers in some regions (so far it appears to be just the U.S.) login to create an AdWords account, they are given the option of signing up via the "starter edition" or the "standard edition." The standard edition accounts pretty much make up the traditional AdWords environment, it's the starter edition that gives a quick and easy option to new advertisers.

Why Starter Edition is a Good Thing

I've heard time and time again from small business owners that pay per click marketing is simply too confusing, too expensive and too difficult for them to dive in to. While they are right to be cautious, most fail to realize that they don't have to take advantage of every single offering in the AdWords program when they first sign-up. Starter Edition is based off this premise.

Advertisers are able to setup a simple campaign on a sign-up form that consists of a single page. The targeting options are limited, as is control over fine details of the campaign, but it is a quick and easy way for new advertisers to take the system for a test drive. Overall, setting up a campaign can be done in just five steps.

1.) Select an ad location and language - Advertisers will need to select where they want their ad to run...The United States, the UK, etc... They also need to select their language of choice, English for most advertisers, but other languages are also an option. Note, advertisers are limited to a single location and a single language.

2.) Write a single ad - Advertisers will only be able to run one ad for campaigns set up through the Starter Edition interface. They'll need to create a headline and two lines of brief ad copy.

3.) Choosing keywords - Advertisers can decide which keywords they wish to add to their campaign. It is important to note that the same CPC and ad text apply to all keywords in campaigns setup through the Starter Edition.

4.) Choose a Currency - Pretty simple...if you're American, you're going to select dollars, if you're British, you'll pick pounds and so on.

5.) Set a Monthly Budget - Advertisers need to plug in the maximum amount that they are willing to spend each month. Google will shut down a campaign once this amount has been spent.

From there, it's simply a matter of completing the account form, entering payment information and watching your ads start running. There's no dealing with groups, multiple variations of ad copy, individual bids, landing pages, etc...

Why Starter Edition Isn't a Great Thing

I'm not going to say that the option is a bad thing, because it's obviously an option that's been a long-time coming for the small business market. On the other hand, the danger of an offering like this is that it's all the more likely that an advertiser will setup a program, get poor results and then decide that pay per click advertising "doesn't work."

Because the Starter Edition lacks the option to fine tune accounts with things like individual landing pages, individual keyword bids and multiple combinations of ad text, it would be very difficult to setup anything but a very narrow campaign while actually creating a strong return on investment.

In other words, small business owners will need to view Starter Edition as what it is...a starting point. Advertisers can upgrade their accounts to the standard system at any time, thus turning on more advanced targeting and management options. Ultimately, that should be the entire point. Advertisers that are wary of setting up a new campaign should use the Starter Edition interface to get going and then once they are comfortable, should take the plunge into the full version so that they can expand and fine tune their campaigns.

More information on the Starter Edition option is available in the Starter Edition FAQ and a comparison of features offered on Starter and Standard is available in the Google AdWords Help Center.
Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.