CTR optimization is all about testing. The synergy between the keyphrase someone looks for and the ad that you present them is vital (not forgetting the keyword that triggers the ad in your account, and the space between the search term and searcher intent left by match-type).
I’ve compiled tips and tricks from some of the best in the business to help you revamp your PPC campaigns and increase your CTRs. Okay I’m honestly going to try and give you guys some decent tips, but am I doing a disservice if I leave out some of the basics? No! I mean Yes! I mean… well, okay I’ll group the basics at the very start here (that might be the wrong place for them because you’ll lose interest, but trust me, juicy stuff towards the middle and all the way to the end).
To start things off, here’s a tip from little ole me:
Negatives’r Gnarly
When setting up your campaigns, put a whole lot of thought into searcher intent and the standard profile of your audience, then try and translate that into a bone-crushing list of negative keywords. Creativity and lateral thinking are key here — for more tips see a previous round-up of tips I did on this topic (click the negatives’r gnarly link).
Some simple tips from Shimon Sandler
If appropriate include a strong call to action right in your ad text. Giving the surfer a reason to click is sure to help your CTR — just don’t lead them on and not fulfil what your ad projects, or you’re just wasting money.
Shimon also recommends using dynamic keyword insertion. This is something I would love some more comments on. I think DKI is likely only to be useful as a whole to a PPC account in very specific circumstances. There are big names like e-bay that DKI into everything and bid on everything — they’re horrid ads. Then there are computer memory distributors who use DKI and send people directly to extremely specific product pages, for them it works amazingly.
Another couple of basic tips come by way of WMTips.com:
Keep your ad-groups small and tight. By grouping your keywords all sorts of tightly, and writing your ads specifically for those keywords, you will give yourself a large advantage over your lazy competition, and it will increase your CTR every single time.
Use specific numbers. Numbers create interest and specific numbers create curiosity. They won’t always perform better, but try to test the impact of including numbers in your ad. If you can, include a very specific number such as “314″ instead of “300+” or “76.83%” instead of “75%”.
(umm, be real careful with the whole idea of false advertising here — I love the idea of specific numbers, but they have to be real.)
Test multiple versions of your display URL. While you should experiment with capitalization (i.e. “DomainName.com” vs “domainname.com”), you should also experiment with “www”, sub domains, and pages. It usually, but not always, increases the CTR when you include the keywords in your URL.
(authors note: I’ve also seen people recommend using BRAND NAMES in their display URLs , or as subdomains, like apple.laptopdeals.com which makes a lot of sense — but that may have been an old tip, in the past it was possible to put brands into your display URL even if you couldn’t bid on them, which may not be the case anymore).
Godda love the tips coming out of PPCFool.com
Dave over at PPC fool writes about SHOCK advertising. Basically this is defined as deliberately, rather than inadvertently, startling and offending the audience by violating societal norms or personal ideals
This is an old copywriting and advertising technique, obviously, but Dave shows us how to translate it into modern PPC advertising. It’s simple, just use shocking words:
- Exposed
- Scam
- Naughty
- Sneaky
- Secrets
- Wicked
- Yucky
- Disgusting
Some of these words, like secrets and exposed and scam, play into specific psychological needs of consumers. Others, like sneaky, wicked, naughty, play into pure curiosity “either way you’re likely to increase CTR” but again be aware of how it’s going to affect your overall conversion rates. Don’t put the word scam in your ad, and then not address it on your landing page, that would be a pure fail.
The super smart (read, Irish) folks over at Red Fly Marketing have wisdom to share:
Instead of just paying lip service to the idea of including a “strong call to action” in your ad, they break down what they believe goes into one. Invaluable stuff. RFM believes in strength in ad-copy, whether it be through simple strong words, like:
- Guaranteed
- Discover
- Proven
- Safe
And calls to actionn like:
- Book Now
- Reserve
- Discover Your
- Order Now
As far as strong words go, I know that “guaranteed” is quite strong (essential if you’re of the MindValley labs persuasion), and weaker words like “proven” and “discover” can still add a lot of clickability to otherwise dry ad copy.
RFM recommends matching a strong word up with a strong call to action to build your ad, like joining guaranteed and order now. Guaranteed Satisfaction so Order Now! Who wouldn’t click that? I’d click that, my grandma would click that!
Next up on the tips too good to ignore boat is Dave Davis (the Red Fly guy, yeah) but via WebPro business.com
Use the Registered Trademark ASCII symbol in your ads : this is a great way to look authoritative and professional, which will likely increase your CTR.
Put your price in the headline : earlier we mentioned using specific numbers in your ad copy, this goes further by quoting your actual prices. This can obviously be a headache if there are constant changes or you don’t manage your PPC campaigns at a fine level, but if you’ve got static prices and they’re competitive, brag about it.
Seasonal headlines — another great tip from Dave is to use words like Xmas or Easter in your ad copy and headlines when it’s that time of year. This creates a sense of validity in the ad, showing that you’re not only offering a time-limited sale, and that your company is quick and nimble enough to do so, implying that they’re also likely to be quick in shipping, and responsive.
Our last contributor today is topseo.org, with a couple of simple gems:
Decide what is most important to your customers and what differentiates you from your competitors and highlight these benefits in your ad copy (surprising how often this basic and intuitive task is left by the wayside).
Present yourself as the answer to your customer’s problems. Think about the problems your prospects have, how you can solve those problems, and then determine how you can present the best solution in 95 characters or less.
There you go folks, a nice little round-up of ad-copy and CTR tips for your PPC account management pleasure.
About Naoise Osborne
Fantastic post Naoise and thanks for the mention(s)! I love the way you actually READ the posts you covered and didn’t just quote the articles
Keep up the fantastic work!
Thanks Dave, I’m a big fan of the work you guys do over at Red Fly (obviously) – and your home base doesn’t hurt.
You keep writing intelligent things, I’ll keep quoting them
The PPC Fool type ads always make me laugh, but it generally works for get rich quick schemes and info-products and therefore, will largely only hold water in the content network.
I daresay well over half our clients would fire us if we used headlines with Scam, Naughty, Exposed, and so on. That’s just too aggressive for many corporate clients, but more to the point, it doesn’t necessarily get clicked or convert, or create the correct type of information scent.
Andrew – I agree, I don’t think I can picture myself inserting the word scam into an ad – but then again, I don’t find myself trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator… I wouldn’t be too surprised to see those type of words helping certain audience CTRs… kind of like how the infamous super-long cheesy landing pages work for a lot of demographics, but I turn and run from personally.
This reminds me of something important – Despite what we sometimes seem to think, CTR and performance metrics are not the only things that matter with internet marketing. I would not encourage advertising as aggressively as these examples suggest for any real business that also has a brand image to carry.
These examples work fine for throwaway domains in the affiliate industry for example.
In the case of Acquisio, while I know I may be able to get a slightly better conversion rate by building the typical long sales copy landing page, I would never do it because the perception of our brand would suffer.
What Marc, you don’t want to run ads for Acquisio search like
“Discover the Secrets that Google doesn’t want you to know about Adwords”
or
“All other PPC software is a Scam!”
or
“PPC Secrets Revealed – Guaranteed to Triple your Revenue!”
?
c’mon you know you want to click on those, even if they’re plain text
Yo Mama so Fat
when she steps on a scale,
it reads “one at a time, please
I clicked Yo Mama.
Hehe, I just dug up an old landing page for my Special Report, 21 Techniques to Increase Your ROI on Google AdWords Select, way back in 2002. Among other things, the headline said “Unleash Amazing Profits from Google AdWords Select!” (and yes it worked… but I wouldn’t do it now… I tell you a lot of people swiped these specific benefits, for their own copycat reports… aggressive worked then, but back then, no one had heard of AdWords… or me.)
http://web.archive.org/web/20020323014130/www.page-zero.com/products_asroi.asp
[excerpt]
[start laughing]
–
21 Techniques to Crank Up Your ROI on AdWords Select
Here’s what the report contains:
* Reveals the only methods of “beating” the AdWords Select system – tricks that Google wants you to figure out! Gives an explanation of one of the key methods used by the winners – the ability to achieve off-the-chart clickthrough rates – and why you need to learn about it to beat your competitors on the system.
* Explains what Google’s motivations are in designing their dynamic pricing model, and why they don’t care if some of you get ridiculously good deals on advertising. And how they’ve ensured that most advertisers don’t get bargain rates.
* How to zero in on the “dream scenario” that most advertisers are missing out on: search phrases with HIGH search volumes which will only cost you 5 cents, EVER, because no other advertiser knows what you know about how to get there and STAY there. Some key phrases – even high volume ones – are competition killers. If you can “own” just a few of these high volume winners, assuming your visitors convert well to sales, you can multiply your profits at a shocking rate. But you can’t win if you don’t play.
* The eight most powerful techniques for achieving sky-high clickthrough rates. With some effort, you can achieve 3-3.5% clickthrough rates for a sizeable number of key phrases. One of these eight principles explains why I’m currently pulling 7% clickthrough rates on a phrase no other advertiser can get a response from.
* The best four ways of lowering your average cost per click. Everyone can achieve dramatic reductions in their average cost per click on the AdWords Select system. The difference between an average cost per click of 20 cents, and an average cost of 50 cents, is precisely difference between life and death as an AdWords Select advertiser. The tricks I give you aren’t obvious, by the way. I’m not going to tell you things you could easily figure out for yourself.
* How to harmonize the four (sometimes conflicting) objectives that you and every advertiser on the system are facing. Knowing this formula is what will keep you going when others are forced to give up.
* Nine tactics for dramatically improving your return on investment (ROI) on your AdWords Select campaign.
* A handy way to benchmark whether your AdWords Select campaign is better value than other online advertising venues when measured by standards other than cost-per-click.
[/quit laughing]
Thanks for the article and all the comments! I will be posting this article as recommended reading to the students of my new Basic Web Marketing Strategies class at Dickinson Lifelong Learning Center.
Andrew G. I also appreciate your bringing up information from the past. It’s great to be able to demonstrate that the strategies change over time, and they need to not get into a rut!
I appreciate that you have included some basic tips and more advanced ones as well as links to additional information on each one of them. I have only recently found DKI and find that in most instances it increases my CTR. I have been to Red Fly, I will now go and read all the others.