The niche and keywords I'm working on have been giving me about 5-10% CTR for the week or so, but I haven't had a single sale in almost 2 weeks. Maybe I was just lucky in the beginning, but I got my first sale by the second day, and another sale the day after the next, and then another sale the day after the next. Well that was kind of a while ago, and while my CTR has only been going up, and I'm more than sure I'm relevant to what the people are looking for, but I haven't had any sales during this time... I can't tell whether I've been unlucky for the past 2 weeks or what, but I've been getting about 20 clicks a day to no avail. Should I drop or keep going? If I hadn't use a 50 dollar voucher in the beginning, I'd be in the red zone right now.. On the other hand, I've started some SEOing. Does linking the PPC adds to articles that you write, instead of directly to the product page help out in anyway in your guys' experience?
Many of your customers do not want to buy. So what you must do is put "buy now" in your ad. Then, everyone who clicks on your ad will have the desire to buy and you will get more sales. If you want even higher conversions, you must also put the price in the ad. Then you will only get buyers who can afford your product. Also Guaranteed. For example: Exact key phrase Guaranteed bla bla for $14.95 Bla bla bla bla. Buy NOW... Hope this helps.
I don't know about putting "buy now" in your ad but I disagree about putting the price in most cases. You mention linking to articles. If you want to sell, link to your sales page directly. Give them what they were looking for right away. That sales page has to be good too. You don't say if you tried different ads. Did your CTR go up because you tried other ads or it simply occurred naturally? Ad can have some effect on your conversion rate. If you tried different ads, sometimes an ad gets great CTR but converts less well. You may have something in the ad that attract them but that they don't see on your page. It could all be natural. If you get a 2% conversion rate one week, it doesn't mean you will every week. You proved you can get traffic and that it potentially can convert. I say don't give up and optimize further: keywords, ads and landing page.
Here it is some recommendations from Google for Adwords's user. Hope you can improve your ads to get more conversions.
After 2 weeks, I've finally made another sale And yes, I use many of the techniques you guys told me after studying up on how everyone else does it, even though I haven't really tried the call to action that much because I thought attractive details>call to action, but I will give it a try soon. I think my weakest point at the moment, is that I simply need to learn to experiment more. Even if I am getting pretty high CTR... conversions are by far more important >_> @Lucid - "I don't know about putting "buy now" in your ad but I disagree about putting the price in most cases." Why do you disagree? From what I've read, putting the prices may lower your CTR but will increase your conversion since the clicker will know the price of what he's dealing with. Of course if you're selling something that is less affiliated with the price, like a product that pertains to a disorder that someone wants to cure no matter the price, then it doesn't matter... But usually, from what I heard anyway, it's helpful in most cases. - How exactly do you set up conversion tracking on your adwords? I know you have to get a code from the vendor or something, but I'm sincerely lost after that haha
> Why do you disagree? The idea is for them to read your sales pitch. That's why the price is always mentioned last. You want them to decide on the product's merits. Then you make your offer. The price in the ad defeats the purpose of getting them to your site and read your message. Price isn't everything and you assume prospects decide on price even before knowing the details. What if others show lower prices in their ads? And if you lower your CTR, you lower your quality which increases your click cost. There are always exceptions of course. I have one client where the ads with a price do better. Adwords has conversion tracking. You simply put the code on your confirmation page. Of course if you're an affiliate, that's a problem in which case you'd need a third-party solution which is not as good. You want to track conversion down to the keyword level, including the match type and the ad.
I see your reasoning, I will take that into mind, thank you. So.. since I AM an affiliate, are there any other ways to track them? Even to the keyword level/match type/ad/etc?
It's good to mention a price, if your price beats your competitors. It's also good to mention a price, if you are looking to drive down the 'happy clickers'. It's all down to testing. Maybe have Ad A include the price and Ad B leave the price out - then see which performs best. Another thing to keep in mind and that is don't treat CTR as a major factor when determining whether an Ad is working, as it isn't. If ad A has a low CTR compared to Ad B, but Ad A has better conversions and Return Of Investment (ROI), then Ad A is the one to keep, it's as simple as that. Many people, especially newbies, get hungup on their CTR and they shouldn't - unless neither Ad is getting any clicks at all. Then both Ads may need scrapping or the bid upped.
Hi Guys, Some of you have great suggestions like testing Price, Buy Now, etc ads; that would surely help but lets not forget the actual keywords that converted first time around. The best way to optimize Conversion that worked for me is to move converting ads and keyword combinations in a new group in the same campaign, then pause those keywords in the original group; in addition to testing variations. Download the Ad Performance and Keyboard Query reports with Conversion columns enabled during your Converting date ranges to help you identify working keywords/ad combinations. This way you improve both your CTR and Conversion Ratio at the same time. Another component is your geographic reach; depending on the service(s) you offer. For example, some of my larger accounts want to target higher income areas while some of my other accounts prefer to target lower income areas. - Use your Geographic Report during your converting periods to help you better allocate where you want to and more importantly where you DON’T want to target. If City A and B got 500 Clicks with 3 conversions/week and City C and D got 100 Clicks with 5 conversions/week, you bet I’m going to make a new Campaign targeting only City C and D; because C and D has more than 8 Times the conversion rate! (Logistically speaking, when city C and D gets 500 clicks, it would have had 25 Conversions.) The last component to optimizing Conversion and CTR is POSITIONS. I like to use Manual placement preference on most of my campaigns because it gives you the ability to limit how and where your ad shows up. When you download your Keyword Query and Ad Performance keyword reports (during your converting periods) keep an eye on POSITION when Conversions Occurred. If you notice a trend of Ad position 2,3,4 converted 6 over 300 clicks times but position 5,6,7 converted 9 times over 100 clicks, then on your new campaign targeted with city C D and working Converting Keyword Ad Combinations you would manually place just those keywords from your keyword/ad position report and force them into 5,6,7 spot positions. Lastly, review the Date conversions occurred for Keywords and Ads. On reports you can segregate Day or week view or day of month view. Pivit DAY of the week and compare that against Conversion/rate/clicks to asertain which days work best. Secondly, keep an eye out for “Daily Budget Met†days. Typically If “Daily Budget is Met†on most days but had higher conv rate, then conversions likely happened during early hours (like 12:00am to 3M) If your rate is low when Daily Budget Met days, you need to adjust your bids as follows: 12n-3pm 50% 3pm-12m 100% Lastly look at your DAYS of the Week that converted, If Mondays got 4 conversion and 100 clicks but Tuesdays got 6 conversion and 300 clicks, I’d put more money on MONDAY and less Money on Tuesday since Monday has 2 times the historical conversion rate. So I’d se it up as follows Monday: 120% Tuesday: 70% Not only does this method works for me every single time, but my QS improved significantly, usually from 4/10 to 7/10 or better. The more historical data you got the better you can methodically apply these methods; Also this process takes weeks or months to optimize, I’d say 2 to 3 months is a good benchmark to get it on ‘auto pilot’. In short, you could effectively go from 1%ctr/10%conv to 5%ctr/50%conv I hope that helps -miekoo