Adwords Tip - Achieving high CTR

I've just been experimenting with my Adwords account and figured out a way to get high CTRs. It's quite simple, really.

Most of you guys must have websites that target specific markets and most people can bring it down to around 20-50 main target keyphrases. The trick is to create copies of your ads and have different ads running for small batches (or even single keywords).

Ex: If you have a site selling widgets, don't create one ad that has a generic heading like "The best widgets" linked to 50 keyphrases.

Instead, create different ad groups for different keywords: Ex: Ad with the heading "Red widgets" for keyphrase "Red widgets", ad with the heading "green widgets" for keyphrase "green widgets", ad with the heading "small widgets" for keyphrase "small widgets" and so on. So, when somebody searches for "red widgets", they see an ad that has the same heading as the keyphrase that they have searched for. They will be quite likely to click on the link if this happens. It might take a while to set this up, but believe me ..... you will love the results.

I have been trying this technique with a website for around 15 targeted keyphrases (total) and we have been able to achieve CTRs of over 20% for some of the keywords!

 

Using exact matching - [] - also helps focus impressions to the exact searchers you wish to target. This is a decent thread explaining how the broad, phrase and exact matches affect the impressions for an ad:

Can I get your opinion on "" -vs- []

 

Yes, you are right about targeting your AdWords, but AdWords (or any PPC marketing effrot), your click-through rate is MUCH less important than your conversion rate.

And the reall kicker is you CPA - cost per action.

So if you have a 20% click through rate and a 10% conversion rate and are paying 10 cents a click, that means your Cost Per Action CPA is 1$ (10 clicks at 10 cents = 1$ to get 1 sale). If you make more than a dollar on what you just sold, you are in good shape.

The above is a pretty much a best case scenarios. For competetive keywords, teh click cost is much higher than 10 cents, and a 10% conversion rate is very high as well. From what I've seen, most conversion rates hover around 1-3 percent.

If you have a 1 percent conversion rate, your CPA above would be 10$. Big difference.

Depending on the industry and the potential for downstream sales, I've seen companies target as much as a 50$ CPA..... not bad if you are selling big screen TVs, but not good if you are selling blankets (unless they are VERY expensive blankets!).

 

True! I was reading about Amazon's Customer acquisition cost (or CPA) being around USD48.00 at some stage. A lot of companies during the dot com boom were paying much more! Amazing, eh?

I agree with the conversion rates: 1-2% is quite common (even good) for a lot of industries. But remember, you need leads to convert to sales in the first place. And, a high CTR means more leads!

 

It might also mean fewer overall leads, but more targeted ones (hopefully leading to a higher conversion rate).

 

also, the CPA doesn't include future sales. Although $10.00 (or whatever cost it ends up being) might be high, if you get the customer and keep the customer, you are in good shape. If you can get three more deals out of this customer, your CPA drops to $2.50 per deal.

 

That's solid advice, dfsweb.

Negative keywords and phrase matching are the most important options for me.

Exact match just doesn't give me the exposure I need. I think out of 3,200 keywords(phrases) I have less than five set up for exact matching.

I have about 75:1 negative to regular (positive) keywords.

 

Crazy Rob
how do you go about dealing negative keywords, I never tried this.. can u give me an example

 

Add a hyphen in front of it:

-free
-inexpensive
-cheap

etc.

 

Yeah, just use a hyphen.

Pour through your logs to find terms you don't want to pay for. Overture's and Google's keyword tools are also helpful in finding negativos.

 

Does AdWords work pretty well??

 

Obviously it's been a pretty successful program for many compainies. It's just like anything else though- it's not necessarily for everyone.

My advice would be to learn as much about the program as possible and then try it out.

 

Rob's right. It'll work for people who make their money selling stuff online, or through affiliate programmes, or who are promoting their business online. Simply put, you need to make more money through the extra traffic than you spend getting that traffic.

Do some simple calculations:
Payment per click = 10 cents (Change this for your site)
So, cost for 100 clicks - $10
Your website's conversion = 2% (Percentage of visitors that end up buying)
So, Cost to acquire new customer = $10 / 2 (Cost for 100 clks/conv.) = $5

So, your cost for acquiring one sale is $5.

Now, you have two options:

1. Go for this option if you make a "profit" of $5 a sale. This makes sure that you break even and hopefully, some of these customers will come back for repeat business
2. Or, you could use Adwords (or any other programme you evaluate) if you make a "profit" of at least $15 a sale. This is the option I would recommend, as IMO you need a positive cashflow to run your business and you need to make sure that all marketing options you select provide an R.O.I of at least 300%.

 

Adwords blows. Overture is better.

With adwords you have punks click on your ads and drive up your budget. Overture has better fraud protection and better refund policies incase of fraud. Also, overture converts better.