Have you Optimized Your Paid Search Campaign Lately?
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You may have optimized your website for the search engines, but what about the ads you run on them? While many of the principles are similar, profit-producing ad optimization requires some special preparation. Keep reading to find out what you need to do to encourage your visitors, keep track of your campaign, and more.
If you’re running a paid search, e.g., pay-per-click (PPC), campaign on Google or Overture, it’s important to understand that there’s more to campaign optimization than just bid management. A PPC campaign should be associated with a marketing strategy complete with actionable tactics, just like any marketing campaign. The following steps are intended to help you get the most out of your pay per click campaign and minimize “click-waste” – a brand new buzzword I just came up with which implies you are paying for clicks that don’t turn into leads or sales.
Optimize Your Ad Copy
Advertisers are drawn to PPC advertising because it is fast and easy to launch a campaign, and it is often very affordable compared to other forms of advertising. However, it is important to resist the temptation to quickly launch a campaign using one ad for multiple keywords. Ads are much more likely to draw in relevant, conversion-minded visitors if they restate the keyword in both the title and description. This takes some creative copywriting and is often impossible with Google ads due to strict character limitations. Nevertheless, most advertisers can get their keyword in either the title or description section of a Google ad and customize the ad enough so that it is a close match to the actual search term. Here is an example of a Google ad which is customized for two different keywords that could be running in the same campaign.
Keyword: blue widgets
High Quality Blue Widgets
Huge selection of blue widgets
in stock. Low-price guarantee.
Keyword: green glass widgets
Green glass widgets
Twelve shades of green glass plus
Guaranteed low prices. Widgetmania.
Both ads restate the keyword in the title. The second ad sacrifices the word “widgets” in favor of the main selling point (twelve shades of green). Each ad is clearly relevant to the search term in question and leaves room to pull the visitor in by touting the site’s low-price guarantee. There are really two incentives in both of these ads – the huge selection and the low price guarantee.
Differentiate your ad as much as possible from other ads that show up on the same search results page as you. Chances are if there are five ads that feature some sort of low price guarantee, but you are the only one with twelve shades of green glass, you’re the one people are going to click on. Ad copy should be refreshed at least monthly unless it is getting a consistently phenomenal clickthrough rate (CTR) – generally three percent or higher. It’s easy to experiment with Google, but Overture is a bit trickier since it can take 3-5 days for new ad copy to be approved and added to circulation.
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