How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords
How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords
One of the affiliate products I use myself and love to promote - Proposal Kit at http://www.proposalkit.com/kits/pkhelp.htm - 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 that of 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 replacement ad displayed a 4.3% CTR.
More motivated now, I studied the ads that had attracted the most clicks and created more ads 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 between seven and ten sales per week, up from two per week over the past six 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 PPC campaigns...
How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords - To learn more about this author, visit Kalena Jordan's Website.
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Like many people who run a business via the Internet, I use affiliate programs to supplement my income.
One of the affiliate products I use myself and love to promote - Proposal Kit at http://www.proposalkit.com/kits/pkhelp.htm - 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 that of 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 replacement ad displayed a 4.3% CTR.
More motivated now, I studied the ads that had attracted the most clicks and created more ads 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 between seven and ten sales per week, up from two per week over the past six 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 PPC campaigns...
How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords - To learn more about this author, visit Kalena Jordan's Website.
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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