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How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords

Written by: Kalena Jordan

Article Overview: Learn how a few thoughtful tweaks to your ad copy can make a HUGE difference to your bottom line.

How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords

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...

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Article Tags: business proposal, campaign, CTR, Google AdWords, Nick Usborne, Proposal Kit, Proposal Kit



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Re: That First Customer! - Hey Tristan, I felt the same way too with my businesses in the past. Getting the first customer is always the hardest. One day I used a free $100 Google AdWords coupon and got one visitor to buy my e-book. It was one of the best feelings. My advice is to keep going and change your approach to improve your service or website. Once you break through, the journey will become a lot easier.
Re: Google Chrome is not faster than firefox 3.1 - Just a quick update here for Beat, To copy your bookmarks (and history, passwords etc if you want) from IE to Firefox: Open Firefox, Click File (top left of browser) Click Import Select IE Click Next follow the instructions provided, hope this helps, Carol
AdWords - The way I understand it - with AdWords, the price depends on which keyword you choose. Some keywords are really cheap because they aren't in demand, while others are much higher because they are in demand. If you have 2 people that want one keyword, but 200 that want another -- the 200 are going to pay higher prices. I've only looked at it a little, but I have a Google account where I get paid if people click on ads and the amounts vary drastically. Chris
Re: Kevin's Case Study #7 - How do you promote your new book? - [quote="orxan":kako3o5q]Hi Kevin, Normal conversion rate is 2% for me. High conversion rate can be 5-6% or more probably. But if you use Google Adwords techniques properly and have the good sales letter, then it can be 25-30% or more. It depends on books too. If it is exciting and shocking book with great sales letter then it will determine the rate of conversion, too. Orxan[/quote:kako3o5q] Hi Orxan, What are some Google AdWords techniques you can share with us that generate 25-30% conversion rates? Thanks
Using Google Adwords - Can't you do the same thing in AdWords for $.05 and get more targeted keywords?


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