Google Hacks 2Nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 81. Get the Most out of AdWords

Guest commentary by Andrew Goodman of Traffick
on how to write great AdWords .

AdWords (

click-through rates (CTRs) save you
money, so that should be one of your main goals as an AdWords Select
advertiser. Google has set up the keyword bidding system to reward
high-CTR advertisers. Why? It's simple. If 2 ads are
each shown 100 times, the ad that is clicked on 8 times generates
revenue for Google twice as often as the ad that is clicked on 4
times over the same stretch of 100 search queries served. So if your
CTR is 4% and your competitor's is only 2%, Google
factors this into your bid. Your bid is calculated as if it were
"worth" twice as much as your
competitor's bid.

Very low CTRs are bad. Google disables keywords that fall below a
minimum CTR threshold ("0.5% normalized to ad
position," which is to say, 0.5% for position 1, and
a more forgiving threshold for ads as they fall further down the
page). Entire campaigns will be gradually disabled if they fall below
0.5% CTR on the whole.

Editorial disapprovals are a fact of life in this venue. Your ad copy
or keyword selections may violate Google's editorial
guidelines from time to time. Again, it's very
difficult to run a successful campaign when large parts of it are
disabled. You need to treat this as a normal part of the process
rather than giving up or getting flustered.

The AdWords Select system is set up like an
advertising laboratory; that is to say, it makes experimenting with
keyword variations and small variations in ad copy a snap. No guru
can prejudge for you what will be your "magical ad
copy secrets," and it would be irresponsible to do
so, because Google offers such detailed real-time reporting that can
tell you very quickly what does and does not catch
people's attention.

Now on to four tips to get those CTRs up and to keep your campaign
from straying out of bounds.

7.4.1. Matching Can Make a Dramatic Difference

You'll likely want to organize your
campaign's keywords and phrases into several
distinct ad
groups

(made easy by Google's
interface). This will help you more closely match keywords to the
actual words that appear in the title of your ad. Writing slightly
different ads to closely correspond to the words in each group of
keywords that you've put together is a great way to
improve your click-through rates. You'd think that
an ad title (say, "Deluxe Topsoil in
Bulk") would match equally well to a range of
keywords that mean essentially the same thing. That is,
you'd think this ad title would create about the
same CTR with the phrase "bulk
topsoil" as it would with a similar phrase (e.g.,
"fancy dirt wholesaler"). Not so.
Exact matches tend to get significantly higher CTRs. Being diligent
about matching your keywords reasonably closely to your ad titles
will help you outperform your less diligent competition.

If you have several specific product lines, you should consider
better matching different groups of key phrases to an ad written
expressly for each product line. If your clients like your store
because you offer certain specialized wine varieties, for example,
have an ad group with "ice wine"
and related keywords in it, with "ice
wine" in the ad title. Don't expect
the same generic ad to cover all your varieties. Someone searching
for an "ice wine" expert will be
thrilled to find a retailer who specializes in this area. They
probably won't click on or buy from a retailer who
just talks about wine in general. Search engine users are passionate
about particulars, and their queries are highly granular. Take
advantage of this passion and granularity.

The other benefit of getting more granular and matching keywords to
ad copy is that you don't pay for clicks from
unqualified buyers, so your sales conversion rate is likely to be
much higher.

7.4.2. Copywriting Tweaks Generally Improve Clarity and Directness

By and large, I don't run across major

copywriting secrets.
Psychological tricks to entice more people to click, after all, may
wind up attracting unqualified buyers. But there are times when the
text of an ad falls outside the zone of "what works
reasonably well." In such cases, excessively low
CTRs kill any chance your web site might have had to close the sale.

Consider using the Goldilocks method to diagnose poor-performing ads.
Many ads lean too far to the "too
cold" side of the equation. Overly technical jargon
may be unintelligible and uninteresting even to specialists,
especially given that this is still an emotional medium and that
people are looking at search results first and glancing at ad results
as a second thought.

The following example is too cold:

Faster DWMGT Apps
Build GMUI modules 3X more secure than KLT. V. 2.0 rated as
"best pligtonferg" by WRSS Mag.

No one clicks. Campaign limps along. Web site remains
world's best-kept secret.

So then a hotshot (the owner's nephew) grabs the
reins and tries to put some juice into this thing. Unfortunately,
this new creative genius has been awake for the better part of a
week, attending raves, placing second in a snowboarding competition,
and tending to his various piercings. His agency work for a major
Fortune 500 client's television spots once received
rave reviews. Of course, those were rave reviews from industry
pundits and his best friends, because the actual ROI on the big
client's TV branding campaign was untrackable.

The hotshot's copy reads:

Reemar's App Kicks!
Reemar ProblemSolver 2.0 is the real slim shady. Don't trust
your Corporate security to the drones at BigCorp.

Unfortunately, in a nonvisual medium with only a few words to work
with, the true genius of this ad is never fully appreciated. Viewers
don't click and may be offended by the ad and
annoyed with Google.

The simple solution is something unglamorous but clear, such as:

Easy & Powerful Firewall
Reemar ProblemSolver 2.0 outperforms BigCorp
Exacerbator 3 to 1 in industry tests.

You can't say it all in a short ad. This gets enough
specific (and true) info out there to be of interest to the target
audience. Once they click, there will be more than enough info on
your web site. In short, your ads should be clear.
How's that for a major copywriting revelation?

The nice thing is, if you're bent on finding out for
yourself, you can test the performance of all three styles quickly
and cheaply, so you don't have to spend all week
agonizing about this.

7.4.3. Be Inquisitive and Proactive with Editorial Policies (But Don't Whine)

Reply to the editorial disapproval messages (they generally come from

7.4.4. Avoid the Trap of "Insider Thinking" and Pursue the Advantage of Granular Thinking

Using lists of specialized keywords will likely help you to reach
interested consumers at a lower cost per click and convert more sales
than using more general industry keywords. Running your ad on
keywords from specialized vocabularies is a sound strategy.

A less successful strategy, though, is to get lost in your own highly
specialized social stratum when considering how to pitch your
company. Remember that this medium revolves around consumer search
engine behavior. You won't win new customers by
generating a list of different ways of stating terminology that only
management, competitors, or partners might actually use, unless your
ad campaign is just being run for vanity's sake.

Break things down into granular pieces and use industry jargon where
it might attract a target consumer, but when you find yourself
listing phrases that only your competitors might know or buzzwords
that came up at the last interminable management meeting, stop!
You've started down the path of insider thinking! By
doing so, you may have forgotten about the customer and about the
role market research must play in this type of campaign.

It sounds simple to say it, but in your AdWords Select keyword
selection, you aren't describing your business.
You're trying to use phrases that consumers would
use when trying to describe a problem they're
having, a specific item they're searching for, or a
topic that they're interested in. Mission statements
from above versus what customers and prospects actually type into
search engines. Big difference. (At this point, if you
haven't yet done so, you'd better
go back and read over The Cluetrain Manifesto to
get yourself right out of this top-down mode of thinking.) One way to find out about what consumers are looking for is to use

Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) or other keyword
research tools (such as the one that Google offers as part of the
AdWords Select interface, a keyword research tool that Google
promises it's working on). However, these tools are
not in themselves enough for every business; because more businesses
are using these

keyphrase search frequency
reports, the frequently searched terms eventually become picked over
by competing advertisersjust what you want to avoid if
you're trying to sneak along with good response
rates at a low cost per click.

You'll need to brainstorm as well. In the future,
there will be more sophisticated software-driven market research
available in this area. Search technology companies such as Ask
Jeeves Enterprise Solutions are already collecting data about the
hundreds of thousands of customer questions typed into the search
boxes on major corporate sites, for example. This kind of market
research is under-used by the vast majority of companies today.

There are currently many low-cost opportunities for pay-per-click
advertisers. As more and larger advertisers enter the space, prices
will rise, but with a bit of creativity, granular thinking, and
diligent testing, the smaller advertiser will always have a fighting
chance on AdWords Select. Good luck!

Andrew Goodman