PPC Search Copywriting Strategies, Part 2
Clickz
Testing is crucial....
"Always compare any new creative against current ads. Compare the CTR and watch for changes in conversion"
Try these ways to make ad copy more compelling:
"If you sell on price, put the price in the title.
Put the price in the description; lead with it if it's important.
Consider using a percentage off or a percentage savings message if you sell on price.
Add "free shipping," but make sure your free shipping doesn't have strings.
Use hot, power words that aren't superlatives, such as: "great," "save," "savings," "shop," "huge," "latest," "excellent," "selection," "low," "discount," "cheap," "choose," "now," "wholesale," "special," "on sale," "compare," "massive," "experienced," "specializing," "deals," "leading," "VIP," "outstanding," "rebate," "coupon," "wonderful," "search," "stunning," "fabulous" (this one works better on some demographics), "detailed," "easy," "guaranteed," and "quality.""
Contraversially after Geico case they suggest "Use brands in the copy if you carry them. If you're a brand, use that. A ton of money was spent building the brand. Use the brand equity to improve the copy"
Most useful is the link to
Adwords tips and examples by the Google Team.
Google Adwords - 50% increase in ROI
DMNews.com
"Advertisers participating in Google's contextual advertising network have seen a 50 percent increase in their return on investment in the past year, the company said yesterday. "
The figures from Googles free conversion tool were corroborated by Atlas DMT tracking.
Google attribute the increas "to the introduction in April of Smart Pricing, a Google technology that discounts the price per click for many content listings, and a drive by Google to improve ad targeting and quality for content listings."
Previously advertisers complained that "clicks on content listings converted at a much lower rate than search clicks"
At the SES trade show in Chicago Andrew "Goodman urged Google to give marketers more control over their advertising, including the ability to bid separately, use different creative and block publishers sending traffic that is not converting."
Generic Search Terms Drive Most Buying
Clickz
NB the statement is "according to Overture's director of strategic alliances, Diane Rinaldo" based on a research report "based on the buying activity of Internet users who conducted a consumer electronics or computing search on one of the top 25 search engines in the first quarter of 2004. It found that
the average online buying cycle is long, often over one month, with 85 percent of conversions categorized as "latent," or not resulting from a direct search session. Among conversions, 38 percent took place in weeks 5 to 12 of the buying cycle."
Interesting for the details about the buying cycle but the "search funnel" still seems to apply...
" broad search terms that do not include a manufacturer name account for 70 percent of total search volume, and 60 percent of all conversions. Of those consumers who converted on a trademark keyword, 91 percent did so after starting with a different term type. A full 80 percent started with a generic search term. Trademark searches, meanwhile, accounted for 20 percent of all online searches."
SEARCH ENGINE AD TERM PRICES SKYROCKET
Adage
"Holiday season competition among marketers to buy Internet search terms has become so fierce that some terms are selling for as much as $18.90 a single click, according to involved agencies...
Popular brand words marketers are paying premium prices for this year include "digital camera," "mobile phone," "MP3 player" and "iPod."
$18.90 per single click: Among seemingly similar terms, certain configurations can command a higher price. For instance, "Holiday business card" was fetching $18.90 per click; while "Business Christmas card" was priced at $10.50; "Corporate Christmas card," $10.50; "Holiday corporate card," $10.50; and "Company Christmas card," $7.51.
Search ad authorities point out that neither the price nor the action of search engine advertising is static. Advertisers don't know the true value of a phrase until they experiment with it live and their search ad agency checks the return on investment of bids constantly. The real-time nature of search advertising lets marketers modify their terms at any time -- and it has become common for rival retailers to jockey against each other with rapidly changing search term strategies."
Ave CPC Google
MediaDailyNews 12-10-04
"Marketers who purchased sponsored listings on Google paid an average of 54 cents per click in the third quarter, up from 53 cents in the second quarter, according to a new report by Majestic Research...The report also revealed that Google's average revenue per query in the third quarter was 9 cents -- which is five times higher than JupiterResearch's U.S. industry-wide estimate of 1.8 cents per query. JupiterResearch also pegs average cost per click at just 36 cents, for all U.S. paid search.
Other key Majestic findings included that half of all Google searches in the second quarter included at least one paid listings in the results, and users clicked on a paid link about one out of every three times they did a Google search...
Some key statistics from Majestic's report appeared Wednesday night on John Battelle's Searchblog. Goldstein said the company issued a more complete report to its paid subscribers last week in preparation for a private conference "
John Battelle's Searchblog: "Thanks to Seth Goldstein (his blog is a good readBTW), I get fresh research from his company Majestic, and it always has interesting stuff...
- 98 percent of GOOG revs are from paid search. 65% of revs are domestic.
- Q3 domestic growth driven by 7% quarter to quarter increase in paid introductions (paid clicks), to 964 million, and a 2% quarter to quarter increase in average price per click, to 5%.
- Average CPC: 54 cents, up a cent quarter to quarter.
- Revenue per query grew 8.3% quarter to quarter to nine cents. (That's right, every search we do on Google makes them nearly a dime, on average).
- Overall US searches grew 6% quarter to quarter, Google powered searches grew by .2%.
- In Q2, 51.9% of all searches on the Google Network included at least one paid listing.
- Of those, 32% include at least one paid introduction.
That's nearly 17% of all searches ending up with a click on a paid link. "
Google CFO sounds an alarm on click fraud
CNN/Money
"Google exec calls click fraud the 'biggest threat' to the Internet economy"
Krysten Crawford, staff writer reports that: Google Chief Financial Officer George Reyes said about click fraud "I think something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model"
Krysten writes that Google "are openly fretting about the rise of click fraud...The main perpetrators appear to be competitors of advertisers and also scam sites set up for the sole purpose of hosting ad links provided by Google, through its AdSense unit, or Yahoo!, through its Overture service. Humans or specially designed software then click on those ad links in order to "steal" revenue from advertisers."
Alchemist Media, estimated that as much as 20 percent of all clicks on paid search ads are shams.
According to regulatory filings leading up to its IPO this summer, Google has regularly paid refunds related to fraudulent clicks.
Although no solution was offered in Reyes speech Krysten further reports that "For the most part, search engines have been self-policing. They all claim to have in-house fraud detection teams and top-of-the-line technology that can detect miscreants.
Google last month filed its first civil lawsuit against a Texas-based Internet company, Auctions Expert International, that it said defrauded Google and advertisers by systematically clicking on ads."
Despite this Google are said to be "the most stubborn and the least willing to cooperate with advertisers" that complain about click fraud. She said the company is only now changing its tune because advertisers and recent media coverage have put pressure on the company to do more."
The article concludes that maybe the click fraud problem is far more serious a threat to online advertising than has previously been thought.
Cheaper to book hotels online
Travel Weekly
"Traditional travel agencies' average daily rate for electronic hotel bookings in the third quarter was 31.6% higher than hotel nights booked by consumers online, according to TravelClick, the technology marketing company.
According to TravelClick, rates booked by agents averaged $127.95 per night in GDSs and Pegasus Solutions versus about $97.77 for consumers through Internet bookings. The findings were based on TravelClick's third-quarter eMonitor report, which tracks electronic hotel bookings through the four GDSs and third-party Web sites powered by Pegasus Solutions....(also) found that
electronic hotel bookings worldwide through the GDSs and the Internet rose 4.7% in the third quarter as measured against the third quarter of 2003. The average daily rate in the quarter ending Sept. 30 increased 6% to $123.13, the report said."
Online advertising Spend Stats
Center for Media Research - Daily Brief
"Online advertising expenditures totaled $696.2 million for September 2004, the highest figure since April 2004... Online Ad spending is lower than the high for the year so far in January, it has remained steady at a very healthy $650+ Million per month."
Top 10 Advertiser Categories September 2004
Rank Category Est. Expenditures Impressions
1 Tech $181,406,100 14,602,000,000
2 Finance $89,730,650 7,020,786,000
3 Auto $64,027,400 6,975,806,000
4 Retail $61,747,100 5,688,070,000
5 Business $50,274,300 4,427,728,000
6 Travel $47,382,700 4,286,857,000
7 Home $33,821,500 1,923,517,000
8 Ents $32,463,700 2,258,371,000
9 Sport/Leisure $30,720,100 2,184,377,000
10 Health $28,052,400 2,775,364,000
PPC What is Worth Tracking
High Rankings Advisor: Jill Whalen calls upon "Ed Kohler the president of Haystack In A Needle again to answer the questions about tracking paid campaigns, especially conversions. "
The situation is that: "The client is currently very successful online (over $1 million/month in sales) and is relatively new to pay-per-click advertising. They're receiving over 7,000 visitors/month through PPC ads, at an average of $0.11 per click, but haven't tracked conversions yet. I've proposed using the free conversion tracking tools provided through Overture and Google, but my client's IT staff balked at the idea and provided some WebTrends reports tracking the top-10 pathways of each ad, which didn't show any sales or even visits to the shopping cart."
Ed sums up thus "It sounds like your biggest challenge is dealing with a client who is asking for performance information that their own IT department fails to provide. Your client appears to be at a point where they're seeing some great results online, but want some reinforcement to help justify the money they're spending on pay-per-click advertising...
In situations like this, it's important to educate the client about what kind of information is (or should be) available to them. Once they realize that they should know how much money they're making on their PPC advertising investment, there is no turning back"
In answer he begins: "While there is virtually no limit to what you can track in a pay-per-click campaign, there are a handful of reports that are almost always must-haves. Here's a quick summary of a few popular reportsthat will give you and your client actionable data:
Pay-per-click Reporting Wish List:
1. Return on Ad Spend - Take the revenue the client's site generates divided by the PPC ad spend over a given timeframe to get a feel for
whether you're profiting from your campaign.
2. Cost per Conversion - How much are you spending to generate a sale, lead, contact, or subscribe?
1 and 2 will likely cover the reporting needs of most clients. However, you'll probably need more information to manage their campaigns. Here are a few more must-have reports for PPC marketers:
3. Revenue Report - How much money are you making per ad?
4. Search Term Conversions - How much money are you making per search term from PPC and organic searches? Take phrases that
convert like crazy through natural results and add them to your PPC campaigns to bring in even more of that high-quality traffic.
(NB This assumes that organic results have been tracked..)
5. Bounce Report - Measure what ads are generating a lot of back-button clicks. This is a good way to identify under-performing search terms.
6. 404 Error Report - Nothing kills a PPC campaign's performance faster than driving traffic to pages that no longer exist. In the case of online stores, this can happen when products go out of stock, are discontinued, or are moved to a different category. A 404 report will help you identify the changes the IT department forgot to tell you about.
Some of this data can be tracked using Overture's and Google's free tools. However, reports such as #2 are not available through O's
& G's free tools, yet are fairly critical to running a professional PPC campaign.
If you think you have a problem with click fraud he recommends picking up a subscription to WhosClickingWho
to get a third-party opinion on your client's traffic.
Overture vs. Google AdWords
Plus The Secret Powers Of Search - High Rankings Advisor
The article by Ed Kohler of Haystack In A Needle breaks down some of the major differences below and identifies variable which can cause differences in performance between campaigns on Overture vs. Google AdWords.
In summary:
1. Geotargeting: If your AdWords campaign's location targeting is set wide open, you may be paying for traffic with a very low chance of converting to leads.
2. Language Targeting: Overture defaulst displays ads almost entirely to an English-speaking audience. AdWords account can be set to display ads to a broader audience - tighten settings to improve conversion..
3. Ad Syndication: What percentage of your traffic is coming through content targeting compared to search engines on AdWords? While clicks from content-targeted ads can and do convert to leads or sales, a person clicking through from an ad on a web site is not
as qualified as a person who is actively searching for the services or products your business offers... this varies considerably from one industry to another. Advises: Consider turning off content targeting for a test period or comparing your conversions rates from search- vs. content-targeted ads.
4. Matching Variance: Google and Overture use various matching options. Different results are most prominent with exact and broad matching, where AdWords' broad matching is a bit broader and exact matching is more exact.
-
Exact Matching: For example, if you exact-match a phrase on Google (put the phrases in [brackets]), your ad will only show to searchers typing that exact phrase into a search engine. However, Overture's version of exact matching (their default style of matching) will also match your term to phrases beyond the exact match using their Match Driver feature. This includes matching your ad to common misspellings, plural and singular versions of the term, and the use of the term in conjunction with common words like "the" and "of." Also, Overture's "enhanced matching" feature will match your ads to terms where the searcher's words appear in your title and description but weren't necessarily bid on by you.
If you did your keyword research using Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool (which rolls up the plural and singular terms into the singular version), then used that set of phrases to set up your Google Adwords account, you may have inadvertently skipped some of the better plural
version converting versions of your important search phrases.
- Broad Match Variance: Overture's broad matching matches the individual words in a search phrase to searches
containing all of the words in any order and anywhere within the searcher's given search phrase. For example, a broad-matched ad on the
term "LED lighting" could appear when someone searches for "lighting for my home LED lights."
AdWords will provide the same match as Overture does in the above example, but will go a step further with their expanded matching
feature. Expanded matching will cause your ad to also display on terms
Google considers to be synonyms, related phrases, and plurals. He suggests tightening up your Google campaign by using phrase and exact matches. To keep some terms wide open, consider only doing so with search phrases containing at least three words to prevent your ads from being overly matched.
With both Overture and Google, if you're using anything other than exact matching, it's important to include negative keywords (Google's term; Overture calls them Excluded Words) to prevent your ads from matching on irrelevant or poorly converting terms.
5. Competitive Bid Influence: Google's choice to use broad matching as the default matching option (listing your search phrases without "quotes" or [brackets]) has caused frustration for newbies, but has also had a painful effect on experienced pay-per-click advertisers. While you may have worked hard to research hundreds or even thousands of redundant search phrases relevant to your web site, newbies may be setting up new campaigns where they've inadvertently broad-matched themselves into competition with your ads. This can drive up your per-click cost on some terms where you may have little to no competition on Overture. Not much can be done about this, but it's something worth noting.
6. Landing Page Choices. Overture's system forces you to create a specific ad for each search phrase you place in their system. By default, this often leads to higher ad quality because advertisers are more likely to write unique ads for each search term. It also
increases the odds of advertisers to send visitors to the most appropriate landing page on their site for specific keywords. There are two ways to address this in AdWords. Create additional Ad Groups with a tighter grouping of search phrases, or assign unique URLs at the search-phrase level. A combination of both strategies will provide the highest performance along with the most detailed tracking data for stats analysis.
Everything You Need To Know About PPC Search Engines
Pay Per Click Universe : "Pay Per Click Universe is a free resource dedicated to provide unbiased information to the small-to-medium sized business owner interested in exploring the world of pay per click advertising (PPC). Our aim is to show you how best to invest in this rapidly growing, extremely effective, yet highly competitive market easily and with a very low initial investment."
> free resources
> assistance to new and experienced PPC advertisers
> original articles
> interviews with experts
> reviews of various pay-per-click search engine and related tools
> weekly blog written by PPC veteran, Boris Mordkovich
