Most folks who professionally manage Pay-Per-Click campaigns know the fundamentals of how to achieve an optimum CTR:
1) Place the keyword(s) in the ad title.
2) If possible, place the keyword(s) again in the body of the ad.
3) Create multiple variations of each ad and rigorously test until you arrive at your optimum ad choice/choices.
But, what if youve done that already and your results are still less than they should be Do you just give up and accept substandard results
I have a mutual fund PPC client (AdWords onlyContextual Ads Enabled). I keep him at or near top bidder status for each of his campaigns. The CTR for keywords in his particular niche was excellent, but he also wanted to get PPC traffic from people doing more generalized mutual fund searches. Despite following PPC Best Practices, his more generalized campaign CTR was less than I believed it should be.
In our last meeting, he happened to mention that the company got a very positive write-up in Fortune Magazine. A few days later, it dawned on me that name dropping the Fortune Article could lead to a much higher CTR series of ads. So, I created some
The former ads were:
Keyword Mutual Fund
Learn More About (Client Names)
Keyword Mutual Fund
www.clientname.com
The new ads are:
Keyword Mutual Fund
(Client Name) Keyword Fund Featured
In February Issue of Fortune Magazine
www.clientname.com
The rise in CTR was immediate and outstanding. Two weeks after the ads launched, I formally presented the results to the client. For the clients International Mutual Fund Campaign, the new ads had a CTR of 1.2% compared to .4% for the old ads. For the clients Global Mutual Fund Campaign, the new ads had a CTR of .4% compared to .1% for the old ads. For the clients Environmental Mutual Fund Campaign, the new ads had a CTR of 3.9% compared to .9% for the old ads. The client was extremely impressed with the exponential increase in trafficand his CPC even went down slightly during this time period.
The lesson to be learned is this: By legitimately creating a nexus between your company and an industry authority (like Fortune) and writing that authority into your PPC ads, you have the potential for a very noticeable CTR increase.
If you professionally manage PPC campaigns, ask your clients about any noticeable recent PR/media attention they might have received. Perhaps, theyve already made mention of it on their website. Not every bit of PR can turn into a high-performing PPC ad, but if the PR came from a source well known and respected by the clients prospect base, it behooves you to test a PPC ad based upon that exposure.
If you manage your own campaign, you can establish credibility with your audience by creating ads that legitimately link your business to an industry authority. If 10 firms are trying to sell the same widgets through PPC, prospects are more likely to click on your ad if you mention that your widgets were featured in Widget Magazine (the Widget Authority Source for the Widget Industry). You will distinguish yourself from your competitors and reap the benefits of doing so.
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Do you use Adsense to monetize any of your websites
Do you use Adwords to buy in visitors to any of your websites
Have you considered combining the two and sending Adwords traffic to your site featuring Adsense AdsThere are huge profits currently being made by enterprising site owners who are buying low cost keywords and sending the traffic to high paying Adsense ads.
Sounds simple doesnt it It is and believe me it works.
The problem is it can be a real balancing act if you go about this the wrong way. You can loose serious money or just scrape a marginal profit.
First of all you need to find a niche market, stay clear of the Internet Marketing arena theres just too much competition there. Instead look into day to day niche markets. But before you do this you need to consider your target keyword. For best results you need a high bid keyword, that is a keyword that Adwords advertisers are willing to pay a lot for per click.
You can find these for free over on the Overture bid tool. Most bids displayed there are likely to amount to much more on Adwords. For a more accurate bid pricing you can use one of the numerous paid for services that have sprung up across the Net this year. These services analyse thousands of keywords, there bid price, the number of advertisers bidding, the number of searches for that keyword and some of the better services will even report the ad clicks you can expect per day.
One of the better paid for services I came across you can find here www.cashkeywords.com (non affiliate link). They run a list which is constantly being updated and added to. So you will always have a regular fresh source of keywords to target. Currently they stand at around 133,000 keywords.
Next you need to set up a page focused on your chosen keyword. You could buy a domain name for this or simply add the page to one of your existing sites. Grab some free content focused on your chosen keyword in the form of an article from any of the major article directories(www.ezinearticle.com) and add it to your page.
You should also be sure to title the page with your chosen keyword. Adding a related graphic will also help. What youre trying to do here is instil a little confidence in the visitor and avoid having your page look like one of those spammy Adsense sites that crop up all over the place. Visitors will simply click away if you dont put a little effort into your page. You will still get some clicks but you can get so many more with a little effort.
Next place your Adsense ads in a number of spots on the page. You will need to test this to see which positions perform best. The prime spot according to Google is directly within the content of the page. Beyond that a good starting point would be across the top, the bottom and down the left side of your content. Essentially where the navigation appears traditionally.
Once youve got this set up start work on your Adwords campaign. Create your own list of targeted keywords, obviously Id recommend PPC Accelerator for that. ;) Now here you dont need to worry about using high paying keywords in your own list because you will be setting your daily budget at just 5-10c. This will guarantee you dont appear on the first page for those high paying keywords. Instead you are focusing here on related keywords that you can pick up cheaply. Refer back to the issue on keyword list building for keyword avenues you can explore.
Before you run your campaign go into Edit settings and uncheck all the boxes under Network except Google search. This will ensure your ad appears only on Google itself, with the most proactive visitors. If this turns out to be a money making campaign you can go back into Edit settings and switch those options back on.
Finally set your daily budget low and run your campaign.
As you are probably aware neither Adwords or Adsense report stats in real-time so you will have to sit back for an hour or so before any results come in. Be sure to monitor this campaign regularly to weigh up whether your income from Adsense is covering your outgoings on Adwords.
As with any campaign there are a number of factors to take into account when it comes to click through rate. Chief among these Ive found to be the day and the time of day. Some campaigns work better during the week during office hours others bring better results at the weekend.
If youre making a small profit then it may be worth tweaking your set up. If your profit is on a tightrope or youre loosing money then it may be better to move on to a different keyword.
Once you have a winning campaign start again, find another high paying keyword etc. etc.
Thats it, if you take action now youll be in for a nice bonus come January. Im sure that will help you to recover from the Xmas splurge. :)
Darren Yates is an Adwords Professional and currently giving away his Pay Per Click Advertising Mini Course FREE.