Marketing Insight – How to Double your Response in Google Adwords

admin    Google     Adwords, Double, Google, insight, Marketing, Response

The #1 mistake that costs online advertisers thousands

95% of advertisers make this mistake. As discusses in my other article titled “How Google evaluates Your Adwords Campaign”, Google works very differently from other search engines concerning pay per click campaigns.

So what’s the #1 mistake that costs the average advertiser thousands? The answer is encompassed in two simple words – “Content Network”. Google will probably never tell you this because they make too much money from unknowing novices spending more than needed, being unaware of their “Content Network”.

When setting up any pay per click campaign in Google (Google Adwords), there are three main areas in which you can display your ad:

• Google Search

• Google Search Network

• Google Content Network

Google Search and Google Search Network normally deliver relevant searchers. By default however, Google already has their Content Network checked for you on their ad set-up page. But how closely matched is the Content Network to your Adwords? Usually it’s not well matched at all. You will get lots of clicks from responders to these extended relevance sites, however, the quality of this traffic is horrific at best. Not only is the traffic terrible, your click rate will be much lower when including the Content Network. What’s worse, if you remember my last article, one of the key factors that affects your ad position is your “average click rate”, so this can be a double negative whammy. By just de-selecting “Content Network” (in the “Edit Campaign Settings”) you can significantly improve the click rate of your campaign which will then also give you better ad positioning.

Remember, the better your click rate, the higher your ad will be positioned. If your click rate drops below about 0.5%, your ad will rarely display at all. On the other hand, if you have a click rate of 2%, 3% or even higher, your ad will be positioned much higher than if evaluated by price alone.

One more negative alert – click fraud within the “content network” is much greater.

Another great way to improve your ROI and lower your cost per click is to examine where your traffic is coming from within the Google Search Network. If you determine that a lot of traffic is coming from partner sites like www.ask.com for example, you could eliminate the “Search Network” targeting as well and save some additional money. Advertising on these partner sites directly will save you about 50% for each click. The downside, of course, is that it will take more time to manage the extra campaigns. It also depends on your overall budget. The more you invest, the more it is worth looking at the option of eliminating the Search Network as well and setting up separate campaigns on sites like ask.com.

The bottom-line is that, just by deselecting “Content Network” you will dramatically improve your results and save huge amounts of money.

Look for our next article, where we’ll look at the 2nd biggest mistake when doing Google Adwords. Sign up for our “Marketing Insight” ezine and be one of the first to view it.

The article is brought to you by Peter Grundner at P&T Enterprises

For more information please visit www.how2succeedonline.net or www.myedconline.com

Direct Response Marketing and Search Engine Marketing (sem) Principles

admin    SEM     Direct, Engine, Marketing, Principles, Response, Search

I produce Pay Per Click how-to training sessions geared to help online marketers increase their search marketing ROI. As Chairman for PPC Summits, I meet online marketers from around the world, and there is one common theme that seems to reoccur frequently: the myth that SEM is some kind of rocket science. What most marketers don’t understand is SEM falls under the category of Direct Response Marketing.

SEM is just another form of direct response marketing and many of the same principles apply. Successful marketing messaging resonates with the intended audience and the same controls apply to search marketing campaigns.

Here are some direct response marketing principles that should also apply to your SEM campaigns:

• It takes work. Successful marketers have to constantly test response rates: copy, keywords, placement, pricing, messages, landing pages…

• You have to test. In direct response marketing, testing rules is never-ending. Just like testing in direct mail, the cost of the campaign can be justified if the lift in the conversion rate is enough to offset the expense. If the lift in conversion offsets the cost of optimizing the pages, keep testing and roll out new ones.

• You have to track results. Just as savvy offline marketers can tell which piece of mail and from which specific message a customer converted, you have to be able to tell which keyword, message and referrer drove your sale. Tracking is easy to do on PPC, harder on search engine optimization, but critical on both.

• Creative is key. Google rewards those with high click-through rates on PPC by better placement, and the way to get high CTRs is to write great copy that resonates with your audience. Similar to an offline campaign, online creative (i.e., your search listings) should be tested frequently.

• It’s all about the benefit. Successful marketers sell on benefits, not features, and look for the messages that play on their customers’ emotional responses to their product or service. Over time, you will discover offers that work only online, but like offline marketing, it comes through the same test-and-learn discipline.

• The “Lead to Sale” conversion rate is important. Just as in the offline world the key to conversions from search is providing the right hook in your listing at the right phase of the buying cycle, and then converting that lead into a paying customer with the right offer on your landing page.

• Analysis is your friend. Like any good offline campaign, you learn a great deal from analyzing your testing and conversions. One set of keywords can perform significantly better than the rest; but because even changing a keyword from singular to plural can have dramatically different results, you have to test and analyze each variable separately.

• It’s all about CPA or CPL. All search engine marketing campaigns need to be analyzed by cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL).

• Create customer loyalty. Search engines are looking more and more at how many websites link to yours.. You need customer evangelists driving more sales, and links can provide that.

Direct response marketing skills and experience are some of the key drivers in SEM campaigns. There are some nuances of SEM that you can only learn by experience, but if you go into it with the mindset that these rules apply you will demystify the whole experience.

PPC Summit Boston March 3-4, Vancouver March 31-April1, London April 14-15, San Francisco May 19-20, and Los Angeles Sept. 2008.