Top 5 Ways to Increase the CTR of Your AdWords Campaign

Want to increase the click-through rate (CTR) of your AdWords campaign?

 Of course you do, and it can be a lot easier than you’d think. Here are five simple things you can do to increase the CTR of your ads.

Add a Trademark Symbol

Have you registered your brand’s trademark yet? The unique name of your business or product can be registered as a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). With a registered trademark, you can add the ® symbol to your text ads. You can also use the ™ symbol without a registered trademark. Adding these symbols to the text of your AdWords campaign adds a sense of authority to your ad, and it encourages more people to click on it.

Make Your URLs Hyper Descriptive

Use the 35-character display limit for links on your ad to display hyper descriptive URLs. Change the display links on your ad, and experiment to find out which ones give you the highest CTR. Eliminate the “www.” so you have more characters to use for your link. Try a link like this: domainname.com/descriptive-text; or a link in this format: descriptive-text.domainname.com. You can also try dynamic keyword insertion with a link like this: domainname.com/{keyword:descriptive-text}.

Improve the Text of Your Ad

Exactly what you write in the copy of your ad can make all the difference when it comes to your CTR. They key is to focus on solving the problem that the searcher is having. When people search, they are looking for answers or solutions, so focus on explaining in the text of your ad how the link will help them. You need to think carefully about who your potential customers are and what they’re thinking so that you can make your ad speak directly to them. Improve the creativity and functionality of your ad, and you will get a higher CTR. Also closely examine the text of your competitors’ ads.

Add the Right Link Extensions

You should make use of sitelink extensions in your AdWords campaign. Link extensions give you more opportunities to catch the attention of searchers and to convince them to click. If a searcher is looking for one thing in particular, your link extensions could be your products or pages that most closely relate to what they’re looking for, in addition to what they’re specifically look for. The extensions should be as relevant as possible. You can experiment with adding 3, 4, or 6 extensions, and you can also experiment with how you use the 35-character allotment for each to describe the links.

Use Brand Name Keywords

Make your brand name keywords part of your AdWords campaign. Your brand name keywords have a much lower cost per click (CPC) in comparison to general keywords that your competitors want, too. Also include up to six link extensions that are associated with your brand name and are closely related. Use hyper descriptive URLs and link text to boost the CTR of searchers using brand name keywords.

Get in Touch & Get Your Campaigns Optimized !!

5 New & Exciting Google AdWords Features to Try

A whirlwind of upgrades, information, and new features have been spilling out of Google AdWords of late. Consider these five new features that will have advertisers and PPC managers excited about the progress.

1. Upgraded Sitelinks

With the launch of the enhanced campaigns in AdWords, we're also seeing upgraded sitelinks. In the past, a set of sitelinks were created at the campaign level. Now individual sitelinks can be created and then assigned to ad groups, the “override” at the ad group level offers the ability to mix and match and gain a precision new to the ad extension feature.

Mobile specific sitelinks open up opportunities for additional massaging with a local emphasis like directions or local specials. Scheduling sitelinks is great for promotions, and anything seasonal.

2. New Keyword Planner

We reported on the recent announcement of the keyword planner in April and are really looking forward to this new feature. The keyword planner takes the old keyword tool we all know and love and bumps it up to the next level by combining the keyword tool and traffic estimator.

The functionality is very similar, but improved. In-line you can change the match type before adding to your plan, and the tool gives traffic estimates in line next to the keyword.

Also available is a feature to multiply keyword lists to get estimates. Combine two or more lists of keywords automatically into new keywords, and then get performance estimates for the new list. This can save you the time of manually combining keywords.

I can see a great application of this being to easily add geo or purchase modifiers to a campaign.

3. New Google Display Planner

Google's new Display Planner has the look and feel of AdWords with additional data and estimates of the Google Ad Planner. Advertisers can find topics, interests, or placements to target with information on audience opportunity.

AdWords tells you how many “cookies” are available to target, as the cookie is representative of a device that's been cookied, rather than a person. Impressions per week estimates are also a great piece of information.

4. Ad Group Mobile Bid Adjustments

Mobile bid adjustments for AdWords enhanced campaigns are made at the campaign level. You could see how the same bid adjustment may not be applicable to all ad groups. No worries! Between now and the next few weeks, Google is rolling out ad group level mobile adjustments.

It's good to see a granular level of customization. Depending on past performance, if one ad group has CPCs much different from the rest of the campaign, use the ad group level bids to even the playing field and limit losses.

5. AdWords Upgrade Center

Recently released, the upgrade center for enhanced campaigns can make upgrading easier for advertisers. With just a few clicks, several campaigns can be updated.

However, do a little research before taking the easy way out. In this tool, AdWords has a default bid setting “Use the Google-suggested default, calculated for each campaign”. If you know your mobile CPCs are a percentage of spend, use that to guide you and avoid defaulting as much as possible.

The upgrade center rolls out to all accounts over the next few weeks, accessible from the left nav bar on the Campaigns tab.

Many of these updates are now available to experiment with and others will be released in the next few weeks. 

So,What are your favorite new features, tools, bells and whistles in Google AdWords?

Long Tail Keywords - Explored

Long-tail keys are something of a unicorn in online marketing. They’re more obscure than short keywords, which is one reason that people don’t utilize them. However, longtail keywords are often worth the research effort precisely because the competition isn’t focusing on them. When everyone focuses on short keywords, it’s nearly impossibly to rank highly. Of course, that’s not the only benefit of longtail keywords.

Where Short Keywords Doesn’t Help

Before we detail the benefits of longtail keywords, let’s take the time to point out how short keywords might not be as helpful as you think. It takes a lot of effort to rank number one for a keyword, but is it worth it? Open your analytics service and you’ll see that, while searchers use many keywords, they don’t necessarily add up to the bulk of your visits. When you do the math, your short keywords might bring in more traffic individually, but longtail keywords win out as a group.

Longtail Keywords and Click-through Rates (CTR)

These longer keywords lead to a higher click-through rate, because there are fewer entries on the search results page. If a search only brings up ten results, and yours is one of them, you’re more likely to receive a hit. On the other hand, a search that reveals millions of potential matches lowers the likelihood that you’ll see the traffic at all.

Another CTR benefit of longtail keywords revolves around the fact that these are very specific search queries. There’s no doubt what your visitors are looking for, and this allows you to tailor a landing page for those visitors when you participate in pay-per-click advertising. You provide exactly what searchers want, and they go to your website. Everyone wins.

Conversation Rates for Longtail Keywords

This leads us directly into our next point. If consumers know exactly what they want, they’re probably further along the purchasing process, and you’re more likely to see a higher conversation rate. For instance, someone who is searching for a “bed and breakfast in Seattle” have specific requirements that you might meet. On the other hand, someone searching for general accommodations in the location might prefer a cheap motel over a B&B, but you wouldn’t know, because you can’t read their mind.

This point rings true, even if you’re not selling anything. For example, someone who is searching for a forum where they can discuss a certain book wants a focused community and isn’t searching for a community about reading in general. If your site meets that requirements, longtail keywords are helpful and encourage registrations. If you focus on generic keywords, your website might pop up in the SERPs, but searchers may not actually want what you offer.

Longtail Keywords Do Require Effort

One of the things we mentioned in this article are landing pages. Short, generic keywords are more likely to let you create a general landing page. However, if you think your company will benefit from more specific keywords, then you might find yourself with many landing pages. Is this more effort? Absolutely. Creating and editing the SEO for multiple landing pages takes more time, but if it has a greater return on investment, don’t you think that it’s worth it?

Think About the Long Run

Obviously, benefiting from longtail keywords is a long-term goal. You might not see results right away, and you may have to play with your PPC methods to find the best ROI. Remember, the higher ROI isn’t necessarily the highest income. Compare the money and effort you put into the project with the results. You might be surprised how longtail keywords pay off.

Worried About High CPC Costs ? Here are some Alternatives

PPC is now very competitive and if you are AdWords advertiser then you need to devote more time in checking your impression share, Lost IS report, keywords average position and make sure none of your keywords are below first page bid. Actually Google Adwords has an option that can automatically sets the bidding for keywords but a good PPC expert always want to set this manually. Sometimes CPC for particular keywords becomes too high and it become unaffordable to bid for these keywords. That’s why keywords cpc needs to maintain and need to think of some actions that helps in the same context. Here are some easy steps that may apply sufficiently control over the range of cost per click:

Emphasize the Strengthening of Quality Scores

According to the situation, I must say to re-consider quality score which gives you an calculation of how appropriate your ads, search phrases, and web page. This will help you to improve the cost without adjusting your keywords and make you available in the field to fight for the profit.

It is always suggested to make alteration in the highest volume advertisement programs with the intention to increase the compatibility of the CTR that can help improve the conversion rate. The other element that support the improvement in the Quality Score is to create more relevant groups. This would lead you to get the maximum benefits.

Keywords That Are Alternate To Target

Sometimes we are failed to improve CPC for our benefits by making efforts to the first point i.e. improving Quality Score and still get the high CPC which cause harm to budget. In this circumstance, now comes to the Keywords which are considered to be the heart of online marketing. The failure of Quality Score may be prompted by attempting wrong keywords. You can try the best of two ways: First one is that you might adopt the relevant keywords with some diversion that are less competitive but more cost-effective to get traffic. The other one is taking some specific keywords that has deep relation having some variation with the core keywords and helps to get more traffic for considerably less money.

Highlight Display  Network

Display Network is third alternate from which we specified above and may be a hit and trial method to control the CPC . A Display Network is a system of websites that deliver material such as text, video clips etc. and let marketers to demonstrate ads along side it. It is a way through you can generate a better outcomes with cost effective method as this would provides significantly less competitiveness and more affordable costs per click.

Utilize Other Networks in Parallel

These days lots of other networks work in the same field and have a great presence as well. You can make a try with these also such as Bing adCenter, Facebook, and LinkedIn which are also responsible for the better results in comparison of Adwords and drive good volume of traffic for lower CPCs. But keep it in your mind that these are only alternates and frequently requires lots of precaution to work upon, in order to make profits and suggested to keep the above points in your mind while using these alternates

Enhanced Campaigns: “Flexible Bid Strategies” Launching Soon

Google will be rolling out “flexible bid strategies” in enhanced campaigns in the next couple of weeks. Flexible bid strategies will allow advertisers to override automated bidding and apply manual bidding strategies within a single campaign or across multiple campaigns.

The new Bid strategies tool will be located in Shared Library. You can create a flexible bid strategy and then apply it to specific keywords, ad groups, and campaigns. Performance metrics by bidding strategy will be available in Bidding strategies.

AdWords To End Product Extensions As PLAs Take Over

AdWords product extensions will soon be heading off into the sunset. They are leaving quietly, too. Brad Geddes noticed the announcement in the AdWords agency newsletter, but no other formal notification has been communicated to advertisers.

Product extensions will disappear from the campaign set-up flow on May 20th. Google eventually let product extensions be outrun by Product Listing Ads. As Geddes notes, when Google launched PLAs, product extensions were reduced to a less-than-compelling line of text and price.

Here’s a pictorial walk down memory lane:

U.S. debut in 2009

When PLAs roll out to U.S. November 2010

Mobile debut in June 2011

The final incarnation post-PLA

The Different Formats You Can Use for Your Video Ad

In-search 

This works more or less in the same way as Google AdWords. You choose a keyword list, write your ad, choose your video, set your bidding strategy; and then pay when someone clicks on your video, which will appear highlighted as an ad at the top of the search results.

Relevance, as with traditional search ads, is critical.

The types of videos that work best with this format are ‘How to’ videos that address a niche. For example, if you’re selling cosmetics, a video showing how to apply make-up to achieve a certain look might work well.

In slate

These only show on ‘long-form videos’, which are videos of 30 minutes or more (essentially films, or TV programmes ).

In-slate advertising gives viewers a choice: choose and watch one video ad before the programme starts, or have a series of ad breaks through the programme where video ads are pushed to you (which may not be as relevant).

The fact that a viewer chooses your ad over others means they have at least some level of interest, so it’s a more active choice. You only pay if someone actively chooses your ad.

In display

These are promoted videos that appear alongside the video you’re watching (down the right hand-side); they’re recommended because they’re relevant to the content you’ve chosen to watch.

Of course, for in-display video ads to work they have to be very targeted and stand out from the crowd. They need to be compelling enough for a viewer to make an active choice: “I want to watch that video next”.

It’s worth noting that in-display ads don’t just appear on YouTube, they can appear anywhere on Google’s ad network that takes video.

In stream

These are videos that appear as a pre-roll to a popular videos. Note: they don’t appear on niche videos, and you can’t specify exactly which videos you want to appear on (but see ‘targeting’, below).

As with the other formats, in-stream videos work on a system called TrueView, which means you only pay if a user has watched your ad for 30 seconds (or the whole ad, whichever is shorter). If they ‘skip after 5 seconds’, you don’t pay.

In-stream videos are the closest format to TV media. This method can be very engaging if you have a creative video. It is, however, the hardest format to get right: you have to have great content so your viewer doesn’t skip the ad at the first opportunity, and keep it short (under 30 seconds, ideally).

Targeting YouTube ads

There are seven mechanisms for targeting on YouTube, ranging from the brilliant, to the absolutely woeful. 

Search keywords 

These work in the same way as Google, and are very targeted. You know your viewer is interested in a specific subject: they’ve told you so. This works well for niche advertisers, and the cost is incredibly low.

But…it can also be very low volume. Yes, there’s a lot of search on YouTube, but most of it’s for Lady GaGa.

Contextual targeting 

This works just like elsewhere on the Google Display Network. Google will match your keywords with titles, tags and descriptions of videos, and decides which videos are appropriate for you.

This works well with ‘in display’ advertising.

Remarketing 

This is the easiest thing in the world to do, and if you have any reasonable videos on YouTube it’s a no-brainer. You are showing your video to people who’ve already been to your website, to encourage them to purchase.

Obviously this is targeting people who already know about you, so think about what’s appropriate to show them that will move them on in their purchase decision.

Placements 

Essentially, you choose a video or channel and say ‘that’s where I want to show my ads’. This is the hardest targeting to do well, but is used by some of the best ads.

It’s hard because popular videos change all the time, lasting only a matter of days sometimes. So you have to keep choosing videos all the time.

If you get it right, and choose a channel or video that is popular, and directly relevant to your brand, it can be very rewarding, as the targeting is so specific. (As with other mechanisms, it assumes that the channel or video you want to target has agreed to accept advertising on it).

Interest category targeting 

This is exactly what the cookie law was about! But for now, it works pretty well. Google’s network tracks the content and pages that people visit regularly, and builds a portfolio of that users’ interests. You can choose an interest category for your ad and target people by interest.

These aren’t people who’ve just stumbled across a video, they’ve shown a sustained interest in something that’s directly relevant to you. If you sell skiing holidays for example, you can display only to people with a current and sustained interest in skiing.

Topics 

You can choose from a master list of topics that people are searching on, and if you match it, you’re video will show up. This is the easiest to set up of all the targeting mechanisms. Its performance is OK.

Not great, but OK. And it’s really easy to do.

Demographics.

There are absolutely no benefits for demographic targeting on YouTube. Very few people actually tell YouTube their age or gender; the rest is guesswork based on your browsing activity. It's awful.

Targeting on YouTube works best when you combine different methods. For example, you could target someone by topic – let’s take skiing again.

That person might just be interested in watching a random guy break his leg on a mountain, but if you combine this with interest targeting, you know that this is someone who regularly looks at skiing sites, and is right now looking for a skiing video.

If you’re a ski holiday operator, that could be the perfect target. It reaches a smaller number of people, but the ability to target is so specific that it works really well, particularly if you include a clear call to action via the overlay or banner within your video.

YouTube is all about the targeting. Unless your video ‘goes viral’ – and very, very few do – this is the place to target small numbers of highly-qualified people with a specific message.

And of course, the better the content, the more +1s you get, and the better your performance on Google’s search rankings.

How to Use The Keyword Planner — The New Keyword Tool From Google AdWords

Last month, Google quietly began rolling out the AdWords Keyword Planner to select AdWords accounts last month. In typical AdWords fashion, one of the biggest overhauls of the Google Keyword Tool ever went almost unnoticed!

This new keyword tool combines elements of two existing keyword tools, the Google Keyword Tool and the AdWords Traffic Estimator, adding a more structured and integrated workflow as well as all sorts of new bells and whistles.

If you’ve ever used the Google Keyword Tool and/or AdWords Traffic Estimator in the past, take note here – the new Keyword Planner will most certainly replace both tools in the near future, and your workflow will undoubtedly change as a result.

What’s A Keyword Planner, Anyway?

The Keyword Planner is a more focused version of the Google Keyword Tool and AdWords Traffic Estimator tool, and the focus is on doing one thing only: to make it easier for advertisers to get through the process of creating new ad groups and ad campaigns, which is the key to getting your PPC accounts off to a good start.

It differs from the existing Google Keyword Tool and AdWords Traffic Estimator tools in that the old tools were more general purpose, unstructured tools. They could be used for just about anything, including Keyword Research for SEO. This new tool, on the other hand, is more like an ultimate AdWords campaign building workshop.

The Keyword Planner has a “wizard” type interface. The first step in the process is to determine how you’re going to go about creating your ad campaigns and ad groups. You’re asked to pick one of 3 possible paths:

• Search for Keyword and Ad Group Ideas
• Enter or Upload Keywords to get Estimates
• Multiply keyword lists to get Estimates

Here’s what this looks like in AdWords:

Searching For Keyword & Ad Group Ideas

Most of the time when creating a new campaign in AdWords, you’ll need to rely on Google to provide you with keyword suggestions to pick from. Therefore, the primary flow through the Keyword Planner is to “Search for keyword and ad group ideas.”

Clicking on that option whisks you off to the next stage of the Keyword Planner, which provides a robust keyword workbench for researching and picking keywords to add to your AdWords account, illustrated below:

Using this interface, the Keyword Planner lets you brainstorm keywords using any or all of the following three methods:

• By Keyword:  you can type in a word or phrase relevant to your business
• By Landing Page: by entering a landing page on your site (or any competitor’s webpages, for that matter), the Keyword Planner will scan and infer keywords that are relevant to those pages
• By Product Category: you can select from one of thousands of pre-defined keyword categories

Filtering Keywords From Your Keyword Plan

Additionally, the Keyword Planner provides robust filtering capabilities so you can be super picky with what keywords you choose to add to your PPC account. For example, you can filter keywords based on the following ways:

• Average CPC: include or exclude keywords that fall above or below a desired Cost Per Click
• Estimated Search Volume: include or exclude keywords that fall above or below a desired monthly search volume
• Keyword Competition: you can narrow your list based on estimated advertiser competition
• Exclude Keywords Already In Your Account:  the Keyword Planner can automatically exclude keywords that are already in your own AdWords account to avoid having duplicate keywords
• Filter by Keyword: you can specify to include or exclude keywords containing specific terms

Setting Targeting Parameters

Because keyword research requires analyzing keyword statistics in order to determine whether or not a given keyword makes sense for your business, Google lets you customize the keyword stats and performance estimates so that they’re relevant to your campaigns. This means they let you specify targeting parameters such as language, country and search network.

List View Vs. Grouped View

One nice feature is the ability to view keywords in the Keyword Planner that appear either in list view or in grouped view – this is analogous to the concept of keyword niches and keyword lists.

Your “Keyword Plan”

As you discover promising terms looking at individual keywords or keyword groupings, you have the ability to add them to “Your Plan,” which is a temporary storage area for saving interesting-looking keywords and keyword groupings for later.

The Keyword Planner maintains state for the duration of your session – keywords that you add to “Your Plan” are saved while you’re in the process of looking for keywords.

This is a nice change — previously, when using the Google Keyword Tool and AdWords Traffic Estimator separately, there was a bit of a disjointed workflow where you had to save the results of the Google Keyword Tool, then open the file and copy/paste it as input to the AdWords Traffic Estimator. These two separate processes are now integrated into a single, seamless one.

When you’re done picking keywords and adding them into “Your Plan,” click on the Get Estimates and Review Plan button.

Getting Estimates & Reviewing Your Plan

The next stage of the Keyword Plan process involves setting a keyword bid and daily budget for your portfolio of keywords and keyword groupings.

Since keyword volume and CPC bid estimates are based on your budget, bid, location and other competitive factors, you’ll need to provide Google with some information in order to customize your estimates.

For example, you could enter a bid of $50 and a daily budget of $2,000.00 and click on the Get Detailed Estimates button — the Keyword Planner will then generate daily estimates for Clicks, Impressions, Average ad position and costs, as shown below:

Once finalized, you can download your detailed keyword plan in a variety of different formats, such as Excel or AdWords Editor CSV, as shown below:

Enter Or Upload Your Own Keyword List

Another way of running though the Keyword Plan process is to start using your own keyword list. Sometimes, when creating a new campaigns, you may be fortunate enough to already be sitting on a treasure trove of keyword data (for example, several years of Web analytics data, including valuable keyword referral data).

If you’re in this enviable position, it may make sense to start the campaign creation process using your own keyword list rather than the generic keyword suggestions you get from the Keyword Suggestion Tool.  Here’s what that looks like:

When you press the Get Estimates button, you’ll be taken through the rest of the Keyword Plan process as described above — the only difference is that you’ll be looking at your own keyword list rather than the generic keywords suggested via the Google Keyword Tool.

Multiplying Keyword Lists Using Keyword Planner

A third and final way to work thorough the Keyword Planner is to mash-up and multiply keyword lists. For example, you might want to multiply a bunch of names of products with colors and word modifiers to come up with every imaginable keyword permutations, as shown below:

Note that you can have up to three lists to mash up, and clicking on the Get Estimates buttonbrings you to the next stage of the Keyword Planner. The only difference between this and the other two methods is that you’ll be looking at your own keyword list based on the mash-up of the lists you provided.

I personally don’t like this option very much because your mashed-up keyword lists may bear little or no resemblance to how people naturally search for those words, though perhaps you could use this method if you absolutely don’t want to miss any possible keyword permutation.

Summary

The new Keyword Planner tool supports various workflows for building ad groups and campaigns either starting from scratch, or based on your existing lists, and provides more cohesive user experience by integrating the keyword selection, grouping, analysis and filtering aspects of the keyword selection workflow.

If you’re lucky, you can find the Keyword Planner tool in your AdWords account today. According to my contacts at Google, as of two weeks ago, it was enabled in only 5% of accounts. At that time, it took me 67 tries to finally find an account with the Keyword Planner; but as of today, I’m finding it in roughly one out of every 5 accounts. It appears that Google is opening up Keyword Planner access to a greater number of accounts over time, so hopefully you’ll see it in your account soon!

Rolling Out Easier Management of Bid Adjustment In Enhanced Campaigns

Bid adjustments in enhanced campaigns let you easily vary your bids depending on the user context -- like location, time, and device -- all within a single campaign. By optimizing for different contexts, you can get better results with AdWords.


Ad group mobile bid adjustment rollout begins today

Starting today and continuing over the next couple weeks, We can see ad group level mobile adjustments, as previously announced. This may be useful if you’ve been operating large scale campaigns and found that your optimal bids for some keywords require different mobile bid adjustments. The majority of advertisers will still see the most value in using the existing campaign level bid adjustments in enhanced campaigns.



Change multiple bid adjustments more easily

We’re also making it easier to change bid adjustments for several locations, dayparts and devices at the same time.



Say you want to set a bid adjustment of +10% for three cities that you’re targeting. Just tick the checkboxes next to each location, then click the “Set bid adjustment” button (see image below).







You’ll then be able to enter the +10% adjustment and apply the changes to all of the locations you’ve selected, rather than needing to enter the adjustments one at a time. This handy feature is available for making changes across multiple campaigns when you’re in the “All online campaigns” view, as well as when you’re editing a single campaign.



If you’re managing multiple campaigns and need to replicate lots of location bid adjustments or time-based bid adjustments from one campaign to another, you’ll save time by using the AdWords Editor. Available on Windows and Mac OS, AdWords Editor lets you easily copy and paste settings across campaigns, then review and post your changes.

Infographic: A Day In The Life Of The Internet

2.4 billion internet users worldwide with 70% of them using the internet every day. That’s 37.3% of the world’s population… an increase of 566% since the year 2000. The number of mobile devices used to access the Internet has doubled, with 38% of media interactions every day made on smartphones. 139,000 new websites go live and 144 billion emails are sent… 68.8% of the emails are spam! Google still dominates the search market with 88% market share. Users are spending 3.2 hours on average every day now on Social Media. An hour of video is uploaded every second on YouTube, where 4 billion videos are viewed for 133 million hours.

Source: A Day in The Life of The Internet via HostGator

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5 Reasons Your PPC Ads Bite

A big mistake most PPC newbies and vets make is that they don’t take their ad copy seriously. It’s sometimes an afterthought after building out an account or at worst it’s a copy and paste job from one campaign/ad group to the next.
Taking the proper time to understand your market, craft compelling ads and conduct meaningful tests not only gives you a performance lift but also it is one of the more fun aspects of PPC.

Here are 5 reasons your current ad copy bites:

1. Your PPC Ads are Too Relevant

It’s pay per click marketing, not pay per click keyword stuffing. Stop worrying so much about Quality Score and “relevancy” and focus on writing emotionally compelling ad copy that speaks to your target market’s needs and wants.
To focus more on writing compelling content versus relevant copy think through the following questions:
 What’s the absolute worst-case scenario if your target doesn’t solve the problem that your product or service solves?

• What is the most unorthodox feature your product/service has that solves a significant problem for your target?
• What’s the biggest mistake a person makes when choosing a company/product that offers what you do?

2. You’ve Written Ads for the Wrong Audience
Recently I saw an ad with the phrase “protect your stuff” win an ad test. The reason it is surprising is how informal the ad was compared to the control ad, which in my opinion was better written. But when I stepped back to consider that the target market it made a lot of sense. The primary purchaser of this product was under 25 and thus the informal “stuff” spoke more to them.
The take away is to focus on the language your audience wants/uses/likes and not the language you prefer.

3. All Your Competitors Look Like You

Every time I want to feel better about the quality of my ad copy I just search for “Car Insurance.” Sure enough, it’s always a mood lifter as the copy is so bland and generic that it makes my copy read like it was written by Don Draper. I did this today and there were 11 ads on the page. 9 of these ads mentioned price and the other 2 mentioned trust. Not a lot of variety. Not to mention these marketers are just eroding each other’s margins by focusing on price instead of finding meaningful ways to create value.
See the questions in point one of this post to understand how to frame yourself differently than your competition. Additionally, simply search for your largest volume queries and write ads that are drastically different than what everyone else is saying.

4. You Test Ad Copy Just to Test Ad Copy

When I ask interviewees what their ad testing strategy and most often hear, “I am always A/B testing ad copy. Once an ad wins then I test a new headline or description line 1 or 2.” This makes me think that this person doesn’t have a strategy but rather views ad testing as a compulsory item on a to do list that needs to get checked off.
Ad testing should be approached with the mindset of a.) you are trying to learn something about your product, your consumer or your account and b.) you understand why you are going to test what you are. We do this with an ad testing matrix that focuses on features and benefits and then systemically, over several weeks, determines the best copy and thus the most compelling benefits of the clients product or services.

5. Poor Ad Group Structure

This is the most obvious but one of the most common reasons your copy sucks. Our team recently worked on an account with 1,800 keywords in one ad group that ranged from pet types to sporting goods. And this wasn’t some small mom and pop operation. It was actually one of the largest PPC marketers in the world.
We have found that ad groups with 5 or fewer keywords are the most successful. It’s a lot of work, a lot of boring work, to break out all your ad groups to that level but the results are typically well worth it.

Easier planning, better reporting: New tools for display ads

Great ad campaigns have always required two things: knowing your audience, and using that knowledge to reach them in smart ways.

Today we're thrilled to announce new innovations that will help display advertisers with both parts of that equation. They are the Google Display Planner and two new reports: Demographic Performance and Placement Performance.

First, meet the Google Display Planner, a free research and planning tool that delivers targeting ideas and estimates to help you build better display campaigns. Based on data you enter, the tool suggests places to run your ads on the Google Display Network along with key related details: impression and cookie ranges for our inventory, age and gender breakdowns, and historical cost-per-click (CPC) information.  These features can help you: 

• Find new inventory.  Display Planner finds and suggests thousands of websites, mobile applications and video channels for your ads across the online world. 
• Generate targeting ideas. Are you trying to reach golfers, or new parents? Just describe their interests, websites you know they visit and products they buy. Display Planner will use that data to suggest good keywords and other targeting ideas.
• Turn data into insights.  What is the total opportunity for your Google Display Network campaign and what can you expect in return? Display Planner tells you, with estimates and historical data to back it up.

Display Planner

Display Planner is part of AdWords, so with one click you can add your plan directly to your account, or download to share it. Display Planner will be available in the Tools & Analysis menu, and will be rolling out to the US over the course of this week, and globally in the next few weeks. 

Now for the other half of the equation: knowing your audience. Our two new reports will help you understand how your ads perform across different customer segments and websites. 

Demographic Performance Reports show how different demographic segments, gender and age buckets, respond to your messages by showing the impression, click and conversion rates for each group - a marketer's dream!  Armed with these new insights you can quickly tailor your ads to be more relevant for your audience, and modify your targeting and bidding settings for better performing campaigns. 

New Age Reports in Display Network Tab

New Placement Performance Reports combine automatic and managed placements in one report, so you can see quickly how your ads perform on different websites and adjust your targeting and bidding accordingly and with ease. These new reports will be available globally in the next few weeks in the Display Network Tab.   

The beauty of digital is real-time information and real-time action. We hope these new features will give you more insights, better ways to act on them, and an easier and more efficient way for you to buy display ads.

The 7 Best Places To Advertise Your Business Online

As a small business owner, do you feel like you’re constantly wasting your marketing dollars?

Join the club.

Although print advertising, direct mail, tv and radio still have some relevance for some industries, for many, it’s a giant waste of time and money.  Consumer attention span is getting shorter, coupled with an ever increasing amount of advertising, you can see why people go about their day with blinders on.

One area of marketing that is growing though is online advertising.  According to a study by Zenith Optimedia, the current global display advertising market is predicted to reach $25.27 billion this year(2012), with a 36% growth to $34.4 billion in 2013.

If you aren’t advertising online yet, or are looking for new avenues to pursue, below are 7 places you can market your small business online.  While I’m a huge proponent of optimizing your website so you can get found in the search engine results for free, the reality is that it takes alot of time, patience and persistence to rank high in the search engines.   While you’re slowly and methodically building up your organic search rankings, why not spend your advertising dollars more efficiently online right now?

Note:  Many of the programs below offer a free credit for new advertisers.  If you don’t have one or see one on their website, do a quick Google search online to see if you can find an offer code you can use.  If not, I would call them directly and ask for one, competition is fierce for advertising dollars and most will give you a credit for trying them out.

Google Adwords

The grand daddy of online advertising.  Since Google owns the lions share of the search engine market, it makes their advertising platform Adwords  the biggest platform for Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing.  Adwords lets you create text and image based advertisements targeting people who search for specific keywords (you bid on keywords in an auction type market) and terms in the Google search box.  You can also get very specific in when your ad displays, making your marketing dollars very efficient.  Setting up a campaign can be a bit complicated for beginners, luckily Google offers an easy way for small businesses to get started with Google Adwords Express.

Microsoft Ad Center

Similar to Google Adwords, Microsoft uses it’s Bing search engine to serve ads in it’s search engine results as well as partner networks.  The Bing search engine has a much smaller audience than Google, but this typically makes bidding on keywords less expensive and could save you money as it extends your marketing dollars a bit further.

7 Search

A smaller player in the paid search industry, 7 Search uses smaller, niche search engines to display your Pay Per Click (PPC) ads.  They claim a better ROI than their bigger competitors and bidding on keywords is cheaper than both Google Adwords and Microsoft Ad Center.

Facebook Advertising

Advertising on Facebook can be a gold mine for small businesses.  Facebook ads work similar to traditional Pay Per Click advertising (pay only when someone clicks on your ad), but the great thing with Facebook is that you can add an image along with your text.  Even if people don’t click on your ad, you’re still getting lots of great exposure to a targeted audience for free.  While not as efficient than Pay Per Click (PPC), where you can get very, very specific in who sees your ad, Facebook let’s you create mini billboards on thousands of targeted Facebook users and is well worth checking out.

Twitter Advertising

While Twitter has allowed advertising for quite some time with promoted tweets and trends, it has been way out of the budget for small business owners (unless you had a min of 10k to spend a day!).  Recently, Twitter launched a small business advertising program that will make it much more affordable for businesses to advertise on Twitter.  Currently it’s invitation only via a partnership with American Express, but will be opening up to everyone shortly.  Lot’s of potential here for the right businesses.

Stumbleupon Paid Discovery

Still relatively unknown to most people, Stumbleupon drives more website traffic than both Facebook and Twitter.  Stumbleupon is a neat social service people use to discover (stumble on) new websites they never knew existed, related to their interests.  It’s simple to use, create a profile, select your interests and start stumbling!  Stumbleupon has an advertising platform called Paid Discovery where you pay between .05 cents and .25 cents for every person that stumbles on your site.  You can select the interests you want your website to be included in and pay according to how targeted you want your stumbles to be.  There are no advertisements here, the website page you select becomes your ad for visitors.  While I love Stumbleupon, I would only consider using it if you have a product or service that has general appeal as it’s not nearly as targeted as PPC or Facebook advertising.

LinkedIn Ads

If you’re in the BtoB or professional services industry, LinkedIn Ads may be exactly what you’re looking for.  Linkedin can serve highly targeted ads to other professionals and businesses on Linkedin.  The Cost Per Click (CPC) is higher than pretty much any other platform listed here (there is also a minimum daily spend), but you can target your ads to very specific people.  I would recommend this if you are BtoB or offering professional services and you are looking to acquire high value clients.

Online advertising works

Relative to traditional advertising like newspaper ads and direct mail, paid online advertising is very efficient.  The thing I like best about advertising online is that you can see exactly where your money is going and if it’s generating an ROI that makes sense for you.  I also like that fact that it’s usually a pay for performance scenario, where you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your website.  Image if you only paid for your newspaper ad if someone called or walked through your front door?  The newspapers would go bankrupt!

Final note, paid advertising should coincide with your organic marketing efforts (Search Engine Optimization), you should really be doing both as the two of them working together can bring awesome results for you business.  Have questions about paid advertising online?  Contact me here, I respond to every email.