PPC Strategy | Oasis Interactive

The little things that make the difference in your Google AdWords

July 29th, 2009 | 0 comments

If you thought composing a meaningful message within 140 characters in Twitter is difficult, you’re going to need to make it even more succinct with the 95 characters you have for a Google AdWords ad. And that translates to convincing someone to go to your site within 95 characters! No doubt a challenge.

There are plenty of tricks and tips out there in the WWW to refer to when you write your Google AdWords ad copy but here, we’ll like to share with you some very interesting statistics I came across at MindValley Labs – the good people there have some very interesting killer writing tips as well.

1) Dot Dot Dot…

MindValley Labs once placed 2 ads and the only difference between the 2 was 3 dots. Check out the statistics below:

And why did it work so well? Well, putting 3 dots behind a sentence tend to make people think there is more information waiting to be read after clicking on it isn’t it?

2) The Impact Of a Word Change

Can you spot the difference? Yes you got it. MindValley Lab found that when they changed the word “Changes” to “Change”, it resulted in a 180% increase in Click-Through Rate. What an impact it made!

Change versus Changes. The two words can be subtly read as “To change it yourself manually” versus “This will change automatically”.

Depending on your product, the words you use should imply differently. Think. What would your customers find more appealing? To have your product work for your customer or would your customer rather do it themselves?

Here are some examples:

Organize versus Organizes

Transform versus Transforms

Create versus Creates

You get the idea.

3) Capitalization:

The MindValley Labs folks have proven that by simply capitalizing strategically in your Google AdWords copy, it can maximize CTR and ROI. Capitalized keywords stand out more and almost always outperforms those ads that aren’t capitalized.

The above test done by MindValley Labs clearly show that by capitalizing the right keywords in your ad (except for words like, “in”, “and”, “on”, and those 2 words like “up”, etc…) can boost your CTR by 80%! Small but very impactful!

We always look forward to opportunities for sharing our knowledge and ideas. We hope you found this insightful!

Keyword-to-Conversion Model

June 25th, 2009 | 0 comments

The usual approach to SEM by most companies are:-

1. Identify keywords used for search (either by guessing, online media companies or online tools like Google Keyword Tool)

2. Craft out Ad copy, focusing on product USP and Promo mechanics

3. Link to website (either homepage, promotion page, microsite or specific product pages).

This method is not wrong to some extent but if you give it a deeper thought, the entire process could be more focused, direct and conversion-driven. I term it as the keyword-to-conversion model. Basically, conversion starts from the point a search attempt is made.

keyword-to-conversion

The key here is to identify the search objective through the search words/ phrases used. Based on the search objective, the ad copy has to be created to address this. The aim here is to allow the ad copy to be relevant to the search objective, thus allowing the consumer to be able to relate to the ad. With this, we can achieve what we call a ‘true click-through’.

A ‘true click-through’ is a result of a non-impulsive, need-driven action. It basically filters real clicks from those that are merely in for the wrong reason, thus reducing your PPC budget, increasing ROI. Let me emphasize that this approach is strictly for Search networks and is not applicable if you are advertising on a content network.

With a ‘true click-through’, 50% of the battle is won. Remember, the person that is coming onto your site now has a ‘real’ intention / objective and is not merely browsing. As such, the landing page is crucial. It has to make references to the ad copy and search objective. For example, if the search objective is to compare prices of a service, the ad copy could say ‘voted most cost effective service by ABC magazine’, providing a point of comparison. The landing page should further emphasize the concept of ‘comparison’ – such as allowing the consumers to select some brands and do a side by side comparison. With this, a high level of interest and relevance is maintained.

In a conversion site, traffic resulting from a PPC campaign on a search network needs to be guided. Imagine someone comes up to you and says he wants to buy an iPod. You bring him to the entrance of your shop and drop him off there and say ‘Feel free to browse around’. ???

Guide them around. Create informational paths within the site that has a purpose in mind – conversion. From the landing page where you have shown that your service and product is great, bring them to the next page to reinforce that buying decision. I called this the Influencing Page. In this page, contents are created to reinforce buying decisions. It could be testimonials, it could be a summary of USPs, it could be a promotion to create the need to ‘buy now’.

Remember – in a conversion site, it is important to craft contents that are relevant to the search objective, guide them through the site, reinforce buying decision and then convert. The process should be sharp and sweet.