Online advertising has broadened the scope of traditional advertisements. Now, not just desktops but tabs and mobiles also form a major segment of displaying advertisement. PPC or pay-per-click rules online advertisement arena.
The best part of this platform is, here an advertiser can measure every aspect of his ad campaign through some distinctive metrics. One can measure how his ad is doing on an everyday basis.
One can measure how his ad is doing on an everyday basis.
With a clear and systematic projection of performance, PPC has become the most favorite choice for most companies. Ultimately it is all about ad performance that ensures ROI.
There are several metrics to check ad campaign performance. CTR or Click through rate is an important side of PPC advertising.
What is CTR?
Amongst all the PPC metrics, CTR or Click through Rate is predominant. It is not just a crucial indicator of how the ad is performing but it also plays a vital role in reducing the cost of advertising.
In PPC, advertisers pay for clicking on their ads. When people type a search query in search engine related ads show up in the sponsored spaces.
And whenever an interested visitor clicks on the ad, the advertiser pays money. In short, companies pay to bring traffic to their websites.
How Good CTR feeds PPC advertising Performance
Click through rate is the ratio between the number of times an ad appears and the number of times it is clicked.
Suppose, an ad appears 1000 times and gets 6 clicks. Therefore, the CTR is 0.6%. In the case of AdWords, Google says 2-5% is a good CTR. To get good CTR advertisers bid on high performing keywords and design campaign keeping the psychology of the respective customers in mind.
CTR has an important part in increasing revenue. In the case of AdWords, Google rewards high performing advertisers by lowering their bid amount.
Image Source: Optimizely Blog
CTR also directly affects the Quality score of an ad campaign. The quality score indicates an ad’s CTR, relevancy of keywords, landing page and ad text and historical AdWords account performance. Improved quality score triggers lowering of ad spend.
A high CTR denotes better conversion rates. The original search of the visitor is more likely to be directed to the most relevant topic.
With high CTR, a low-budget ad campaigner can garner high profit and brand recognition. It all depends on the selection and density of keywords. Keyword selection depends on you and your PPC account manager.
[bctt tweet=”CTR is directly related to Quality Score. Higher CTR means good Quality Score and lower ad spend.” username=”adstriangle”]
How to Improve CTR
It all depends on the selection and density of keywords. Keyword selection depends on you and your PPC account manager.
Your account manager can’t recognize your target customer without your help. Only the owner knows the true nature of his company and how it works.
Through gaining a thorough understanding of your company from you, your account manager can design the ad to attract the right audience.
Relevancy of Keyword also gets improved with such close association of the client and ad creator. It also helps in figuring out the negative keywords.
Keywords that do not define your company should also be carefully placed in AdWords. It will keep wrong searchers at bay and save valuable clicks.
For example, if your product ‘red jacket’ also comes under the purview of ‘free red jackets’ then interested visitors will wrongly click on it.
No company does business to give it away free. So, this way several clicks would be lost.
CTR for being so much important metric, some valuable tricks to increase it have been discussed here.
After deciding that you want to opt for PPC campaign keep following points in mind-
1. Implement Seasonal Headlines
It is all about going with the flow and making your ad more relevant to the visitor. Every season comes with a festival with it.
While creating your ad copy you put a reference or the exact name of the festival in order to make the ad look timely and relevant to the user.
It helps the customer to find your ad from the sea of companies who sell similar products. It improves CTR for it improves ad’s relevancy.
Relevancy also works in increasing quality score of entire PPC campaign.
While creating headline include seasonal elements. For example Christmas, thanksgiving etc. In the US there are 40 national holidays.
If your ad is targeted to a specific geographic area, try to capture
2. Use of Trademarks
Image Source: Google Search
Trademark is the mark of trust. When a company displays their trademark in their ad copy it signifies that the company is has a brand image.
Nowadays, most of the customers are brand savvy. They do not buy things unless it has a distinct brand image.
It actually matters of creating a brand reputation that creates a feeling of faith with conviction. Trademarks increase CTR in a good way.
Trademark is subject to copyright. You have come up with your own unique trademark that would increase your brand value.
You have to be cautious regarding the use of a trademark. Google has strict rules and regulations regarding this.
You cannot use your competitor’s trademark in your ad copy. If your ad infringes copyright issues then your company can face legal actions.
In the UK, USA, Ireland and Canada trademark laws are quite stringent. If any of those countries ask Google not let their company’s trademark, Google cannot allow anyone to use it.
3. Put an Offer in the Headline
Image Source: Google Search
Who does not want to get something for free? Seasonal offers, discounts, and free gifts are sure shot CTR enhancers.
Free gifts like free eBook, free evaluation, buy one and get one free etc are good for increasing CTR.
Put that special offer in your headline. At the headline, it would work most effectively.
4. Take Out Prices & Ad Discounts
Image Source: Google Search
Do not project the price of the product in the ads. Its presents significantly decrease Price often reminds viewers that they have to spend a lot.
Always project the advantageous side of your product or service in your advertisement. It comes handy when your product is not the cheapest one among its competitors.
Effective way-out is projecting the discounts instead. Projecting what they can save rather what they have to spend, works more like an interesting proposition.
Suppose, instead of saying that a customer has to spend $100, if you say that they can save $20, it would sound more profitable deal.
5. Use the Display URL as Marketing Copy
The domain name comes from the fourth line of the advertisement. This URL signals searcher in what website they would land after clicking on the ads.
It does not have to be the actual address of any page of your site. The root domain and the display URL (where the user goes) have to be same.
For the domain name, Google gives 35 character long spaces that should be utilized. Except the domain name take the rest of the URL as the part of marketing copy.
Product name, features, benefits can be added there. Use of URL like this makes ads more attractive.
6. Ellipses can make viewers click on your ad
Using ellipses in the ad makes the viewer more inquisitive about what more it has to it. These three dots ignite the mind of the viewer to click and look more into it.
It is another weapon of increasing CTR. For example “To make you home termite free read it…”
A termite stricken viewer would definitely click on the ad. Ellipses garner relevant CTR that has possibilities of receiving conversion.
7. Include Your USP
Image Source: Google Search
A catchy line, a one-liner or the tagline of your company works significantly to increase CTR.
It is the like the crux of what the company sells or what it serves. It could also be a unique feature of the service that puts the company apart from its competitors.
USP of a company is a very much important part of marketing practice as well as increasing CTR.
While doing pay-per-click campaign keep the fact in mind that it is a game of probability. Small spenders often bring more profit than big spenders.
These tools help in building a comprehensive campaign.
8. Write Compelling Ads
The headline is the main area of your ads. The headline should be catchy enough to catch the attention of your potential customer.
Usually, visitors have the very low attention span. An ad gets hardly 5-10 seconds to catch the attention. To achieve this within such a short span of time the ad copy should be enough creative and unique.
A compelling ad copy reflects the psychological aspect of the customer. Reading their mind is the most challenging task for an ad creator.
Carefully selected keywords, keeping the need of the market in mind ads must project company’s different offers.
9. Ad-texts should be to-the-point and less elaborative
Do not get so serious about writing ads. Your ad is not going to publish in any journal. The main aim is grabbing attention and for that, you can go the way you want.
There is no such rule that grammatical sensibility has to be maintained in the ad copies. You are open to doing all kinds of experiments in order to create something better than the rest.
If your ad is audible and clearly puts the information across to the visitor that is enough.
10. Put Ads in Testing
Testing is seminal to PPC advertising. Here probability rules the game. So, to make the ad hit the pinnacle you have to keep testing spree alive.
Create different ad copies bearing different messages in headlines and description. Now, check with ad copy is getting more clicks.
If your existing ad is giving very good result then don’t stop there. There is always room for surpassing the previous achievement in PPC. Enhance your ad further for better results.
With making little changes in headlines and description, run the ad for a week. See how ad’s performance improves or goes down side. Only through testing discovering the sweet space for your ads is possible.
11. Focus More on Benefits Rather than Features
Features are the qualities and characteristics of your product or service.
On the other hand, benefits are positive effects that are going to be advantageous for your customers.
If you want to create an ad copy that highly compelling and attracts a majority of clicks, you need to highlight your benefits rather than the features of your product or service.
The customers are more interested in knowing what advantage will they get by purchasing that product or hiring that service. It is the benefit of the product/service that initiates the customer to make a purchase.
12. Have a Clear Call to Action
Image Source: Google Search
Ads must have a clear call to action. Clear call to actions works like an instruction that moves the visitor to act.
It is better to add CTA at the third line of the Advertisement and it should be 35 characters long.
Some example of CTA is ‘call now’, ‘contact us’, ‘download the ebook’, ‘shop now’ etc.
13. Avoid Broad Match Type
While bidding for keywords Google suggests going for broad match keywords. Technically broad match keywords should always be avoided.
Broad match keywords are ideal for bringing more traffic to the website. But they often bring the good amount of irrelevant traffic inflow. Apparently, it looks enticing but it finishes up valuable clicks. In spite of registering good CTR, it fails to generate revenue.
Google, being a good merchant wants his clients to use broad search more. With more traffic clicks would get exhausted quickly and money has to be refilled.
If with the existing setting your ads fetching good sale and revenue then let it be. Such settings, if disturbed, often bring bad results.
Narrow keywords, being exact, brings more relevant search. The keywords here are more product oriented and does not cover a large area of search real estate.
In the case of negative keywords, the reason remains the same. Narrow keywords, consisting of exact match and phrase looks to cater prominent visitors.
14. Low Performing Ads Should Be Restructured
If you already have some low performing ads running, go and overhaul them. Rewrite them by putting right keywords.
But remember, before going for applying a change your ad must go through at least 100 impression shares. See the bounce rate of your website and measure the effectiveness of the ads.
Targeting higher click through rate is always advised, as it ensures getting good conversion and ROI.
15. Introduce Negative Keywords
Using negative keywords increases chances of driving more relevant traffic. These keywords filter irrelevant searches and thus indirectly they reduce the number of unqualified clicks.
Your ad will not appear on a search query if the search term matches one of your listed negative keywords. By stopping your spending on the keywords you have not bid on you can save your budget. On the other hand, by displaying your ad before the qualified users your CTR gets increased.
Though using negative keywords is a standard practice but you need to go through your keywords reports.
[bctt tweet=”Negative keywords stop your ad from appearing on irrelevant search query thus increases CTR. ” username=”adstriangle”]
16. Make Your Brand Image
CTR plays a vital role in building brand image. With increasing click through rate awareness of the product increases; thus a brand image is made.
Many companies, especially of travel industry use big hotel names along with their company name with many variations. They spend money on these keywords to create a brand presence.
In practice of making a brand name the name of the company should come in number one position in the organic SERP. Use of variations increases the chance of capturing a greater audience.
17. Go For Manual Keyword Bidding
Google advises greenhorn advertisers to use Google automatic bidding service. Here Google, keeping companies budget in mind, does the entire job from keyword section to putting bid price.
Google always uses broad match keywords and that actually at the end exhausts all the clicks. It does not bring quality impression share, resulting in low revenue collection and low ROI.
To get an effective CTR manual bidding is always advised. In manual bidding from the selection of keywords to what types of keywords are going to be used are done manually.
You can channelize your money from low performing keywords to high performing keywords. It allows you save a lot and makes advertising more effective.
18. Stop Promoting Low Performing Keywords
Low performing keywords should be stopped at once. Then they not only eat up your budget but also foil the entire campaign.
Keep doing experiments with the ad copy and put emphasize on benefits but not on the features of your product/service.
Be careful about selecting negative keywords that work in keeping bad traffic away.
19. Use Ad Extensions
From 2015 onward ads are using more and more extensions as possible. Ad extensions have made ads more user-friendly and comprehensive.
Site link, Geographical location, call button, offers, and product extensions are fetching more sure shot clicks that convert in the sale.
With the site link extension, a visitor can enter the site or a category of products directly from a search engine.
Geographical location extension helps in locating the service area of a particular service.
Call button allows to the visitor to make direct calls from mobile. Offer extensions allow jumping on that product from a search engine. Use of product extension is same as offer extension.
Extensions are nothing but a further step toward getting accurate CTR and sales. Google does not charge advertiser unless someone clicks on it.
[bctt tweet=”Always use ad extensions to make the ad more comprehensive to the audience.” username=”adstriangle”]
20. Keep Optimizing and Testing with Patience
After 2 weeks or so how the ads are doing. If the results are not as you wanted then start optimizing and keep the testing.
With doing little variations, addition and deletion see how they are performing. Testing hast to be conducted throughout the year in order to enhance the outcome and take it to the next level.
Final Insights
To achieve higher CTR, initiatives should be taken from the very basic level of ad creation. Ads that perform well have their basic things right.
In making ads though process should start before actually start creating the ad. In the initials, stage goal should be set and good and bad things about the company should be distinguished.
Understanding of the potential market along with consumer behavior is important. It can only happen through the joint approach of the company and the PPC agency.
The account manager must understand them and evaluate how the competitor companies are doing.
After that, a good research of keywords should take place along. Money should be spent on high performing keywords by keeping low performers at bay.
Relevancy is big in terms of both keywords and ad copy. Good relevancy increases Quality score that automatically reduces the cost of the advertisement.
Using broad match keywords should always be avoided. Exact match, phrase match, and modified broad match are the need of the hour.
At the end, Google’s newest offering ad extensions should be used accordingly. These extensions add to the advertisement’s relevance.
All the above-mentioned practices need relentless modification with patience, after an interval of one or two weeks. You can always modify your ad as with time search engines behavior changes and so do the preference of customers.
AdWords is a game of patience and practice. A lot of trial and error goes into making a perfect PPC advertisement.