Ad Copy Testing - The Right Way

Too many of my clients come to me with only one ad running in their ad groups. Google provides you with such an easy-to-use benefit testing, why not use it? It's such an easy way to find out which of your company specific benefits are the most attractive to users, as compared to asking them (users lie!) with lengthy surveys (which only a few users will fill out.)

Here's how you set up a basic test:

1. Take your ad, copy and paste it twice.
2. Change one element in each of the new copied ads.
3. ONLY change one element. If you change the headline, the display URL, and a description line, you'll never know what worked!
4. Set your campaign settings to rotate (only available in Adwords...)
5. Wait a while!

Some say that quality score of older ads will affect this test's validity. If you are worried about that, copy your current ad again, and pause the ad that has history. If you are constantly rotating ads, quality score should not affect the test very much.

What should you change in your ad?

One of the simplest ways to get ideas of what to advertise is to look at your competitors. If everyone is advertising 50% off and you're advertising 30% off, don't be surprised if your CTR suffers. Try to stand out or at least keep up with what everyone else is doing.

Tricks to Win More Google Ad Real Estate:

1. Use Google Checkout. The Google Checkout logo instantly makes any ad stand out. They are also now beta testing including promotional text on the Google Checkout graphic like "Free Shipping" and "$30 Off." Maybe something we'll see in the future for everyone?
2. Submit your products to Google Base. There was a private beta released recently to include a line of text under an advertiser's ad that states "clear here to view more products."
3. Target geographically. If you are targeting on the City or State level, your ads will include the state underneath it.

Aimy's Magic Checkboxes, Landing Page Recommendations

As a landing page recommendations specialist, the most common recommendation I make to my clients is to display their key benefits simply and quickly on their landing pages. This approach answers the question, "Why should I buy this product I'm searching for from this company, rather than someone else?"

I can't tell you the number of times my client has had spectacular company policies, like 60 day money back guarantees, free return shipping, or price matching, and you could not find a single mention of them on the landing page.

That is when I invented "Aimy's Magic Checkboxes" which is basically a bulleted list of these key benefits. I use checkboxes, some user stars or arrows, but it's the easiest way I can find to communicate the information that users need to know within the first few seconds of their visit to the landing page. In my tests, simple changes to the header like adding checkboxes and a directive call-to-action header doubled sales.

Here's a list of other common landing page recommendations I make:

1. Build trust with your users with trust certificates, testimonials, and prominent company information. There's still lots of scammy sites out there, and you do not want to be confused as one of them.
2. Make the next action for the user very clear with large shiny, colorful buttons (trust me, they work!)
3. Break up large blocks of text into short, easy-to-read statements and lists. This works well for initial impressions. However, never sacrifice quality selling copy. Great copy is the best asset a marketer has.
4. Provide a real benefit to your users for them to submit their contact information to you -- and tell them when they're going to get it! Too many sites simply have a box that says "sign up for our newsletter" without actually giving the user any value. Offer special discounts, free shipping, or personalized service to those who sign up.
5. Have one goal and stick to it! Landing pages often try to accomplish too much and lose conversions along the way. Having only one goal for your page helps you focus in and create more accurate tests in the future.

Introduction to Bidding Strategies

All the major search networks we advertise on are based on an auction system, which means you have to bid for keywords in order to determine your ad positions.

There are three main strategies for bidding:

Positioning

Since your positioning is determined by your bid, an important aspect of bidding is targeting certain positions. In Google, positions 1 - 3 are at the top of the page, where positions 4 - 11 are on the side.

The number of available positions varies on the nature of the keyword. Informational search queries like “Information about Cancer” will have 1 or no ads, where as commercial or shopping related queries like “Sony TV” will have 11 per page. On average, there are about 8 ads per search query.

Deciding where you want to appear on this list will determine your bidding strategy. While top positions can get you a lot of clicks, they are often not the best return on investment. On the other hand, anything lower than about 7 will probably make you lose out on a lot of potential customers.

Cost-per-conversion

Another way to adjust bids is to reach a certain cost-per-conversion. A “conversion” is an action performed by a user that makes the advertising successful. For example, a conversion could be a sale of a product or filling out a form to get more information about a service. 

If you can determine what a good cost-per-conversion will be, you can adjust your bids around this number. Any keywords producing at a high cost per conversion will be bid down on, while any keywords below this number could be bid up on to possibly gain some more traffic and sales.

Budget management

You can also manage your bids based on budget management. If your budget is unlimited and your main goal is to drive traffic for your site, you would want to bid for top positions in order to gain the most traffic possible. In the opposite case, you would bid down in order to save money. This is more common for low priority products or services that you just want some advertising visibility on.

Since the market is always changing due to seasonality, introduction or departure of competitors in the market place, or modifications to Google's software, you need to adjust bids regularly.

How to Install Google Adwords Conversion Tracking On...

This is my first entry covering how to install Google Adwords conversion tracking and dynamic conversion tracking on many popular shopping carts.

I hope this is of benefit. Please comment with more information or shopping cart requests!

Yahoo Store

You have to create a Security Key at some point in this process.

1. Login

2. Go to checkout manager

3. Put the code in “confirmation page message”

InstanteStore

1. Once you login to the control panel you see a bunch of links

2. Under "advanced settings", "Other", there is a link that says "Useful Tools"

3. Under Useful tools there is one called "Order Conversion Tracking"

* Need special access to use this tool

Volusion

Please see http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=339

1. Edit Web Site text or quick edit the confirmation page.

2. LiveEditFile Editor, edit template, end of

X-Cart

1. Login

2. Edit templates

3. The confirmation page is in /customer/main/order_message.tpl

If it’s a new version there is a Google Analytics module that you can add your code id and check off e-commerce variables.