At 1% CTR you’re not even getting an invite!

Let’s compare the three;

• a High-Performing account that dominates every valuable keyword in the market- average 8-10% CTR on Search with 8-10% Conversion Rates.
• a pretty good account that has the basic optimisation techniques applied - average 3% CTR in Search with 3-4% Conversion Rates on average
• the typical campaign that Google will build for you if you don’t know any better. (And we see all too often merrily wasting clients’ money) - average 1% CTR on Search with no Conversion Tracking.

For the same keyword, here’s what happens:

The high performer is in ad position 1 almost every time. Not necessarily because it bids more per click, but because Google knows it’s the most relevant ad and gets the highest CTR. This has been proven over months of consistent performance.

It gets a higher CTR still because it’s the first ad AND is more likely to convert in to a sale because the site, product and price set the benchmark for clicks on subsequent ads.

Psychologically, Google told this searcher that you’re the authority for the keyword, which also increases conversion rates.

In addition, this advertiser uses the Display Network to position their brand during the research phase. The searcher is already aware of the brand, consciously or subconsciously and may have even previously visited the site via a Display ad.

Furthermore, because this campaign shows ads in top positions for every keyword in the market, searchers are likely to see ads multiple times before clicking, also dramatically increasing authority in the brand, CTR and conversion rates.

The optimised campaign achieves third ad position, the ad is relevant and compelling enough. CTR is still strong, which Google respects, but you’re a way off from catching the top spot without some hard work.

Though conversions are still good and profitable, many of these clicks are ‘validation’ clicks. The ad in number one spot is currently favourite and your site has to offer something compelling (better design, better site, better price, more familiar brand) to steal the sale.

You might also be surprised to learn that clicks here are not necessarily cheaper. In fact, because the CTR is lower, there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll cost more. Yes, more than position 1!

This brand is less familiar to the searcher as it is present for a smaller set of keywords. Visibility and frequency during the Search Funnel are lower, compromising authority and trust in the brand and ultimately conversion rates.

The basic campaign typically bids on far too many broad match keywords and has poor structure, often showing less relevant ads than competitors. This results in a low CTR, typically around 1% on Search, showing ads and wasting money on clicks that are completely irrelevant to the business or product or at best, failing to land the visitor on a relevant page, resulting in high bounce rates.

The low CTR demonstrates to Google that what you’re advertising isn’t relevant to the searchers – their customer, remember.

Google wants the most relevant results and you’re not providing them. So Google slowly drops your ad position or will charge you more for the click. If things don’t improve, you’ll find your ads showing less frequently and in increasingly lower positions.

The campaign also targets the Display Network, though unintentionally, failing to have a coherent Display strategy or make use of much more powerful banner ads. This typically delivers little or no value and often wastes budget.

The worst sin of all can usually be discovered lurking in this account – no conversion tracking. You’ve no idea what’s driving sales and enquiries or what’s wasting your budget, making optimisation and increasing ROI much more difficult.

Win, Just take part, or Waste Your Money?

The top campaign will keep on winning the business, the optimised campaign will continue to leave sales and enquiries on the table and the poor cousin is left out in the rain, no doubt deciding that this particular party was a waste of time and effort and won’t bother next time.

More cake for the rest of us!

Understanding the Different Keyword Match Types

There are 3 main types of keywords that you can use in your Google AdWords campaign(s); Broad, phrase and exact matches.

Starting with the simplest, Exact matches only match Searches for that keyword EXACTLY. i.e. the exact match keyword, [blue jacket] will only show your ad if someone types in that precise search term in that order with no additional words. The ad won’t show for plurals, (blue jackets); longer searches, (cheap blue jacket); misspellings (blue jaket); or other Searches containing those words (jacket blue, mans blue jacket).

The safest of the match types, but also significantly restrict coverage of the search market.

Phrase matches will show ads where the Search contains the phrase in that order. The phrase can be preceded or succeeded by additional terms. e.g. the phrase match keyword “blue jacket” would match Searches for cheap blue jacket, mens blue jacket, blue jacket hire, london blue jacket hire.

However, as with Exact Matches, the phrase would NOT match plurals, misspellings or Searches using a different structure; blue formal jacket, blue leather jacket, jacket blue – to show ads for those terms, all of the variations would have to be included separately.

Broad matches will match any Search containing the words in the keyword; blue jacket, jacket blue, mens blue jacket, blue jacket hire.

Broad matches will also expand to match plurals and misspellings; blue jackets, blue jakets, blue jacets. With search frequency so low, obscure searches like these examples are unlikely to match Exact keywords even if you were to bid on them – Google only includes keywords in its index with a reasonable search volume.

Most dangerously, Broad keywords use a contextual matching algorithm, potentially expanding blue to navy or jacket to coat. Potentially then, your Broad match keywords matches Searches for blue overcoat, coat of blue paint, navy mens jackets, mens navy blue parker coats and even ladies jackets.

Care should be taken when using Broad match keywords. However, implemented correctly, Broad match keywords do represent a significant volume of traffic otherwise unavailable with Phrase and Exact matches alone.

Ad Split-Testing

CTR (Click Through Rate – the percentage of clicks on your ad versus the number of times it is displayed) is an important consideration in both traffic volume, Quality Score and ad positions.

One of the ways to achieve a good CTR (upwards of 3%), is to “Split-Test” ad copy.

Ad split-testing is a great way of finding out what your target audience is motivated by. For example, eCommerce stores might test; “Great value blue jackets”, “Wide range of blue jackets” and “Great quality blue jackets” to see which achieves the best CTR.

Ad split-testing never stops. After testing the first set of benefits, it is common to test different headlines or action calls in ad copy. What works best?

In stock now, free delivery OR Free next day delivery
Call now for free advice OR Call now for expert advice OR Call now for a friendly chat
Finest Blue Jackets OR Blue Jackets OR Blue Jacket Sale Now On

(And here’s a tip – you might think you know, but you’ll be surprised at the results).

Once you know which achieve the best CTR and what best motivates your audience, you can reinforce this selling point throughout your marketing strategy.

Conversion Tracking

CTR is an important statistic for both quality score and traffic volume, but the real value to an advertiser is Conversions. A Conversion might be a sale, an enquiry, a registration or a download – whatever is the objective of your campaign.

The tracking code is available in your AdWords account and can be implemented easily with little knowledge of HTML code.

The code is placed on a “goal page”; the page after the event you’re tracking occurs, commonly called a “thank you page”. This might be the page that says, “thanks for sending us a message”, “thanks for registering” or “thanks for your order”, but in all cases, you should only be able to reach this page by completing the Conversion action, or your stats will be completely unreliable.

Why do it? For a successful campaign, it is essential to know the Conversion Rate and most importantly the Cost Per Conversion for every keyword you bid on or every site on the Display Network that drives traffic to your site and for every landing page you might be using.

Armed with Conversion Rates for every keyword, it is far easier to measure the ROI for each of them and to increase spend, optimise or remove them entirely depending on their individual performance.

Without Conversion Tracking, you’re merely paying for traffic with little knowledge of which keywords Convert, and which just waste your budget.

Managing Bids

The maximum CPC (Cost Per Click) bid is a significant factor in the positions that your ads appear in the search results on Search Engines. Ideally, your ads should appear in the top half of the results on the first page (positions one to five).

Managing how much to bid involves analysis of the performance data in your account; what ad position did it achieve, how many Conversions and the Cost Per Conversion are important stats to consider.

You should also pay close attention to conversion rates achieved by ads in higher or lower positions. As a general rule (not ALWAYS true, be careful), ads in the top position convert better than ads lower down. Even though the CPC might be higher, the Conversion Rate is also higher, generally meaning that the overall Cost Per Conversion is lower in top positions than in those in lower positions.

Be especially careful with Broad match bids. The higher you bid, the harder Google will work to show your ad – and also how aggressively it will contextually match your keyword. If you’re not cautious with this, you could end up with some weird and wonderful Searches showing your ads that you really didn’t want to pay for!

It’s more common than you might expect. Luckily, tools in the AdWords account help to understand, measure and resolve the problem; budget.

Example A:

There are 5 keywords that get 1,000 searches a day, a 5% CTR at £1.00 per click (let’s keep the maths simple). This uses all of the £50 per day budget.

Also, for these keywords, we’re getting 90% impression share (ads are showing almost every time for the keyword set).

We want to increase traffic and generate more sales but we’re buying all the clicks we can, so what do we do?

Usual optimisation steps; split test ads to increase CTR, find more relevant keyword variations, increase bids to improve ad positions and CTRs.

The result? More traffic. Excellent.

But wait, conversion rates went DOWN! What happened?

Example B:

As example A, but improved ad copy gets a 10% CTR. Again, keeping the maths simple, the clicks still cost £1.00 and we still have a £50 per day budget. There are still 1,000 searches per day, so we’re using the budget much faster. In fact, we’re now doing so well on CTRs, we could be buying £100 worth of traffic per day.

Here’s what happens (at least sometimes); Search Funnels.

People don’t always buy, enquire or register from the first search or on the first click. Analysing your Search Funnel will reveal how many impressions, how many clicks and how much time it takes from the first ad impression (or first click) to the conversion. Pretty powerful stuff.

Now, let’s say your average conversion needs 3 ad impressions and two clicks to convert and this process takes two days, on average.

Because we increased CTR in Example B, the budget is now too low to show ads for every search. The impression share is now 50% rather than the 90% enjoyed in Example A.

Which means; the customer only has a 50% chance of seeing ad impression #2 and a further 50% chance again of seeing ad #3 to complete the average conversion path. That’s a 25% chance of completing the Search Funnel, in case you’re not paying attention.

Because there’s only 25% completing the impressions and clicks required to convert, the conversions drop.

Now here’s a difficult decision. Conversion costs went up and to fix it needs some guts; increase the budget. It sounds counter-intuitive. It sounds insane. But it’s necessary if you want to convert those clicks in to sales.

An alternative might be to reduce geographic coverage using location targeting for a short time to prove the theory. A higher impression share for a limited audience would also work, gradually increasing the budget and the geography together whilst maintaining high impression share.

The same result occurs if the keyword set is increased, or search volume naturally increases because it’s Christmas or Summer or some other reason.

If keyword increases are the cause, there’s a solution that requires less of a leap of faith; reduce the keyword set a little, gradually increasing the budget and the keyword set to prove it as you go.

If you can’t measure the success of your campaign, how on earth can you make sure it’s effective?

Conversion Tracking is one of the most common points we have to explain to clients that are new to advertising online (and even some that aren’t). Simply implementing conversion tracking will provide invaluable data in your account, but there are more options you can use that you might not be aware of.

The most criminal point – the function comes free with your AdWords account, it just needs to be implemented.

What is a conversion?

If you’re new to advertising, we use the term, “conversion” to describe the objective of a campaign. This might be a phone call, or a sign up to a newsletter, a download of a guide like our one, use of a contact form, or for an eCommerce store and conversion would be a sale.

Why it is important

Once you have conversion tracking implemented correctly, you’ll see some additional columns pop up in your account; Conversions, Conversion Rate and Cost Per Conversion. This data is then available for the whole account, each campaign, each ad group and most importantly every single referring site from the Display Network and every single keyword in a Search Campaign.

You’ll be able to measure the cost of every conversion from every keyword in your account.

If you’re spending any amount of money on clicks or on SEO, this level of detailed analysis is essential.

How it works

Think of it as a simple process with an end goal; Click ad > browse site > conversion (fill in form, buy something or call) > “thank you” page.

The most important point here is that the goal or “thank you” page comes AFTER the conversion.
Only on this goal page, you add the conversion tracking code.

To generate the tracking code from your AdWords account, go to the Reports Tab, click “Conversion Tracking” and follow the prompts. You might need a friendly developer to add it in for you if you’re unsure.

eCommerce Options

If you operate an eCommerce store and you’re a little more technical, you should implement the value tracking too. With this method, not only can you track the number of conversions for every keyword and the average cost per conversion, you’ll also see the total and average value of the transactions. You’ll be able to directly measure the ROI from each and every keyword in your account and each and every referring site on the Display Network and optimise your account performance far more effectively.

You’ll most likely need a developer for this type of functionality. Full instructions are here.

Google adopted the Yahoo!-style predictive search a little while back. What it actually does is to help narrow the search market – less search terms means greater volume on the most popular searches. This also makes those search terms even more competitive, pushing up the CPCs and of course, Google’s revenue.

Showing dynamic results as you type or pick from the predicted searches is a little helpful to a user, but Google’s relevance engine still has to decide which result to rank where whether that’s paid or organic. It doesn’t look like that algorithm will change significantly.

Impact on Search Engine Optimisation

Mike Jones, our resident SEO guru says: “The impact of Google Instant on SEO campaigns has mixed views from the SEO community. Due to the added level of refinement that is offered to the searcher, the potential for any given search to return the same set of results is much lower – particularly as Instant takes into account browsing history.

The Death of the Long Tail

On the one hand it means the volume of “long tail keywords” might decrease because there’s more volume in the popular terms. Advertisers will have to work harder to compete on a smaller number of more popular terms with more traffic – making ad copy and CTR even more important to a successful campaign. On the other hand, searchers needing a more specific result that isn’t satisfied by Google’s prediction type longer search terms. It could be argued that they’re then even more valuable searches. That’s certainly the case right now – we regularly see far greater conversion rates and therefore lower costs with longer tail terms.

Questions Answered

A couple of questions we’ve been asked;

1. How does Google count AdWords impressions with Instant results? Google only counts an impression if an ad is shown for 3 seconds or more, which excludes the vast majority of those that show briefly as you type. You won’t suddenly see a huge increase in impressions in your AdWords account.

2. Where did the Wonder Wheel go? If you disable Instant, you’ll see Wonder Wheel right where it was before.

If you don’t already have conversion tracking implemented correctly, you’ll need to resolve that to make use of Search Funnels.

You can find Search Funnels for your account on the Reports tab on the Conversions page in the left navigation.

This is a pretty simple premise, but scratch the surface and there’s a rich seam of data. Here’s the low-down:

By default, you’ll be shown the last 30 days’ data, but you can change the date range as you might expect. If yours is a longer sales cycle, looking at the most recent data might skew your results and analysis, so factor that in.

Aside from the number of conversions, there are three interesting figures here; average ad impressions to conversion, average ad clicks to conversion and most importantly, average days to conversion. This last one surprised us when we first got access to this data, which will vary depending on your product or service, the market competition, the cost/value and of course the keywords that you bid on and the overall performance of your campaigns.

Knowing that visitors typically click more than one ad also puts some context to the performance of specific keywords. We’re often asked, “why not bid only on those keywords that convert most effectively?” This data helps to demonstrate that the conversion is often achieved through more than just one keyword and one click.

The conversion is only allocated to the last click – take away those search terms that position your offer through the search funnel and your offer loses some of its impact. Take away the frequency of your ad being seen for every relevant search and your CTR and conversion rates go down and the cost per conversion more likely to rise rather than decrease as you might expect.

In short, if your ad appears consistently for each of four relevant searches, and your competitor only appears once or twice, it is more likely that you’ll get the click AND the conversion rather than your competitor. It’s the cumulation of seeing your ad multiple times that wins the game, not one search, one ad one click (wouldn’t that be so much simpler?).

The knowledge that customers take a number of days to convert also helps to build a strategy to address that conversion rate. In this example, an average 5-day funnel suggests that remarketing should influence the rate at which visitors return and also position your site more firmly in their memory when they make that decision to buy or enquire.

There really is enough science and psychology to write a book, but to summarise:

• Conversion tracking is required to use Search Funnels
• Analyse a date range that ends before your average days to conversion to avoid mis-diagnosis
• Investigate paths to understand what visitors search for before they convert
• Build this knowledge in to your strategy using the other tools at your disposal such as remarketing and Content Network campaigns.

It can be done, but you can’t rely on AdWords or organic placement alone – a web site and more specifically the pages you land a visitor on need to work hard to convert that visitor in to a sale or an enquiry.

We use Google Website Optimiser to test landing page variations to improve conversion rates. This is a free Google tool that does the hard work for you.

You’ll need the ability to add some code and make page changes on your site. Your friendly developer or coder should find it easy enough.

How To Implement a Website Optimiser Experiment

Firstly, you need to create and upload at least one variation of your original landing page to your server (we’d recommend 2-3 variations for the best results). Try different headlines, or different copy, or different images, or even a different layout. We’d recommend testing just one element at a time though, otherwise it might be difficult to isolate the reason why one variation performed better than another.

Next, create an experiment specifying the original landing page, the URL of the variants and the conversion page. Website Optimiser then provides the codes that need to be installed on each page. Once added and verified, start the experiment.

How it Works

When a visitor lands on your original page, the code will redirect them to one of the variations, spreading the traffic evenly amongst them during the experiment. The source of this traffic isn’t important, whether it’s from AdWords, Facebook, Yahoo!, Bing, organic placement or your email marketing.

It takes some time. Depending on how much traffic visits the landing page you’re testing, it could take days, weeks, or in some cases, months, particularly if you’re testing minor variations. Wait until enough data has passed through the experiment to pick a clear winner or a clear loser.

A graph illustrates the conversion rate of each page as the experiment proceeds. This is annotated with the percentage chance of that page beating your original. Eventually, you will find out which page performs the best and produces the best conversion rate.

Once you have the data, knowing which page performs best is great, but it is more important to understand the reason why, so take care when creating page variations. Finally, make this page your original and you can start testing new variations to improve performance further.

Website Optimiser: The Point

The point of the Website Optimiser is to test and measure variations of web pages to see which produce the best results. You can experiment with different fonts, images, text, videos and more. The aim is to increase your conversion rate, thereby decreasing your cost per acquisition.

In a recent project, we’ve seen a 20.9% improvement in overall conversion rates after two experiments on a single landing page.

What it Means for Profitability

Getting a higher conversion rate means a lower cost per conversion, which means more sales or enquiries for your budget.

It also means that you can afford to bid more per click than your competitors because you know that your cost per conversion will still be lower. Your ads will be in higher positions where there are more clicks and more sales and enquiries.

With a predictable conversion rate, you can afford to increase your budget to buy more quality traffic and you’re on your way to dominating your chosen market.

What is Remarketing?

Remarketing is a new weapon in the Google Adwords advertiser’s arsenal and one that you really should consider using.

The premise is that if a visitor comes to your site, but doesn’t purchase, sign up or perform whatever is considered a conversion, then Google will start to re-show them your ads, wherever they are on the Google network, until they convert.

How does it work?

First of all, you need to create set of Javascript remarketing tags in your AdWords account. One tag goes on every page, for example, and the other goes on your conversion pages. Every time a customer visits one of your pages they will be tagged, whether they came through Adwords or not.

In this example, you’ll now have two audiences; ‘visitors’ and ‘converters’. You can now show ads across the Content Network to a specific audience or create a custom combination – a group of visitors that includes everyone who visited the site, but excludes those that contacted you or bought something, for example.

This group becomes your market for an audience targeted content campaign. Upload a mixture of text and display ads to keep your brand front-of-mind, positioning you firmly when the buying decision is made.

Important point though – ads in your campaign will target the audience, not the content they are reading. This also means that you can understand where your audience lives on the web and use that data in a separate Content campaign to raise the profile of your brand and drive new visitors to your site.

What’s the thinking behind it?

The reasoning here is that, especially if you are selling items or services with a longer buying cycle, you’ll benefit from reminding them of your brand, product or service. For instance, if you are selling a high ticket product or service or a long term commitment, they may take a while to actually decide. Remarketing ads help to positively influence the choice between you and your competitors.

Does It Work?

Yes. We’ve been running remarketing campaigns for a number of our clients’ campaigns with some great display ads. Early stats show the cost per conversion to be 35% less than the account average and conversion rates 100% higher.

Ask a Google AdWords Professional about this

There’s a lot more science and sales psychology behind visitor behaviour, but here are the most common visitors turn-offs that you should be able to address.

1. Navigation. Make it easy and clear for me to find what I’m looking for. Too many options is no option at all, so keep it short and logical and use sub-sections if necessary. If you’ve 1001 products or services, why not let me navigate by problem, not your solution – I may not even know what the solution is yet.
2. Search - if there are lots of products, give me a neat search box so I can type, but give me some sensible results. The search function needs to be intelligent enough to understand that boxes=box and even that 12mm might well mean the same as 12 – if you have no results give me some other method of finding what I need, perhaps a product filter or maybe just get me to pick up the phone and ask.
3. Page loading times. Those pretty images might look great full screen, but squeezing them in to a small frame means my browser will have to download the whole image (5-10secs) and then resize it – 10 images would take over a minute! Resize the images before you put them on your site and include larger versions that I can view if it is important.
4. Broken links. Nothing worse than clicking a link and finding that it’s dead is a surefire way to get visitors to leave or at least begin to mistrust you. Check links on your site regularly, or find a broken link checker online to do it for you.
5. Too many similar products. Giving me too many options will most likely confuse me. If I can’t tell the relative benefits between two or three different products, I’ll probably buy none of them. How about you let me order those products by price, or size or filter according to some criteria?
6. Too little information. I found the product I need and now I’m ready to buy. Is it in stock? When will I get it? And the number one pet hate, “How much is delivery?”. Please don’t hide it away and make me search for it, I’ll tire in my search and leave. Putting it in the checkout process won’t help either, I’ll just feel like you’re trying to cheat me and leave anyway. Be clear about your shipping policy and price and honour your promise.
7. I need some help. How do I contact you? Where’s your phone number? If your primary goal is for me to pick up the phone and talk to you, don’t make me search for your number on a contact page somewhere. If you want me to pick up the phone, make your number big and prominent (top left of the screen and at the end of your content as a call to action are usually the best places). There’s a rule that fits most situations: tell me (succinctly) why I should do something, show me evidence of why and then make it easy to take action.

Ask a Marketing Professional about this