 |
5 Ideas for A/B Testing Your PPC Ad TextPosted by Amber on March 20, 2007 in Ad Texts |
With the new algorithm changes from Google and Yahoo!, having a good quality score is an added challenge in the PPC world; and your ad text is a big part of having a great quality score. Here are five tips I have used personally that helped me gain control of my accounts through ad text testing.
1. Call to action: Speaking with Google and Yahoo! frequently, they suggest that when leading customers to a page where they need to fill out a form or download a whitepaper, tell the customers they also will do this in your ad text. For example, “Download our whitepaper on e-mail marketing today.” That way, users know what they’re getting into before they click. I think it’s a great idea if you’re working for conversions; if you’re just driving clicks, it may turn someone away. Use your “calls to action” wisely. This test seems to be working on some of my accounts. Nothing dramatic yet, though.
2. Keyword smothering: Yahoo! has been adamant about having your keywords smothered in your ad text title, short description, long description, and URL in order to get a great quality score. These guidelines make it harder to get creative and pull people in. I tested Yahoo!’s theory on keyword smothering. In one instance, I cleared stats for all three of my ad texts for one ad group. The first one had my keyword in every line of my text, including my URL. The second had just one instance of my keyword. Number three had the keyword in only the title and URL. The results? Strangely enough, the third ad text had a click-through rate (CTR) of 1.19%. The first ad text, with the keyword smothered, had a CTR of .93%. The second, with only one instance of my keyword, had a CTR of 0.55%. Since this seemed to prove Google and Yahoo! wrong for the time being, I will be testing this theory more in the future. But it’s something to try for yourself.
3. Dynamic ad text: Make sure you learn how to use dynamic ad text correctly before putting it into place or your ads could look strange to the user. If you have a lot of different types of keywords within one ad group, this is the best time to use dynamic ad text testing—although if you have many different keywords in one ad group, they should really be broken out into separate ad groups, but that’s another discussion. In four out of five cases in which I have tested dynamic ad text, it proved to work better than non-dynamic ad text—although I don’t usually use dynamic ad text in the descriptions, only in the title. I feel the user may catch on to our logic, and then be turned off.
4. Get creative: Take a look at your competitors’ ads. Are they just like yours? If you’re testing, you shouldn’t be afraid to get creative. You want to find the ad that works best, right? Use punctuation if you can, such as question marks or exclamation points. But most of all, get into your customers head and think of some words that might catch their attention. Marketing studies show that men tend to follow high-tech buzz words, while women are looking for deals.
5. Numbers: I’ve heard this has worked for some people but not others. Putting phone numbers in your ad text just might help your click-through rates. Some people may be looking online just to find a phone number. This might catch their attention and they may possibly click through. Or the number might just catch someone’s attention more than another ad does. You can also put in percentages or money values. I have an ad that consistently performs better and the text goes something like this: Over 40% of e-mails don’t reach the in-box. If something is on sale, put the sale price in the text. For example: Personalized Vases on Sale, $24.99. You get the point.
My point overall is that perhaps smothering your keywords in your ad text won’t always do the trick. In my experience, when I get creative is when I see the majority of my ads performing better.
- Let Google Write Your Ad Texts! Now in Beta.
- A Few Easy Steps to Optimize Your Account Quickly
- Ad Text Testing – a PPC Manager’s Constant Friend and Companion
- 4 Tips For Getting Out Of Your PPC Rut
- 4 Ways to Enhance Your Performance in Yahoo!’s Panama
April 29th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
[...] You should be testing your ad text (with A/B testing) in order to determine the best message for your target audience. To run a fair, balanced test between two or more ad texts you need to rotate them evenly, giving each ad a chance to prove its salt. In order to make sure your ads are displaying evenly you need to make sure that your ‘optimize ads’ setting is set to ‘no.’ Optimizing your ads is a default setting within Panama when you open a new account or migrate from an old one. To turn off the ad optimizer tool just go into your campaign tab, check every ad group that you want to conduct testing within, click the “Optimize Ads” button, and answer ‘no’ to “Optimize Ad Display.” [...]
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:37 pm
[...] Begin/continue ad text testing. Even if you feel you have an advertisement that is your clear winner, you can always find ways to enhance your message and speak to your audience. [...]
October 15th, 2007 at 11:46 am
[...] DKI is a helpful tool. Simply using DKI does not automatically improve your quality score. Crafting your ad texts so that they are relevant and appealing to your audience (and you may utilize DKI to this effect), will increase your click-through rate, which can have a positive impact on your Quality Score. [...]
September 27th, 2008 at 11:54 am
[...] Continuously perform A/B testing of ads (PPC Hero) Even if Google AdWords shows “Great” Quality Score status, there is still room for [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 7:50 am
[...] this first round of copy can be tricky. I like to start with a test element in mind. There are a lot of things you can test, but generally I find the headline gets you the most bang for your buck, so it’s probably a good [...]
January 20th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
This was very useful. I’ve been wondering about the phone number in the ad. It might cost less, but you could also lose the analytics data if there’s no click-through.