How To Improve Your Adwords CTR

In this post will shall be discussing certain tips to help you improve your Adwords click-through rate (CTR). But before we do that let us discuss what Adwords and CTR is all about.

What is Adwords?

Adwords is an online advertisement service from Google where advertisers pay to display their advertisements on Google and their Partner websites.

What is CTR?

In terms of Online Advertising, a Click Through Rate (CTR) can be defined as the ratio between the number of times an advertisement is clicked to the total number of times the advertisement is viewed.

Adwords offers various options on pricing advertisement inventory to advertisers. The principal among them include:

1. CPM: CPM stands for Cost per Mile (thousand impressions). Under the CPM system the pricing is based on a fixed rate per thousand impressions. Thus the advertisers pay a fixed amount per thousand impression their ad receives; irrespective of the number of clicks the ad generates.

2. CPC: CPC stands for Cost per Click. Under the CPC system the pricing is based on a fixed rate per click. Thus the payment made by the advertisers is based on the number of clicks the ads receive. A CTR rate is relevant for advertisers who bid on the Cost per Click system for their ad inventory.

Lets us now discuss the ways in which we can improve our Adwords CTR..

If you have come across a good sales copy, you would have noticed that it incorporates a “Call to Action“. This could be something as simple as “Buy Now!” or “Try Us Today.”

So why not go the same way and implement a “call to action” to your AdWords campaign as well?

A ‘Call to Action‘ induces customers to ‘do‘ what you ‘want them to do‘. Use words such as

– Call

– Buy

– Subscribe

– Donate

All of them encourage users to take action. By simply adding the word ‘Now‘ after these, you induce an immediate response on the part of your customers.

You can also create a sense of urgency by using phrases such as:

– Offer Ends Today

– Only 10 Left

If you look at some good AdWords ads, you will find that they mention phrases like “sale” or even better something like a “30% off” in their ads.

Why?

Ever since the barter system died and capitalism took over, people have loved sales. Why argue with a system that has worked so well since long before you were born? Discounts have always been effective in turning simple ‘needs‘ into ‘demand‘ and in inducing people to act.

Bid for Relevant Keywords 

There is a belief with most Adwords users that bidding for more keywords simply translates into more clicks on their ads. This is however not true and in fact, by bidding for irrelevant keywords your Adwords campaign can go awfully wrong.

The right way to proceed is to keep the number of keywords that you bid upon – small but relevant. Take this example:

You wish to sell new white sedans, and place a bid on all three keywords: “new”, “white” and “sedan.” Little B searches for the term ‘white’ on Google and ends us seeing your ad.

 The important thing here is to understand that if someone searches for ‘white’, they are most likely not thinking about buying a sedan. Instead, bid on “new sedan”, “white sedan” and “new white sedan.” This will deliver your ad on relevant Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), and relevancy always helps CTR.

Use Negative Keywords.

We continue with the previous example. Let’s say you don’t want your ad to show up when people search for “old white sedan” or “used white sedan.”

 Google allows you to incorporate negative keywords to your advertising campaign. All you need to do is to incorporate the following negative keywords “used” and “old” to your campaign. This would prevent your ads from showing up with these keywords prompts. Thus your ads will only be shown only to those individuals who are likely to find your services relevant to their needs.

Read this resource on how you can add negative keywords to your Adwords Campaign.

Which is more easier to read? “mywebsitesellsgoodthingsatcheapprices.com” or “MyWebsiteSellsGoodThingsAtCheapPrices.com”

This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but unless the abbreviation is common knowledge, like CD or TV, you shouldn’t use one. For example, you sell exchange-trade funds – commonly abbreviated as ETFs in the financial world. Well, there aren’t many other uses of ETF in the financial realm, right? Wrong!

Even in the financial realm, ETF can stand for Electronic Transfer of Funds, Emerging Markets Telecommunications and Early Termination Fee. So, when you see “ETF”, you wonder which ETF does the advertiser mean? Either use context clues, or nix the abbreviation entirely.

I hope with these tips you would be able to generate better Click Through Rates from your Adword ads and thus make your campaign a success.