At ReavHealth.com we have spent a lot of time working on CPC campaigns and we are always looking for ways to increase our click-through rates without increasing our costs. The bulk of what we do involves tweaking ad text and adjusting bids to reflect the revenue potential of the keywords. However, there is one method that we have found to be an effective means of increasing CTR that requires remarkably little effort, and that is to maximise the physical presence of your advert on the page.
Advertising pricing is normally based on two factors: size and placement. Both of these factors attempt to price ads based on potential viewer attention – the more attention a placement is likely the get the more it costs. Size is simple, the bigger the advert the more it costs. Placement is slightly more complicated but works on the same principle. In traditional print advertising we tend to see the following pattern:
- Front of the publication is more expensive than the back
- Right page is more expensive than left
- Top is more expensive than bottom
In creating an effective advertising bidding market place, Google and the other search engines have tried to simplify this by eliminating the size variable. They give advertisers very prescriptive maximum lengths for their adverts which ostensibly create an even playing field for a position only pricing model.
This creates the illusion to advertisers starting a PPC campaign that the ad size is fixed and is not a factor to be taken into consideration. However, at RevaHealth.com we have come to realize that spending some time focusing on the size of the ad is one of the easiest ways to increase CTR without increasing our bids.
How to Maximise your use of Space
- Line Length. Google gives you 25 characters for your title, 70 characters for the body and 35 characters for the URL. USE THEM ALL! Every character you use increases the size of your ad and therefore attracts more attention than if you don’t use all of the available space. This is particularly important if your ad is going to appear in the premium sponsored positions above Google’s search results rather than in the right hand column.
- Bolding. If the keywords a user is searching for are repeated in your ad, then they will automatically be bolded when Google displays it. Bolded words attract more attention than normal words, and increased attention equals increased CTR. Our internal guidelines look to repeat the keywords at least once in the title, once in the body and once in the display URL.
- Use Capitals. Each capital letter you use increases visitor attention. Google does not allow you to use capitals letters for everything, but they do allow you to start each word with one, and this is our policy.
Worked Example
The following three sponsored listings were returned when I searched for ‘Dentists Hungary’ in Google. Our advert appears in 3rd position, however because of its effective use of the allowed real estate it achieves a higher CTR than its position would normally merit.
Dentists in Hungary
www.Access-Smile.ie/Hungary Irish Company, Consultation Ireland Full no quibble treatment guarantee
Dentists in Budapest
www.dacadia.eu Save up to 60% on you dental treatment and enjoy the vacation
Find Dentists In Hungary
Dentists.RevaHealth.com/Hungary Huge Choice Of Dentists In Hungary New Pics, Prices, Maps, Free Quotes
Analysis
When you analyse each ad the objective differences become obvious. Our Advert uses more of the available space in each metric.
| Access Smile | Dacadia | RevaHealth.com | |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Characters in Title | 19 | 20 | 24 |
| # Characters in Body | 70 | 61 | 70 |
| # Characters in URL | 28 | 14 | 31 |
| # Bolded Words | 3 | 1 | 6 |
| # Of Capital Letters | 10 | 3 | 20 |
A word of warning – while it is important to effectively use the space provided you must never take your eye off of your messaging. You use of the space and bolding keywords may attract the visitors attention, however if your call to action is poor they will never click on the advert.
[...] Your AdWords Account Stuff we’ve learned Add comments Following on from Caelen’s post about increasing your AdWords CTR for free, I’m going to be sharing a few tips with you about the things we’ve learned since starting our [...]
[...] some very useful posts on the RevaHealth Blog about managing your Google Adwords campaign and increasing your Click through Rate. This got me thinking about how we use Adwords and I though I’d write about my own [...]
Dear whoever wrote this blog entry,
I just happened to stumble upon this blog entry and thought it warranted a bit of feedback. To begin with, every good salesman knows that it is never a good idea to criticize a customer; if you thought you could add value to our relationship with constructive critique, then you could have contacted me directly instead of letting me accidentally find out that you are trying to promote your own ‘expertise’ by calling me a bad example.
By picking my AdWords ad as a bad example you are actually confusing apples and oranges, because you seem to be under the impression that my only aim is to maximize my CTR, which it is not.
I agree that it might be beneficial if a word or phrase in an AdWords ad appears in bold, especially in the headline, but I always manage to find other activities with a higher pay-off to my business than spending time on writing more ad variations. This is where our agreement ends, because my AdWords ad is intentionally written as short and precise as possible, because the important thing for me is to communicate my key points.
As a lot of website owners are following the crowd by character-spamming their AdWords ads they are providing me a good opportunity to stick out by using reader friendly chunk sizes. When somebody skim down the list of ads, then the brain needs much longer to decode a character-spammed message, especially if the second body line is dependent on the first to make sense. If you read the headline and any one of the two body lines then it may not be good grammar, but it provides the brain sufficient information to get one of my two points; save money by visiting a dentist in Budapest & combine your dental treatment in Budapest with a vacation.
My aim is getting the highest ROI from the money I spend on online marketing, which is why my focus is on conversion rate, not CTR. If I do a good job with my website marketing, then visitors hit the Send-RFI-button when they are ready to discuss whether I should be the one organizing their dental treatment abroad. This is also why spending an hour polishing and improving my website takes priority over fiddling an hour with AdWords ad alternatives. Most of the time I spend on AdWords administration is on adjusting my bidding to make sure that my ad positions stay within my target ranges and that my campaigns do not over-heat with too high CTR.
Since I am selling a service that requires significant consideration and commitment on behalf of my potential clients then quality leads are of high value to me and something I am willing to pay you good money for. A quality lead is a potential client who is as far ahead in the decision making process as possible, because then I have to spend less time educating and qualifying him/her and can focus my time and efforts on differentiating myself from the other providers that may be under consideration and, of course, close the deal.
I signed up as an advertiser on RevaHealth based on a promise of high quality leads, so I have agreed with my account manager that I will try out your service for a while to see whether you provide me a profitable addition to my marketing activities with AdWords.
If your focus has changed from selling me quality leads to attracting visitors in volume and thereby getting as many RFI forms filled out as possible, then you are on your way to bastardize your product for short term profit. If your aim is quantity over quality, then you end up exclusively sending unqualified leads my way which means that I have to spend a lot of extra time on providing shoppers with basic information on what dental travel is about – information they get if they go directly to my website and which they should get on your website before they fill out an RFI form that you send to me at a cost.
The price per RFI from my own website through AdWords is 60% higher than what I pay per RFI from RevaHealth, but my conversion rate and ROI are still significantly higher, the sales cycle (days from RFI to commitment) is about 80% shorter and I spend less than half the time on communicating with a potential client before I get their commitment. If you forget that you are competing against Google for my marketing money, then you are well on your way to loose share of my budget. If you provide me value for my money then I pay, but I don’t need your help to pimp my AdWords and definitely not to attract casual shoppers that I could get much cheaper if I increased my bidding on Google to maximize my CTR.
Best regards,
Thomas Søndergaard
General Manager, Dacadia Ltd.
http://www.dacadia.eu
[...] How To Improve Your AdWords CTR For Free – RevaHealth [...]
,..] blog.revahealth.com is one great source of information on this issue,..]