Google announced in January 2005 significant changes in their popular AdWords Pay-per-Click System (PPC). In future only unique URLs per page will be displayed. If several advertisers uses the same URL (i.e affiliates of the same program), only the one with the best Ad will be displayed. It is obvious that Google is trying to maximize the diversity in their AdWords results. Very popular Affiliate Programs, like Amazon.com, lead to hundreds of affiliates showing the same product with different Ads. For the affiliates using this system the "easy way to get money with affiliate programs" is now over, since it will be practically impossible to advertise just the affiliate link. Significant more effort, but also significant changes are the consequence. The following tips can help you to get maximum benefit of your AdWords Campaigns. 1) Build your own unique "landing page" for your product. Remember that 99% of Internet users are looking for Information and thus, expect unique content from your side. Include Product pictures, Product reviews and interesting content related with your product. Use illustrative images of your product, trying to keep the load time of your "landing page" low. 2) Include a form allowing the visitor to enter his/her e-mail address in order to get more information about the product or service you are selling. Do not sell, pre-sell. Try to build a long term "trused relationship" with your visitor. Offer free gifts or freebies to motivate your visitor to enter his/her e-mail address. Of course, consider this information confidentially. Use an autoresponder to follow-up your potential customer. You could dedicate one e-mail to describe your product or service in detail, enhancing the value for your potential customer. Explain why this product or service will add value. 3) User Ad Groups to manage "keyword families". Each Ad Group should be dedicated only to one Keyword family, i.e. all variants of a Keyword choosen to advertise your product. Example, if your Keyword is "shoes", try a Ad Group with "Blue Shoes", "Red Shoes", "Mountain shoes" and so on. Use Wordtracker.com to find Keyword families. Use a high number of negative keywords to avoids clicks with no sales (i.e. -free to prevent freebies seekers to click on your ad). With the time, create a good number of selected negative keywords for your campaign. 4) Include in the text of your Ad the Keyword choosen in 3) This (key)word will be printed highlighted and will lead to a higher CTR (Click Thru Rate), lowering your costs. 5) Include in the text of your Ad a line for the Benefit of your Product, i.e. Discount, short term opportunity. Explain in few words why the customer should click your Ad. 6) Mention explicitely the price of your product or service. This will prevent freebies seekers to click on your Ad and generate costs and no sales 7) Create at least 20 different Ad versions per Keyword Group. Monitor the CTR of each ad and finally delete all versions with low CTR, keeping the most successful Ad versions. Experts create usually hundred of variations. Experiment, test, evaluate, change and keep only the best results. 8) Exclude the "content search" option to reach highly targeted traffic. Only in the case you have an amazing conversion rate, activate this option to maximize your profits. 9) Calculate the value per visitor on a regular basis. Just divide the achieved earnings in a given period (i.e. weekly) thru the clicks in the same period. This is your maxium CPC (Cost per Click). Adjust your maximum bid accordingly. Try to maximize profits, not just to lower the CPC. 10) Track your ads carefully. Google provides a tracking facility you can ad in your "thank you" page after each sale. Monitor closely which keywords convert and which not. Delete Keywords which obviously do not convert. If you monitor your Ads on a regular basis and take care of the topics mentioned here, you may have a great benefit also from the new system used by Google. Try to differentiate yourself with high quality and content from your competition and enjoy your profits! |
