Archive for the ‘PPC’ category

The Worst AdWords Ad

April 16th, 2010

While doing the regular check on the referring keywords for this blog, I’ve noticed that Google is ranking my website high for some keywords related to the websites I am spotting A/B tests, such as accountnow.com, autotrader.com or genbook.com.

Those keywords are irrelevant for my objectives but checking them lead me to the discovery of the worst 2010 PPC ad in Google I’ve seen until date:

the worst ppc ad of 2010

The worst PPC ad of 2010

I know that is hard to manage dictionary based keyword lists, but the add looks totally ridiculous. Ask.com should spend more time in creating campaigns specific for domain name searches, with ads targeted more towards users and not search engines.

Do you manage dictionary based PPC campaings? What are your thoughts and how do you manage suck keywords and  ads effectively?

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Posted in Don't Do Like Them, PPC, Usability and Design

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Trust Seals Collection and How to Use Them to Increase Conversion Rates

January 14th, 2010


Trust seals is the generic phrase used to depict those images (see collection at the bottom of the article) which online businesses use on their websites to address Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUDs).

Seals can be categorized into privacy seals, business validity seals, PCI compliancy seals, hacksafe seals and other types. It may be useful to know that there are seals which are applicable to certain industries only (like the Pharmacy Checker for Canadian pharmacies) and seals which can be used on most of the websites (business verification seals).

Smart online marketers use seals on websites to transfer trust from a well-know company (i.e. Verisign) to visitors and to make them feel comfortable about their privacy, confidentiality or other concerns. In our terms, we use them to increase the conversion rate of websites.

Do they really have an effect on conversion rate? Yes, they do, but each seal will perform different, simply because your audience is different than the other website. While I do recommend using some of the seals, namely those which anyone will recognize, I advocate for multivariate testing. Most likely, if used correctly the impact on conversion rate should be either positive or neutral. If improperly used (clicking is not working, fake seal, etc) your conversion rate could suffer.

Having 20 trust seals on each page of your website will hurt. Having none, may hurt also. For site wide use, you should display 2 or 3 of them, which are important and recognized by  your audience. However, if you’re would like flex you muscles with 10 or more (which I don’t advise), I would recommend creating a dedicated page on your site, where you can lay all of them.

Here are some ideas when it comes to using and testing trust seals:

  • start testing with 2 or 3 seals: one wide known (i.e. McAfee) and your industry-specific seals
  • always display the seal above the fold; if your copy is way longer, repeat it near your call to actions
  • test overlaid seals (i.e. comodo, remains in the same position at scroll) against layout-integrated seals which have fixed position
  • seals should be displayed site-wide (on all pages)
  • except for checkout pages, where you may have a different layout, keep the seal in the same spot for the whole website

Additionally:

  • a good place to test seals is near the logo (top left) or on the top right corner of the site
  • test the logo near the main Call-To-Action (CTA) button
  • display seals in the checkout process
  • at click on the seal, open the merchant site in a new window

Those are only some ideas, but you I am sure that you can think of your own tests. One thing in particular (never tested by me thou) is to test the effectiveness of a no-spam seal in email blasts :)

Here’s the collection listed in alphabetical order – click seals to enlarge – (back to top):

If I missed some, let me know. Enjoy testing!

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Posted in Conversion Optimization, Landing Page Optimization, PPC, Usability and Design, Who's Testing

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Campaign End Date Setting Matters in Online Advertising

January 13th, 2010

Probably one of the most under-looked settings in your PPC account is the campaign start date and campaign end date. It’s fine not to have an end-date for campaigns which are meant to run indefinitely, but when you run limited time offers (promotion which ends before a certain date), you don’t want to make the same mistake as the guys at Kontera:

kontera expired ad

Expired Campaign from Kontera

The PPC ad is saying that you’ll get double for your clicks (whatever that means, I was not able to find out on the landing page anyway) but the scent is lost when you read that the offer ended on January 1st 2010 (the campaign is still running on January 13th 2010)

They are loosing money on PPC, I am disappointed and I will click back! Now go check if you have time sensitive campaigns and if so, make sure you end the PPC campaings at the same date with the offer.

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How To Insert More Than 25 Characters in Adwords Titles

January 12th, 2010

The Adwords guidelines for ad text are obsolete. So are the test Adwords professional test questions related to this issue. You can now have more than 25 characters in your ads title, up to 30 actually. Check this ad on Google:

more than 25 characters in adwords titles

Adwords Ad with 29 Characters in the Title

To get similar ads for your account you will need:

  • to bid on the exact version of the [keyword]
  • your keyword is max. 30 chars (i.e. conversion rate optimization)
  • use Dynamic Keyword Insertion in your ads (i.e. title {KeyWord:less than 25 chars title}
  • luck: Google will evaluate your keyword, your ad, the user query and if it “thinks” the title is relevant, your ad will show up

The strict old rule was that if the keyword in the DKI was longer than 25 characters, then the default ad text will show up. THis is no longer the case, but there’s nothing official from Google yet.

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Posted in Conversion Optimization, PPC

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Don’t do This PPC Mistake

December 4th, 2009

I can’t stress on the importance of checking your destination URLs for your PPC landing pages. This is especially true when you advertise for terms such as “ad testing” .

These guys are really funny – they can’t deliver for them selves and they expect others to buy their services? C’mon! If you can’t do it for your business, don’t expect customers to come asking for the service. Their ad, followed by the related landing page:

Adwords Ad for "Ad Testing"

Adwords Ad for "Ad Testing"

The Landing Page returned 404 Not Found Status...Oops

The Landing Page returned 404 Not Found Status...Oops

Google won’t give a damn that your page is not there. They’ll take the money and you won’t see the ROI you’re dreaming on.

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Posted in Don't Do Like Them, Landing Page Optimization, PPC

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How To Improperly Execute A Bing CashBack Campaign

November 27th, 2009

… and lose customers at checkout, in 10 easy steps.

This is related to the cash back on Bing from Dell. Yesterday, November 26 2009, Dell has a 20% cash back offer on Bing.

Here’s how to improperly execute a cash back marketing campaign:

1. Start a cash back campaign with Bing
2. Advertise products on Bing cash back

Dell's Ad on Bing

Dell's Ad on Bing

3. Don’t list yourself as participating store (where’s Dell?)

Where are you Dell store?

Where are you Dell store?

4. At click on your ad tell visitors they will receive 20% off

Wow 20% off

Wow 20% off

5. Not display anywhere on the landing page (or the whole website) a cash back banner to remove some anxiety

Do You Really Have a Cash Back Campaing?

Do You Really Have a Cash Back Campaign?

(at least these guys have a scent of Bing’s CB on the website:)

At Least There's Something There

At Least There's Some Scent Here

6. Let them add hundreds of $$$ worth in the shopping carts hoping for savings

7. Do not display the discount on the checkout page (I love this one! Probably at this stage 90% of cash back-ers will leave)

dell checkout page

8. Display a live chat option which is not active

Why Do You Display the Live Chat if it's Closed?

Why Do You Display the Live Chat if it's Closed?

9. Do not answer calls during Thanksgiving (or Christmas)

10. Give your  HiPPOs a bonus, right in time for Christmas Shopping.

PS: this time twitter was out-paced. Check out the time stamps on this page for almost realtime posts:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/970643?newest=1#last

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Posted in Conversion Optimization, Don't Do Like Them, Landing Page Optimization, PPC, Usability and Design, Website Traffic

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Check & Fix Your PPC Destination URLs Frequently

November 26th, 2009

Are you throwing money on the window with your PPC campaigns, like these guys are doing?

The Ad Looks Fine

The ad looks fine

but the destination URL is broken

but the destination URL is broken

I searched for something, I clicked on the ad and then I landed on a search results page which didn’t return any results! Are you kidding me? To quote someone: “I came”, I took money from your pocket (my addition to the quote), “I puked and I left”. I just took money from your pocket and you just say Sorry, I can’t find the product. Some guys really need the help of a PPC management company.

Not to mention the “professional” look and feel of the landing page. I wonder it they’re making any first visit sales, or any sales at all with the website :) (I know, I am mean sometimes)

Anyway, here’s what you need to do, on a regular basis especially if you’re a big advertiser with hundreds or thousands of destination URLs (any ecommerce website probably has).

First, download your PPC account and extract all destination URLs in a separate file, one destination URL per line.

Second, give that file to your programmer and ask him to create a script (better, a cron job to run the script) and, for each destination URL, tell him to add 0 (zero) and 1(one) next to each URL. Zero means no results were found for that URL, 1 means at least one result have been returned.

Third, get back the output file from him and sort by zeros in Excel. Analyze those destination URLs and fix them. Your boss will now be happier, and you get a bonus :)

PS: For the case above this is the broken URL: http://www.wholesaledirtcheap.com/search.php?keywords=12.2+MP+Digital+SLR+Camera+(Bo&x=6&y=11

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Posted in Don't Do Like Them, Landing Page Optimization, PPC

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The 3 Laws of Pay Per Click (PPC) Management

November 23rd, 2009

Too many times I have seen business owners trying to create and manage paid advertising account in Google Adwords, without having a good sense what rules they should follow to easily and successfully manage a PPC campaign.

Here are three fundamentals laws of PPC management:

1. Don’t waste time with online interface(s)

Setup the campaign online and download the Adwords Editor to manage the campaigns on your desktop. This will save you tremendous time, by not waiting for web pages to load, by the usability of find and sort functions of GAE (Google Adwords Editor), by customizable views and multiple updates on the account and many others you don’t have online.

If I would have to restrict the 3 laws to just one, this will be it.

2. Think globally, act locally

It was supposed to be the other way round, but for managing your PPC accounts you need to start small, and then evolve. Constrain the budget for your campaigns, so you can get maximum 25 clicks a day. Start a test campaign with a single product type or service, one ad group, limit the number of keywords to 10-15 and place them in phrase match and exact match only (no broad match yet, baby).

3. Get intimate with MS Excel

This is a must also. Once you will add more keywords to the account, you will need to analyze data in manner of thousands of rows of data and columns. At least you should become good with sorting functions, conditional formatting and as an Excel guru that you’ll be, you will get to dream of pivot tables.

I could add to this another two important rules:

  1. If you don’t want to waste money and time in the beginning, avail the services of a consultant and ask them questions as you learn it by yourself
  2. If you manage tens of thousands of keywords and $50K+ budgets, you may want to have access to a bid management tool (at this moment, I don’t believe rules-based tools are offering much value, go for portfolio-based tools, but try to understand what they mean by portfolio first)

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Posted in PPC, Website Traffic

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How to Insert the F Word in Google Ads

November 22nd, 2009

I think that all online marketers have encountered, at least once in their lifetime, a PPC ad which have been rejected for some editorial rule.

What about the F word (and I don’t mean the word FREE) ? Do you think it’s possible to cheat the Adwords system, just for the fun on inserting the FUCK word? With a little bit of cleverness here’s how you can do it:

The F Word - Clever Use In Adwords

The F Word - Clever Use In Adwords

Smart isn’t it?

Considering this ad was actually uploaded and approved, even when the account was not tied to the display and destination URL, it makes me think what bad competitors can do on your name.

I recently saw an ad on Yahoo! for which the destination URL and the display URL was totally different. The advertisers were using a brand to trick people into clicking on the ad, while the landing page was not the brand’s website. I still have no answers from Yahoo! how this is possible. If you know, please share here!

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Posted in PPC, SEO

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