Google AdWords Tip: A ‘Guaranteed’ Way to Boost Your ROI
November 23rd, 2006 by Mike Reining Read more about Google AdWords Tips, PopularOver the past week tested two different Google AdWords Ads. One included the word "guaranteed" and the other did not. We wanted to find out if making a strong claim in the ad would boost the click-through-rate of our ads and also boost our ROI. However, the results did not turn out as expected.
We thought that adding the word "guaranteed " would be a sure fire way to boost both the CTR and the ROI of our AdWords campaign. However, the results were very different.
Here are the two ads that we ran and the results of our test:
It turns out that the ad that did NOT include the word "guaranteed" had a 30% higher click-through-rate. What gives?
Honestly, this is not what we expected but here is one possible explanation. Talking about a guarantee makes your ad look more like an ad and so it might turn people off.
However, the ad that included "guaranteed" saw an 80% boost in ROI! Now that is excellent! So, while the ad looked more like an ad and attracted less visitors, the visitors that we did attract had more confidence in what we had to offer and far more visitors turned into leads (31% vs. 17%).
Obviously, we kept the ad with the higher ROI because it delivered us far more leads and at the end of the day, we care about leads and not visitors. Given the results of this test, will be sure to test this in a lot of our other campaigns.
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About the Author
Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype.
Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.
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Vishen Lakhiani
Interesting results. Thanks for posting details. Seems like there was enough data to make a real comparison, but the impressions were very different. Did you have the 'ad optimizer' turned on?
Is 27 clicks enough data to draw conclusions from? You find that with another 27 clicks your conversion rate is cut in half.
I am curious what would happen if you let this test last longer. I love to know how the conversion rates would compare after each ad had reached a specified number of clicks, like 500. I think this is really interesting, just feel 117 vs 27 clicks may be to small of a sample to trust. The bad part is that this is counter intuative to way Google Adwords rewards advertisers.
hi, how are you?
i like these tests, but could you start doing them like-for-like? i would have liked to have seen this compare 3,220 impressions vs ~3,220 impressions over the same period. you can do this easily by turning off AdWords' automatic (CTR-based) ad optimisation. As you're interested in ROI rather than CTR, turning that off would seem to favour you anyway.
thank you!
Daniel makes a very good point.
There is always this big debate at where I work as to whether CTR should be looked at or Conversion Rate to judge an ad. I think both Conv.Rate and Cost per Conv are much more important than CTR.
Anyway I am not very concerned about sample size as I am of keyword - ad combination. I mean conversion rates do depend on keywords too. So if the second ad got triggered on words like self healing books, home remedies, reiki, while the other ad got clicks for broader words like maybe medicines or exercise etc. This could easily cause difference in conversion rate.
These are all good points. In this case 27 clicks was statistically valid so we can be very confident that in the long run the winning ad will really deliver a better ROI. However, if we keep the ads running for longer, we would truly see by how much one add outperforms the other.
CTR vs. CR is a big debate and I would say that you need to multiply the two together to get to the leads per thousand impressions that you will see.
FYI: The this add only targets keywords that contain the phrase "self healing" to control for different conversion rates across keywords. The key to success in AdWords is to have very targeted ad groups so I would never have self healing books, home remedies, and reiki in the same Ad Group.
Mike
>>The key to success in AdWords is to have very targeted ad groups
Very true. Unfortunately I notice so many people do not realise the importance of tightly knit ad groups.
Better keyword - ad combinations have so much benefit - better messaging therefore better conversion rates, better CTR, therefore better QS and therefore higher positions / lower CPCs.
I could not aggree more with you!
Having very targeted Ad Groups is a relatively easy and very effective way to boost your results in Google across all metrics. I am constantly surprised to see that relatively few online advertisers take advantage of this.
I guess most people are lazy and most people do not realize how effective this can be for their online marketing campaigns.