MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Whatch your Google ROI - Case study: How we boosted ROI by 331% with better ad copy

Most Google AdWords advertisers focus most of their time on increasing the CTR (click-through-rate) of their Google pay-per-click ads. There is nothing wrong with that and we highly recommend that you do the same. However, just gettting more people to click on your ad is not everything and could be the downfall of your PPC campaign.

The key to a successful AdWords campaign is to focus on both the click-through-rate and the conversion rate of each Ad Group. After all, you are buying clicks to convert your visitors into leads or buyers. The little know secret is that two ads in the same Ad Group might achieve roughly the same click-through-rate but could have a huge difference the conversion rate.

Case study: We were buying a group of “meditation” keywords and wanted to keep improving our ad copy to keep boosting our CTR. After trying lots of different ads we were able to settle in at about a 1% click-through-rate, which is not bad given that we were not paying for the top position and buying lots of generic keywords. However, what amazed us is that one of our ads ad a 9.8% conversion rate while the other ad for the same ad group was converting at 33%!

The most wanted response of the destination site was to convert visitors into leads by getting them to sign up for a free offer (a free meditation course delivered via email). What was stunning is that we had two ads with similar click-through-rates but a HUGE difference in sign-ups for the ads. Here are the two ads that we ran.

The winning ad:

The loosing ad:

By looking at the above two ads, you might come up with lots of guesses why one ad would get a higher click-through-rate and sign-up rate. However, what is counter intuitive is that one ad might would get a similar CTR and yet have a conversion rate that is dramatically higher which results in boosting the ROI of the campaign by over 300%!

So the key lesson is to start optimizing and tweaking your ads for ROI. After all, you goal should not be to maximize your click-through-rate but to maximize profits.

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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.

Check out other posts by Mike

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