Google AdWords Tip: Mimic a Universal Call-to-Action and Boost Your CTR by 100%
August 20th, 2006 by Mike Reining Read more about Articles, Google AdWords, Pay per click advertisingThere is a reason why Google bans advertisers from adding universal "call-to-action" phrases such as "Click-Here." They work! So, how can you still take advantage of this? Very simple, find some way to get close to a "call-to-action" without actually using one of Google's banned phrases.
Here is one example / successful test that we just completed. We tried to just add the word "here" into one of our ads to find out what would happen. The result! We increased the click-through-rate of our ad by 100%!
Here is the old ad:
CTR = 2.19%
Here is the new ad:
CTR = 4.40%
As you can see, the only change in the two ads is the keyword "here." In a way, it is stating the obvious. The word "here" is not really necessary since it goes without saying that the copy of the ad is for the site that is mentioned in the ad. However, the data clearly shows that adding "here" can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your ad because it triggers twice as many people to notice your ad and to take action by clicking on it.
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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 Reining
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Vishen Lakhiani
I think that this and the other articles you have published are good at helping increase a CTR of a PPC campaign.
But, you haven't gone into any detail on what to do when your visitor actually gets to your site. Having an increase of traffic, only helps if those visitors actually perform the desired action on your website. Otherwise, the increased CTR is just wasted money.
It is very important to track ads on a website level just as much as on a PPC campaign level. It may take time to get a large enough sample of visitors but you should be able to see which ads people are more likely to convert from. If those are the ones with the higher CTR then they are good ads. If they are still the ads with the lower CTR, then it's time to change the high CTR ads again, in attempt to get the visitor conversion up on the website.
Ideally we want as much converting traffic as possible. What we dont want is traffic just for the purpose of traffic.