MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Illus­trat­ing The Power of Small Tweaks

How One Tiny Change Boosted Our Click-Through-Rate by 180%

As you well know by now, our Chain Reac­tion Mar­ket­ing phi­los­o­phy is rooted in rapid test and opti­miza­tion. Once we find some sure fire tweaks that work over and over, we love to share them with our read­ers to help you become more successful.

Today, I wanted to share one tiny tweak with you that boosted the per­for­mance of one of our major Google cam­paigns by 180%. When you see it, you will say, what, that’s it? The answer is yes! That’s all it took to get a HUGE per­for­mance boost. See, the secret to mak­ing money online is not work­ing harder, it is work­ing smarter by know­ing what works and what does not and rapidly test­ing your way to become incred­i­bly successful.

Still can’t see the change? Hint: I said “This Changes Every­thing.” See, we changed “Changes” to “Change” and that tiny change alone resulted in a 180% increase in the Click-Through-Rate.

Here’s why “Change” and “Changes” can cause such a big con­ver­sion difference

The word “changes” insin­u­ates AUTOMATIC change. The word “change” implies the act of doing some­thing your­self. For exam­ple, if you were adver­tis­ing a tool for clean­ing for your dog:

“Dog-Clean-O-Matic Washes Your Dog Spotless”

Makes the reader see the machine as an auto­matic tool. Toss your dog into it and voila — the animal’s now spot­less. You don’t have to do any dirty work.
On the other hand:

“Dog-Clean-O-Matic: Wash Your Dog Spotless”

Makes it seem like the machine requires YOU to do man­ual labor. Per­haps it noth­ing more than a fancy new kind of fur brush.
This dis­tinc­tion is impor­tant depend­ing on the prod­uct you’re sell­ing. In the ad above, we’re sell­ing a relax­ation CD: per­haps this is why the word “Change” relates bet­ter to the audi­ence. They want to be in con­trol when they go through this relax­ation process. The word “changes” per­haps implies some­thing where the par­tic­i­pant losed con­trol — as in hyp­no­sis. It could be intim­i­dat­ing.
For other ads — in the case of soft­ware for exam­ple — I have seen the word “changes” work bet­ter. This could be because, for soft­ware, we want stuff that does the work for us auto­mat­i­cally.
So try test­ing both phrases on your ad.

Hun­gry for more Google AdWords tips? Check out our guide on AdWords Sys­tem Exposed.

Last 5 posts by

• Do you think SEO in other lan­guages is eas­ier? — Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2008
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• Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analy­sis Indicates…It Just Might — July 23rd, 2008
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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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