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Google AdWords Tips | Another day of 100% Improvements…

January 14th, 2008 by Mike W. Read more about Google AdWords Tips

This is some­thing to get used to!

We changed 1 word in an ad and saw our CTR double.

As you may know, it’s cru­cial to test whether your audi­ence responds bet­ter to adver­tised fea­tures or adver­tised ben­e­fits (If you can’t test, bank on ben­e­fits first). Another impor­tant ele­ment is whether they pre­fer imagery of pas­sive or active results from said product.

I think these next results fall within that last cat­e­gory. We changed up one word (the first one, so a cru­cial one) in our ads and wait­ing for results, and when they came in…

CTR Variance

… it was pretty huge. It is clear the idea of devel­op­ment bet­ter res­onates with our audi­ence. The astute observer might ping the los­ing ad with bad gram­mar, but that doesn’t always mat­ter.

That one tiny tweak instantly dou­bled our click thru rate and even though the con­ver­sion rate dropped a bit we still devel­oped leads way faster than before.

Why don’t you try test­ing YOUR ads’ first word and see what happens?

Learn other major tests in our step-by-step AdWords Guide.

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About the Author

Mike W. Mike is an internet marketer at MindValley responsible for running marketing tests, designing product launches, and leading an eCommerce project.

Check out other posts by Mike W.

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8 Responses to “Google AdWords Tips | Another day of 100% Improvements…”

  1. Tony

    Great post, the best first words in an advert I have come across are: afford­able, dis­cover and explore.

  2. David

    Uh, did you turn the opti­mizer off? To make a good test, total impres­sion for both ads should be equal.

  3. Profit on Autopilot

    Hi Mike,

    A very inter­est­ing insight into the impor­tance of test­ing and track­ing adwords cam­paigns. I have found, just like you, that even sub­tle dif­fer­ences between ads can cre­ate dra­matic dif­fer­ences in click through rates.
    I always use 3 ads per adwords cam­paign, and select the option to show all 3 ads equally. I then take the ad with the low­est ctr and try to improve on it. Adwords is a great way to drive tar­geted traf­fic to sites but the key to suc­cess is to con­stantly mon­i­tor your ads, costs and ctr.

  4. Steve

    That is a great tip that many peo­ple for­get about when doing ppc is adcopy test­ing. Nice article.

  5. Pay Per Click Advertising Roundup 1/12/08 - 1/14/08 | Apollo SEM

    […] Google AdWords Tips | Another day of 100% Improvements… […]

  6. Google AdWords Tips | This Time We Test The LAST Word Of The Ad

    […] Google AdWords Tips | This Time We Test The LAST Word Of The Ad Jan­u­ary 17th, 2008 by Mike W. Read more about Google AdWords Tips We just recently ran an AdWords test show­ing how impor­tant your ads’ first word can be. […]

  7. Deepali

    The drop in CR would have been an issue because of rise in cost per con­ver­sion (though it all depends on the objec­tive of the cam­paign — over here more leads was the big­ger ben­e­fit). The good thing about adwords though is that high CTR means lower CPC. Have noticed on quite a few cam­paigns that an increase in CTR, nearly always leads to decrease in CPC.

  8. mike

    Hi there Mike (good name!),

    Mate, a 100% increase is fan­tas­tic… but.… a 0.06% CTR is pretty horrible.!

    I’m guess­ing that this includes Con­tent Net­work results?? Did you run this Ad on Google, Search & Con­tent?
    What were the Google Net­work results?

    Yes you’re right to test… but nobody should be happy with under a 1% CTR (except a few rare circumstances)

    Sorry to be neg­a­tive, but I think this result should be viewed in perspective.

    Cheers,
    Mike

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