Have text ads in your AdWords campaigns arrived at a point that they would require a Click Through Rate (CTR) boost without making any campaign changes towards the CPC bids? You know that making an increase on text ads Click Through Rate (CTR) would not just lead to increased traffic, but would just result in Quality Scores and a higher Ad Rank. You might not just want to attempt an adjustment of CPC bids for the improvement of CTR, would not just add to traffic that has increased, but will just result in quality scores that have improved and a bigger Ad Rank. You may also not want to make adjustment to CPC bids for the improvement of CTR- so what are the options that are available to you for the increase of the ads’Click Through Rate CTR without making an adjustments to keywords or CPC bids?
Here are a couple of changes you may apply to campaigns that will be sure to improve the Click Through Rate or CTR:
A. Put a Registered trademark:
A trademark could be unbelievably easy to get, as it was a word, phrase, symbol or design that would be unique and identified as a brand or product. In America, you may apply for a trademark via the US Patent and Trademark Office. A registered trademark would allow the business to utilize the symbol along with saying the word, phrase or design just mentioned. You may also even use the TM symbol even if it is not officially registered or the trademark application is ongoing. Having a TM or R in the title area of the text ads, notably in competitive search results, would foster a sense of command and authority bringing in more clicks to the text ads.
What is a better part of this is that AdWords gives advertisers third party TM or R symbols should the owner of the trademark, give permission, this permission would usually be default as a lot of the trademark owners would need the use of the TM or R symbols in print advertising after everything.
B. Extensions for Sidelinks:
Ad Sitelinks Extensions would be an pplication to ads for the top positions, notably when the text ads would make it to the top 3 positions located above the organic search area. Such would include the main landing page that would be associated with the text ad, along with a series of either 3, 4 or 6 text links. The character limit would be 35 characters, and 1024 characters for the destination URL.
Make sure that the site links belong to your armory of getting more clicks for campaigns. Also ensure to link each of the text links to the most relevant landing page you can. The last tip for the text links would be the descriptions. You need to make sure they compliment, upsell or cross sell the offer for the main text ad. You may get away with lower CPC if the text links have a theme of higher value keywords. You may even use the company’s phone number as a special offer for the site link. You should be as creative as possible with 35 characters allocated to you for the sitelinks text links.
C. Utilize a Business Image or an Icon with the Location Extension:
When putting up a Location Extension, you have to ensure putting up a business image or icon which may be the logo or an image of importance to the business. The procedure would be for either 125×125 pixels for images or 16×16 pixels for custom icons for JPG, GIF or PNG formats. Even if such ads do not exist yet, we would advice that they are added to the location extension to prepare for when Google would begin displaying the business image or icon, or the search results.
D. Utilize Adwords Product Ads: Product Extensions plus Product Listing Ads:
Should you already have a Google Merchant Center account for the eCommerce site, you have to make sure that you connect the Adwords campaign to it via the Adwords Product extensions. Product extensions could be very useful for the improvement of the Click through rates of the campaigns as they bring a visual layer to the displaying of the ads for Google’s mostly text based search results. Product extensions would be a necessary Adwords feature for the utilization of any campaign with an associated Googel Merchant account extension would be in an optimally structured merchant account which is alike in structure to the Adwords campaign.
An alternative to Product Extensions would be Product Listing Ads. They would display the product listings from the Google merchant feed, but then they utilize keyword or ad test from the campaign, solely utilizing the content of the product feeds to automatically match the search queries as suitable, It would be very akin to dynamic search adsm but would just apply to products in the Google Merchant Center account. Google would claim that the searchers would be twice prine to click on a Product Lsiting Ad compared to standard text ads.
E. Google Plus Social Extensions:
Whether one would like or not like Google +, it would be here to stay and contain the social extension making a difference to the text ads as it would add an element for social proof plus an endorsement.
F. Having Reviews, Both Rich Snippets and Google Places:
Reviews are an established route for the getting credibility and attraction of more clicks in the competitive paid search space for Google. Acquiring reviews for displaying on the product and the text ads can be claimed from three main sources: the initial and more popular option would be via rich snippets reviews, the second would be via the Product Search Seller Rating extension, and last and more recently, is through reviews from the Google Places profile page (which is currently only available form AdWords express account however likely to have an inclusion in AdWords).
G. Giving Extension (which is currently on limited release beta) :
With Google going into the group getting space it has not taken long for Google to get how to integrate offers together with AdWords. At this point, in limited release place, the Offers extension gives allowance to advertisers for the extension of Google search ads with online redeemable and in-store coupons plus discounts offers. Upon its release in beta, it would certainly give an increase on the CTRs for early adopter campaigns. Apart from the higher CTRs it would give advertisers, it could put an added layer of customer engagement with customer wanting to have unique deals through search.
H. Display URLs that Describe A Lot:
Put up the clickthrough rate or CTR through the writing of hyper descriptive display URLs using the 35 character limit. Try out CTRs through utilizing identical headlines and ad descriptions and also different display URLs. Acquire more space from display URLs by taking out the www. Prefix, and place this instead (domain.com/description or description.domain.com)
I. Put an Investment in Brand Name Keywords + Sitelinks Extension:
Through the implementation of a strategy making a combination of an aggressive bidding for competitors and the brand name keywords, and by utilizing the sitelinks extension, you would give searchers a lot of options to click through to bigger value pages for a greatly lower CPC.
Brand name keywords have the tendency to contain lower CPCs when compared to mainstream keywords, along with the sitelinks extension, advertisers may have a choice of just 6 landing pages to link with the brand name. Advertisers may not just get the associated landing pages but alos utilize descriptive sitelink text.
J. Make an Improvement of the Ad Copy, and put a focus on benefits such as the address, passion, problems and anxieties of searchers:
Lastly, you should keep in mind the text ads, and have some creativity by going into the passion of searchers via striking text ads.
1) Try to work on potential problems of the searchers.
2) Aid the searcher in overcoming the fears via aspirational text ads.
In doing so you would have to go into the mind of a prospective customer and role play to have an understanding of search intent.
Content of text ads is a game maker, so you should look at other text ads first before writing some of your own. Aim to make an improvement on the other competing ads.
Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. His expert knowledge on Internet Marketing practices and techniques has earned him the title “Internet Marketing Guru”. He is also an innovator, investor and entrepreneur widely recognized by the top players in the industry.
