A complaint that I hear all to often relating to CPC advertising is that it doesn’t convert well enough… and I’ve had this problem from time to time as well. What you must remember with CPC is that you have 1/10th of a second to make an impression on a surfer.
Within that fraction of time the surfer see your ad and makes a conscious decision to click or not to click. So when he clicks, he is taken to your landing page (let’s talk affiliate for a bit) and then he converts or presses back. Now most would tell you that you must always be optimizing your landing pages (which is true) and that you want as many clicks as possible… which is semi-true.
Since the competition has risen is virtually every vertical of CPC advertising you can’t just get all the click in the world, you have to target them more efficiently. One way is negative keywords, which most of us use. For example lets I’m running a campaign for a Free T-Shirt offer that has a shipping cost. I would want to add negative keywords for popular terms that don’t relate or are contrary to my add, like “Free T-Shirt Designer” and “100% Free T-Shirt” if I am broad matching. The second way you can have more targeted clicks is by fixing your adcopy, something often overlooked. So lets say my simple ad is…
Get a Free T-Shirt
Limited Time offer! Tons of Designs to Choose From.
Ok, ok… I know shitty adcopy but anyways, this is going to attract lots of clicks from people wanting a free t-shirt… FREE. Now this offer is for a free t-shirt with a shipping charge, so what are surfers going to do once the see a shipping charge? I’d say 90% will leave feeling emotionally violated and robbed of their innocence… ok maybe not that bad :). So we are going to waste a ton of money and get few conversions… So let’s adjust this adcopy.
Get a {Keyword:Default_text} T-Shirt, Free
Limited Time Offer! Tons of Designs, only $4.99 Shipping!
This is a much better ad that will attract more relevant clicks because a keyword your targeting will appear in the headline and more importantly it mentions the $4.99 shipping charge. This way when users click the ad they won’t feel violated that there is a shipping charge involved and people that just don’t want to pay anything won’t bother to click. TaDa! Improved conversions and lower spending! (now just expand your keyword list to offset the possible loss of traffic)
Just be straight forward and honest! Bait and Switch don’t work here!
Oh,yeah I know exactly what ya mean. When I was selling magazine subscriptions. I made sure to put how many magazines they would get,for how long they would get them along with the price of the subscription in the initial ad copy cause when you’re payin for clicks you definately wanna get the right people clicking and not people who just wanna see how much it’s gonna cost and then leave.