Forge Search Marketing

The Importance of Testing Pay-Per-Click Advertisement Text

One of the most under-valued aspects of a pay-per-click campaign is aggressively testing different advertisements and ad copy. Many people will create a list of keywords, slap a single advertisement on the ad group, then hope for the best. One of the largest benefits of using pay-per-click is that you can get daily feedback as to what is working and what isn’t, allowing for highly effective and cost efficient campaigns to be made. What’s more, is there is no penalty for making an array of advertisements and seeing what performs the best, just apathy to do such.

To push the point home, I recently ran a series of advertisements for Forge and conducted several tests to demonstrate just how powerful ad copy is. I began by collecting a very targeted list of keywords relating to pay-per-click management services, which I planned on directing to the Pay Per Click Management page here on Forge’s site. Keep in mind, ad copy isn’t just about attracting clicks but also helping to establish a good quality score. I ran each of the below advertisements one at a time and collected around 50 clicks for each to get fairly accurate statistics.

The first ad I created was rather generic:

Note that this ad does include some best practices such as utilizing a call-to-action (Start Now!), but overall I expected it to get a fairly low quality score as the keywords do not particularly match up with those of Forge’s Pay Per Click Management page. Using a uniform keyword scheme in ads and to the landing page is a common mistake, but intentional in this case for demonstrative purposes.

After setting an appropriate Max Bid value and letting the ad run for a few days, it resulted in a dismal 0.22% Click Through Rate (CTR) on the search engine results page alone (this doesn’t include the Content Network, which in most cases drastically reduces the CTR.) Additionally, the quality score was a horrific “4″, meaning I was not only ranking poorly, but paying more than it needed to.

Alright, a small improvement:

Trying a slightly different direction, I added “management” which is only part of my keyword scheme, in addition to some very exciting ad copy to attempt to draw attention. A few days later the ad was looking at a 0.39% CTR and a quality score of “5″–a minor improvement, but an improvement none the less.

Getting the hang of it:

This is where I really began to kick in the usage of best practices, along with adding some verbal credibility to the advertisement. You can see the the keyword scheme is in line with my landing page, as well as noting I was a “Certified Pay Per Click Manager,” which is sure to draw more attention and interest than any Joe Schmoe that dabbles in per-per-click advertising. The entire ad copy is one large call-to-action and I added a dynamic URL structure in the display URL to allow for the ad to match up with more queries. Lo-and-behold, the ad received a generous 1.19% CTR and a quality score of “7″.

One Final Adjustment:

Now having lined up not only titles, but the ad copy with the keyword scheme, maintaining a call-to-action, and allowing for dynamic titles and display URLs, this advertisement took the cake with a CTR of 1.64% and maintaining the quality score of “7″. In addition, the cost-per-click of this ad was $0.34 less expensive than the advertisement we started with.

I hope this demonstrates how critical it is to vary your advertisement text, whether it is you or the professional you hired doing such. Good luck!