Adwords Click Through Rate

[grobinso]

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Hi, i was just wondering what all you seasoned PPC'ers would consider a decent CTR for a campaign.

I am currently running a single campaign on Adwords for a product which converts really well, yet i cant seem to get a CTR of more than 3-4 % at best.

I know that ad wording is key and i have read all the 'Killer Adwords Tips' i can find yet it seems to make little difference to the CTR. When i get clicks and these eventually transfer to the merchants page i usually get a sale within 5-10 clicks.

I just can't seem to move things up a gear or 2 , i'm stuck in first.

Any ideas?

Graham

[ChristopherB]

Are you split testing ads?

Im relatively new to ppc also and have had one campaign receive a CTR of 25%, one at 13 and one at 4% i'm constantly split testing ads to see if it helps

[grobinso]

HI ChristopherB, i've tried 'split testing' but as i say i cant seem to get over the 3-4% mark, Maybe i'm not being scientific enough in my approach.

I generally put up a campaign with about 3 ads and let it run for a few days, then see which ads are peforming best and pause 1 that is the worst, then i will introduce a new ad and see how that compares. But i still find it hard to get really good click throughs for my key keywords. My ads have the keyword in them, right there at the beginning of the ads, often repeated in the second line so they show up nice and bolded in the ad and yet CTR's are generally poor.

Generally my landing page converts at about 50% CTR to merchant so i know a bit more could be done there but the problem is to get the clicks to the landing page in the first place.

I think i might suspend the campaign for a day or so, walk away for a while and then re-aproach from a fresh angle.

Graham

[Shane]

"Decent" is a relative concept, we have some laser targeted ads that run at 50%+ CTR, whilst for others 1% would be decent if they are really generic.

Adcopy is one important factor but it's hard to boost CTR if the ad is displaying to too many people who aren't actually that interested in it in the first place, bit like selling ice cream on a cold day, they may be looking for snacks or refreshments but not ice cream so you need to ensure that you are actually targeting the right people and unless you are using exact match alone you can bet there will be some wasted traffic there.

The best way to boost your CTR is by making your traffic more relevant in the first place, you should focus on getting the ad displayed to only those that are genuinely interested in your product/service, using exact match is one way but you'll lose loads of phrase match traffic that could convert so it's best to use both, and in some cases even broad match works ok. but the main point is to cut out the irrelevant impressions.

if you have 1000 impressions per day and get 30 clicks that's a 3% CTR
if you have 500 impressions per day and get 30 clicks that's a 6% CTR

That's a CTR boost of 100%, by adding a few negative keywors and if only you are adding the negatives you'll be running at maybe double the competition's CTR.

by adding the right negative keywords you can remove the wasted impressions and hike your CTR by hundreds of a percent upwards by displaying less often but to more interested searchers.

You need to identify the keywords that are causing wasted impressions, stop them showing for those terms and your CTR will shoot up, THEN you can see far better which ads are winning and losing and refine them even further

Doing one without the other will only give you an adequate adgroup with an OK CTR in most cases, for a real boost in CTR both negatives and adcopy need refining.

[grobinso]

Thanks Shane, thats a great response, some good points in there especially about the 3-6% increase in CTR and audience relevancy

I've been a way a couple of days working ( In your neck of the woods as it happens - Sheffield) and i've being doing a bit more reading up on adwords techniques and i'll be applying all this 'refreshed' knowledge over the next week. I'll let you know how it goes.

thanks again

Graham

[Markup]

... i usually get a sale within 5-10 clicks.

Hi Graham

If this is the case there is nothing wrong with your approach/landing stage, just with your reach.

You need to drastically increase your keyword/phrase bank to increease the amount of clicks you get.

Use different tools (and sit down with a pen n paper) to generate every conceivable invite to a user that you can come up with and load them up in your account.
I found a cracking little tool from the link in one guys sig on this forum yesterday and increased my keyword banks, including misspells, by over 1000. Cant remember his name now but I think it was fisk. I will check and edit for you in a bit.

Conversion at between 10 and 20 percent - whoa, that's serious conversion! You have to get the click rate up!!

[Markup]

Just found it...

...CSN is the forum user and among others he has this PPC Misspelled Keyword Generator
in his sig.

A belated thank you very much Mr David Fiske, I really like your site!! :tup

[grobinso]

Cheers Markup, your help is very much appreciated, and i agree with you about David's site it is excellent, I have bookmarked it. I like the ROI calculator he has on there , very neat.

Well lots to think about and try this week on PPC, lets see how it goes. I'll let you know the outcome.

Cheers

Graham

[PPC-Coach]

Lots of good advice here already. To add to it, ad position will affect your clickthrough rate too. The higher up the page you are the better chance your ad has of being clicked, they've done tons of heatmap studies that show this.

However, a high ctr doesn't mean higher conversions and conversions are what you are really after.