Creating PPC ads that stand out from the crowd
With competition so strong on the ppc search engines you really need to ensure your ads stand out from the crowd. This is important for 2 reasons:
1. Your ad will stand out from a sea of your competitors ads, put simply it will get noticed and it will get clicked on.
2. And if it gets clicked on its CTR rate will improve and so will its rankings, here’s a real life example.
Search on Google or Yahoo! or anywhere for the “Nokia N95” phone. You will get a ton of results, all saying stuff like “New Nokia N95 available on T-Mobile” or “Compare prices on the Nokia N95″ all the usual type of stuff. Its simply not enough to create an ad like this when you are operating in such a competitive space, you could create another “me too” ad but you will end up paying an arm and a leg per click. And nobody will click on your ad.
So when I spotted that Vodafone were having a special weekend only offer last weekend I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to create something a little different. Granted, this was a time-limited offer but guess what? During the whole weekend of the other I was the only affiliate promoting it via ppc.
I decided that my strategy would be to bid quite low and hope that my ad was effective enough to climb the rankings on its own merit, without touching the bid price at all. It was kind of an experiment to be honest, just to see if I could do it.
So I created the ad on Friday evening and set the bids at 35p. Now that is very low for a popular term in a competitive market, and sure enough the ad was displayed 9th. Not great then. But I waited it out and resisted the temptation to up my bids. Sure enough by Saturday lunchtime my ad was alternating between the number 1 and number 2 slot. As you can see from the screenshot below (my ad is number 2 in this example).
What I think worked very well was the fact that my ad stood out from the crowd as it had an urgent call to action that expires soon. It also had “nokia-n95-for-free” in the URL, that helps. Finally, the ad has “Hurry” in the copy, you would be surprised how much this helps the CTR.
So there you go, a few tips on how to make your sponsored ads stand out in a crowded niche. And remember, next time there is a time limited promotion on from your favourite merchant, make the most of it!!
What I’m listening to right now: Young Nate - “Mixed Messages”
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, PPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
September 11th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Yes, your ad stands out from the crowd. But what was the conversation rate with such ad or how many sign-ups did you got?
September 11th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Interesting post.
Hope the test converted well!
September 12th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Interesting post this is something I will need to try.
September 13th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Thanks for the tip, made refreshing reading. How did you manage to get so many characters into your ad title?
September 13th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Yes, I would like to know how you got that many characters in the Adwords title - I thought the limit was 25……
September 13th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Sjbillas and PBiznis - good questions. I’m sure somebody out there must have the answer? It would be too easy to tell you the answer myself.
September 13th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Cracking post mate… again…
As for the title, very intrigued as to how you got more characters in there. I’m off searching…
September 13th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
[...] this, as I’ve been discussing this with a few peeps for the past hour or so, following on from Kierons Blog. __________________ Skype: Frostiecuk Facebook [...]
September 13th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Was it using Dynamic Keyword insertion? If so, I thought that it the keyword searched on was longer than 25 characters then the default keyword (ie less than 25 characters) would kick in?
September 13th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
No - no dynamic keyword insertion was used.
September 13th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Come on…Let’s see. Actually, looking at it now I think that the platform was not Adwords - we all made the (wrong) assumption that it was!
September 13th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
OK I know the answer, but I ain’t saying. It’s taken me all afternoon to find it. Thanks for keeping me busy today mate!
September 13th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Chris - tell us. It’s another PPC network, right?
September 14th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Well do a google search and note the background colour for the “premium” ads …it’s not blue is it?
Looks like a cropped screenshot from yahoo to me. MSN displays URL alongside ad title, not underneath.
ah …I’m a bit late to the party …already solved in the above link to the forum. Oh well, at least I spotted it lol.
September 18th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Obvious when there are no exclamation marks in any ads!
September 21st, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Brilliant - and yes I feel stupid for posing the question now! However, it does show how much of a grip Google have on the PPC market, it’s very easy to make the assumption that when we talk about PPC we mean Google Adwords.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:47 pm
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October 19th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
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November 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
[...] Re: Adwords adverts are boring /cloned… Agreed. Read this : Creating PPC ads that stand out from the crowd __________________ Tokyo::Paris::New [...]
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Thats very interesting - had just posted on a4u forum same subject. Did a trial on a less competitive area - same results - ad worked its way up.
Problem is with longer product names in the heading, in a competitive area - trying to make the heading original without losing keyword rating completely. esp. with Adwords.
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:13 pm
[...] blogged before about the challenge of creating PPC ads that stand out from the crowd. I came across a really good example of this today, courtesy of The Sun [...]