TurboAds : it’s Adwords on steroids!
Peter Turner works at Webreality SEO and he’s an Adwords API genius. Yesterday I was lucky enough to trial out his new TurboAds product.
The team has written a new OSCommerce contribution that exports all product data to TurboAds. Using a sophisticated template system, TurboAds then lists Adwords for every product. With Healthspark we have 106 products. TurboAds created 3 variations per product and promptly listed 106 Adgroups with 3 variations per group, that’s 318 Ads!
Best of all, each Ad is very specific, e.g.
So, the ad lists on the keyword ‘psyllium husks’, the prod description, price, display URL and destination URL are all pulled from Peter’s OSCommerce Adwords Feed.
I’ll post more about what we’ve learnt from the TurboAds data, but I’d thought you’d like to know about it. If you’d like to sign-up for TurboAds just fill out the Contact Baldy Form.
Needless to say I’ve been dancing around the room a lot.
Conversion Rate Optimization
SEM agencies typically will do a lot of work on your Adword account, they’ll fiddle with copy, keywords, etc., but they’re less happy rolling up their sleeves and hacking your site to improve conversion rate.
But when should you start work on conversion rate optimization? Never without stringent testing. Assuming your site is reasonably designed, and your product offering is reasonably priced, you should be able to achieve 6-10% click through rates (CTR), and 6-10% conversion rates. So roughly 1 in 10 clickthrough, and 1 in 10 of those on the site buy.
You can increase your CTR by analysing your copy and keyword cohesion. Spin out the higher CTR keywords into their own ad groups, and just use the target keyword in the Ad title. Speak the language of your customers.
But to increase your conversionr rate, you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and start someone serious work on the design and information hierarchy of your site. But again, I’d stress, don’t do it without testing. These guys know their onions, and their 101 tips for using the Google Optimizer are an excellent place to start.
Google drops pay-per action beta
Yesterday Google announced that it was retiring its pay-per-action beta. The beta programme followed the acquisition of DoubleClick, and at the time I was convinced it intimated a move by Google to take an even bigger slice of global ad revenue.
High conversion value sectors like recruitment or real estate carry Adword campaigns that are almost incidentally cheap. For instance, I’m running an Adword campaign for my parent’s house which is yielding ten targeted leads a day - the estate agent complains he’s getting more enquiries for this property than his entire portfolio. Cost so far : £54.13. Value to estate agent upon sale: £8,300.
So you can see why Google would be motivated by a pay-per-action model. I’m a great fan of Google’s conversion tracking tool, but I’m still skeptical about Google seeing the value of the sale. The temptation to artificially lift CPC must be irresistible, but at least for now, it looks like we’re safe.
Slow site = More expensive Adwords!
Just over a week ago, Google introduced a new aspect into its Quality Score for Adwords. Google’s Quality Score for your Adwords affects your rank and your minimum bid amount - a high quality Ad will generally rank better and cost less. As always, Google rewards relevance. And a relevant (high Quality Score Ad) will be rewarded.
Take a look at Ten things Google has found to be true to find out more about Google’s founding principles. One of these principles is “Fast is better than slow”. And now, this philosophy has been extended to Adwords. If you’re landing page is slow, your Quality Score will suffer. It’s worth checking out how Google scores load times, as if your site is slow you’ll be hit on the Quality Score, and you’ll be hit by customers leaving before the page has finished loading.
Testing times: split-testing rules
Wouldn’t it be great if you could buy a full page ad in the Daily Telegraph, but the print morphed evenly throughout the day, so you could see which ad was the most effective?
One of Adwords most powerful features allows you to do just that. For the same set of keywords you can display as many Ads as you like. By default, the Adwords manager is set to optimize which means Google will establish which is your best Ad, and favour that Ad.
If you’re checking into Adwords once a day (I live there), you should set to rotate. This allows you to choose the winner from your split-testing. You need 20 clicks before you can declare a winner, anything less is just not enough data. There’s a great tool at www.splittester.com that helps you check your analysis.
In split-testing we tend to focus on getting a high clickthrough-rate (CTR). CTRs are definitely important, as Google always rewards relevance, but a high CTR and poor conversion rate is a fool’s game. Don’t lose sight of the end game, which is winning customers.
What’s wrong with this adword?
My apologies to Ink Cycle in advance, but here’s what’s wrong with this Ad:
This Ad was served as a response to a search for ‘HP 57 printer cartridge’. With the exception of the word ‘cartridge’ the adword makes no effort whatsoever to use the language of the customer.
The title and body copy carries no specific price information. This Adword will gain clicks but from browsers who don’t know what they want to buy. That’s wasting clicks.
The destination URL is to a general landing page. Now the customer is faced with a bewildering array of choices. More often than not the first choice will be to leave. Taking customers to a general landing page will often yield a deservedly high bounce rate.
‘Absurdly low prices’ is marketing speak. What’s absurd about them? If they’re so absurdly low, let’s see them!
Finally, the display URL is not utilised to enforce any messaging. If you’re really stuck with absurdly low prices, you might try: www.inkcycle.co.uk/aburd_prices.
Adwords are not advertising
Imagine that you’ve got a high-street store - you stand at the door of your shop and you grab the next passerby and say: “Please don’t come in and browse. Only come in if you’re going to buy. Only come in if I’ve got what you’re looking for. In fact, look here I’ve got a printer cartridge for a Hewlett Packard 57 printer. Do you have an HP 57 printer? You do? Do you need a cartridge for it now? Ok, you can come in.”
This is what Adwords is like, and the beauty of it is that there are millions of people passing by, and you don’t pay when they see your Ad, you only pay when they clickthrough. Out of those millions of passerbys, your job is to find the few that want your product at your price. If they like your competitor’s Adword better, that’s fine, let someone else pay for the clickthrough. You don’t want them, you only want customers who want you. Refreshing isn’t it?
This is the ultimate in request marketing. We’re only interested in consumers who want our product. There’s no persuasion. There’s no tempting a customer to buy something he or she doesn’t want. Adwords aren’t really advertising. They’re precise units of information delivered to consumers who’ve requested them.
There are mega-brands out there using Adwords to build brand, build reputation etc etc. I’m glad I’m not burning those dollars. The best Adwords are highly specific, leading to dedicated landing pages that deliver exactly on the promise of the Adword. Think of it as the haiku of advertising. 3 lines, 95 characters, no over-capitalisation. Short and to the point.
Adwords are not interruption marketing. Browsers are in front of their computers, on-line, searching to buy your product. When they click on a specific, targeted Adword, they’ve just given you the biggest buy signal you’re going to get. Don’t be alarmed then when you see CPCs running into several pounds. If CPCs are expensive, they’re working in your market, and you need to work out how they can work for you.
What should I budget for an ecommerce start-up?
It’s a good question that gets answered in lots of different ways. I’ve got £30k to spend on this site, and it should be better than Amazon.com is a quite frequent approach. Your web agency will always want to know what your budget is - in some ways it’s a fair question; how else can they know what they’re going to build for you.
But when you budget, you’ve got to think way beyond the site build. You should see the site build as opening the door of your new office. More often than not, clients come with an expectation that they’ll spend £8k on the website, and their Adword budget for year 1 is £2k. I’ve seen this 80/20 approach operate at all levels. It’s wrong (not Pareto, he’s never wrong). You’ve got to flip it. Spend 20% of your budget on the site build, and 80% on Adwords, link building and content work (spread this over twelve months, and don’t expect a return in year 1 - you’ll get one, but it’s nice to be surprised).
So, you’ve got a £10k budget. Spend £2k on the site, and £8k Adwords. Or, £20k on the site, and £80k on Adwords. That’s how it works.
Funnel Analysis in OS Commerce
Google Analytics has a great tool which enables you to analyse how your sales funnel is functioning on your website.
Ecommerce sales are just like any other sales. You fill the funnel, lots fall out, and at the end you get a sale. The trick is to make sure that you’re funnel is a funnel, not a leaky colander.
Google Analytics lets you chart each stage of the funnel for analysis. Here’s what a funnel should look like if you’re using OS commerce. I’ll post shortly on the results of this analysis.
How to eat an elephant, (how to make an online mega-brand)
Making a new online store really work often feels as unachievable as eating the ubiquitous elephant. The answer, of course, one mouthful at a time. Here’s a selection of tasks you could consider as a mouthful. You just need to do one of these a day:
- Negotiate or create a meaningful hyperlink from an external website to your site (ideally, on a content link from a site with appropriate context, e.g. Rosehip. Reciprocal links (where the other site links back to you) are not worthless, but have less value.
- Add new and compelling content to your site. If you keep improving the content on the site, the GoogleBot will revisit more frequently. And frequent content changes are a powerful signal to Google that your site *must* have relevant content.
- Make a tweak on an adword campaign (but do remember to split-test, and pull weak ads quickly).
- Read your Analytics Data, find the most exited page, and change it!
- Write a blog entry that someone will want to share
- Approach a possible affiliate partner
- Make a cheese and ham sandwich
- Drink a cup of coffee
- Will be at ten soon, all good blog lists come in tens
- Remember to forward this post to a friend.