CTR EXPLAINED

As a PPC Marketer, it's likely that you have heard the term, "Click Through Rate".  

Here is what it means:

Click Through Rate (or CTR) is a simple way of measuring the success of an online campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of visitors who clicked on your ad, by the number of times the ad was showcased, or seen (impressions). 

For example, if your ad was shown 100 times and only one person click on your advertisement, your CTR would be 1%.  

If your ad was shown 100 times and 10 people clicked on your link, your CTR would be 10%.

CTR is typically defined by the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions and generally not in terms of how many people clicked the link. This is a very important distinction because if one person clicked on a link 10 times, the CTR would not be accurate, otherwise.

Click Through Rate is a very important aspect of PPC marketing, because it can directly affect the associated advertising costs.   Your CTR is also used when determining your quality score. The higher your CTR is, the lower your advertising costs will be for the exact same exposure.

This means that you can end up paying less for top position than the advertising vying for the spot below you!

DECREASE YOUR COST PER CLICK (CPC)

As someone who is involved in Pay Per Click marketing (PPC), one of the biggest concerns you must have is how to decrease your cost per click (CPC). This is the fee that you pay each time someone clicks on your ad for a particular keyword phrase.

Obviously, you want this amount of be as low as possible. There are several things that you can do to make the CPC lower. Here are some tips to get you started:

Increasing your click through rates (CTR):
This is the number of times that someone clicks your ads compared to the number of times they see them (impressions).

For instance, if you have 100 people “see” your ad but only 3 people click on it, then you have a measly 3% CTR. Google uses a number of factors to decide what your ad placement will be. One of those factors is CTR. Another is called your quality score.

Your quality score is made up of several factors (it’s all a little complicated, isn’t it?) Basically, you want good numbers to get good ad placement. If you do it all correctly, you will pay less per click to get better ad placement.

This also means that your potential customers will be higher quality and more likely to purchase something.

Start off the right way:
When you begin a campaign, you should already be aiming for a high CTR and quality score. It is hard to go back and correct course.  Make sure that you set everything up to be right from the beginning so that you can always pay lower fees.

Keywords in your ad:
Make sure that you use your keywords in your ad title and the copy. This will make them turn bold and people will be more apt to click on them. This again will increase your CTR and lower your CPC. It is all a balancing act!

Relevancy:
Google is big on making sure that your website content is RELEVANT to the customer who has just clicked on your advertisement. 

Your quality score will increase if your website content uses your keywords, thus making it very relevant in relation to your advertisement. Google likes this and will lower your CPC.

PPC marketing can be a great thing, but it is very important that you keep your costs down to gain the maximum benefits from it.

IMPROVING YOUR CLICK THROUGH RATE (CTR)

If you are pursuing Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC), you need to make sure that you are following a good step-by-step plan.

It is very easy to lose month using PPC unless you know what you are doing. One of the key components to research is how to increase your click through rate (CTR). 

CTR is simply the number of times that someone clicks on your advertisement as opposed to the number of page impressions. The more visitors you attract, the more money you should make. This is why CTR is extremely important.

After all, if people are not clicking on your ad, how will you sell them anything?  

Here are some time tested tips on how to improve your CTR and make more money with PPC:

Set an objective with your ad:
Know what your ad needs to say to influence the potential buyers you are aiming for. You must do some research into your market so that you know what triggers will cause them to click on your ad. 

In other words, you must hit their hot button issues in the ad so that they feel COMPELLED to click on your link.

Organization:
You must have your campaigns organized so that you can assess their effectiveness at any time and change what is not working.

Letting a campaign run without consistent monitoring, using up valuable money each month, is not a good plan. You need to take time each week to really study how your ads are performing and change what isn’t working.

Optimize your site:
Sending traffic to a site that is not optimized to make the sale is not going to help you. You will be paying for lots of clicks, but not converting anyone once they arrive at your site.

Keyword research:
This is one of the most important parts of PPC. You must create ad groups, which are very relevant to your content. The more relevant the keywords are, the higher your CTR will be.

You do not want to run ads using a keyword that does not really convert your niche.

For instance, you would not want to bid on the keyword “dog training” and then try to send people to a website about dog food.

While that may be an interesting over all topic, the clicks you get from that will not convert because the visitor is expecting information about dog training.

PAY PER CLICK 101

The best thing about internet marketing is the world of opportunities it opens up when it comes to marketing a product or service.

You can literally target your marketing to certain segments of the population with a few clicks of a mouse.

One of the ways to zero in on a particular group of people would be by using PPC (pay per click) marketing. This type of marketing requires a certain level of skill, however, so you must be careful in understanding how to decide if PPC marketing is really for you.

One of the reasons why PPC marketing is so popular is because it enables you to move to the top of the search engine results for your specified keywords fairly quickly. However, this is not without a cost, so you have to be mindful of your budget and stay within it.

PPC marketing is a process of setting up ads that are related to the product or service you are selling using a variety of keyword phrases you have chosen that relate to the item you are selling.

For instance, you may be selling dog bark collars, so you might choose a group of keywords such as “dog bark collars, bark collars for dogs, dog barking problems, dog training barking” etc.

Anytime someone types in these keyword phrases, your ad has a chance of coming up on the screen. If they click on, you are charged a predetermined amount for that click whether they purchase the product or not.

When you create campaigns, you will design each one so that it’s focused on specific groups. In order to do that, you will enter in keyword phrases associated to the markets that you advertise to.

If you have yet to create an account, head on over to http://www.adwords.google.com/select to get started.

Once you set up your account, Google will ask for information concerning your target audience including whether you wish to focus on specific groups by language or location. 

Typically, I choose English and include countries like Canada, United States, UK, and Australia, however you can easily edit your targeted locations at any time should you wish to make changes to the groups of people that will be able to see your ads later on.

The flexibility offered through language and location targeting allows advertisers to develop content tailored to specific groups, nationalities and locations.

This is an exceptional benefit of the Adwords system if you are planning to cater to specific languages such as French or Spanish, or you are interested in only having your advertisements appear to residents of certain countries.

Another great benefit of using Google is that they place no minimum order restrictions on accounts. This means that you can start advertising on Google without having to invest a lot of money. 

In addition, you can easily edit your budget at any time should you wish to start off small and increase it as you become more experienced using the system.

PAY PER CLICK AND SEO

Going through the process of a pay per click marketing campaign (PPC) can feel a bit like a root canal sometimes.

It is not always a fun process making sure that everything is in place perfectly before you launch your new ad groups. However, taking the time to make sure that you have all of the parts and pieces working together will save you money, and make you more profits in the end.

One way to improve your conversions and your Google quality score is to make sure that your landing page is well optimized.

Here are some tips to remember to make sure that your website is ready for the onslaught of PPC clicks and that Google likes what it sees:

Make sure that your keyword phrase is included in the page name of your website. This will help the search engines find your page as well.

Make sure that your keyword phrase is also included in the title tag, description tag, meta keyword tag, H1 tag and link text.

Your keyword should also be found in your website content. The content on your site should be at least 400 words and contact about 1.5% to 2% keyword density (how many times the keyword is mentioned in 100 words).

Link your page internally at least 3 times and point it to pages on the same subject.
Have a site map and make sure that you submit that through Google Webmaster tools as well.

Create a blog post which points to your landing page

Make your landing page a simple design so that it is easy and quick to load

Create a thank you page that visitors will go to after they have signed up for your list or purchase a product.

Create headlines that capture your prospect’s attention. Do you have a call to action prominently placed on your page? Are you fully explaining to them what they need to do?

Privacy page: Google likes websites which have a privacy page, so make sure that you create one.

Terms of Service: Google also wants to see a page called Terms of Service, so make sure that you have one of those included in your landing page as well.

Creating the perfect PPC advertisement is not going to help you if your landing page is terrible, so take the time to make it perfect!

QUALITY SCORE DEFINED

Google advertisers are familiar with what is known as the "Quality Score" and there is good reason for this. 

Your quality score will directly effect the amount you are required to pay for each click to your site. The higher your quality score is, the lower your cost per click will be.

Furthermore, if you focus on obtaining a high quality score, not only will your campaigns be more affordable BUT you will receive the same exposure as you were when you were paying more per click!

The reason why Google implemented a quality score into their PPC marketplace was partly due to quality control.

They knew that by integrating a system in which advertisers were rated based on their campaigns performance, they would essentially cut back on bogus campaigns and irrelevant keywords and advertisements from being featured. 

Since the quality score is based on your CTR (Click Through Rate), advertisers want their campaigns to convert into clicks as often as possible whenever they are featured throughout the PPC marketplace.

Besides, as a PPC marketer, even if the quality score didn't exist you still want to ensure that those who are viewing your ads clearly understand what it is that you are offering, because since you are paying for each click to your site, there is no sense in yielding visitors who have little or no interest in your product.

This is why it's important to focus on creating targeted campaigns that combine relevant keywords with solid ad-content, such as a compelling title, descriptive ad body, and a high converting landing page. 

Every element of a PPC campaign is an important one that ties everything together.

If one aspect of your campaign is lacking, it can dramatically impact your results, which is why so many people experience failure when initially promoting through PPC marketplaces. 

They throw their campaigns together, compile huge listings of irrelevant keywords, and create advertisements that attract freebie seekers rather than pre-selling prospects and targeting only potential buyers, not visitors.

Another thing to keep in mind when striving for a high quality score is that sites like Google retain information regarding your PPC marketing history. 

This means that even if you pause or remove an ineffective campaign, it can directly affect your quality score so it's very important to focus on creating effective campaigns right from the start. 

On a final note, when you initially create campaigns within Google Adwords, you will be given an estimated CTR for each campaign. 

This will occur whenever you assign a new keyword to your campaigns as well, and can you quickly determine whether a specific keyword phrase is likely to preform well or not. 

While this is a general guideline and is not always accurate, it can help you eliminate keyword phrases that are not going to preform well.

PPC MARKETING ADVERTISEMENT IDEAS

When you are writing your ads for a new pay per click campaign, you must take some time to think through what message you are sending to potential customers.

The goal is to get them to click on your advertisement. They should be so enticed by the exciting headline that they are desperate to get to your great information.

Here are some top tips for wording your advertisement to generate curiosity and excitement:

Coupons: If you know that your site is going to offer discounts or coupons related to the product, make sure to mention that, i.e. “Up to 50% off this week”

Holidays: Always use the upcoming holiday (whatever it is) to sell the item. If it is April and you are selling rings, don’t forget to put things like “Get it in time for Mother’s Day!”.

Free shipping: This is, of course, a big perk to any online shopper. If you have any deals on free shipping, make sure to mention that in your advertisement. “Free Shipping on All Orders Over $100”.

Buy One, Get One: This is a very popular type of sale, so if you have a buy one, get one free (or even half off), make sure to put that into your advertisement. “Buy One Book, Get One Free”.

Rare: If you have a product that is hard to find or that others do not have, make sure that you point it out: “We have Green Widgets!”, etc.
Statistics: This works best with health related products. Make sure your statistics are based on research and facts, however. “93% of people said this cured their problem!”

Rebates: If there is an offer of a rebate on the product, be sure to bring that up in your advertisement: “Buy Before December 15 and Get $100 Rebate”.

Comparison shopping: Remind the customer that your website would be a great place to compare products and pricing: “See Reviews on Flat Screen TVs” or “Compare Prices on MP3 Players”.

As you can see, there are a lot of trigger phrases that will hopefully make your potential buyer want to become a “clicker” and then a purchaser of your product!

By using these kinds of key phrases, you will be making the best use of the space that you are allotted in your advertisement. As long as you are paying for the “real estate”, you might as well make good use of it!