Online Marketing - Marketing Don

Increasing Online Conversions In Tough Economic Times

I recently created a paid search account for a new website. I intentionally created multiple ads with

a) Different verbiage for saving percents
b) Gift with purchase ad

I wanted to see what increases click thru rates and mainly conversions for one of our ecommerce sites.

Here are some of the results so far. Hopefully you will find them as interesting as I did.

- Using targeted sports related terms as an example, the lowest ad CTR in the last 5 days was 20% and the highest 46.25%. This was most likely increased due to the email, press releases, posted on social sites, blogs, etc… but still very interesting to see the high amount of interest in the site.

- Ads with “save over 60%” had a slightly higher click thru rate than ads with “Save up to 70%”   (40.31% vs 35.08%)

- Gift with purchase for targeted terms, is the key
The gift with purchase ad I created had a click thru rate in the above group of 34.50% which was actually lower than some of the other ads. HOWEVER! The conversion rate of this ad was much higher.  The highest CTR ad (42.19%) was an ad using keyword insertion and had a conversion rate of 1.0% with a lower number of total conversions.  The Free Hat with Purchase ad had a CTR of 34.50% but a conversion rate of 3.7% and tripled the number of total conversions.

This is even more dramatic in other adgroups.  In the another adgroup, the highest CTR ad (16.4%) had zero conversions, the Free Hat With Purchase ad (CTR 12.72%) had 2 conversions for a 4.7% conversion rate.

For broader keyword groups, I found different results.  Other ads ended up with a higher CTR 5.64% vs 2.80% for the gift with purchase ad.  The difference here is, the other ads converted about the same percentage, but generated more conversions/revenue.  In the end, the other ads converted 5 times more customers than the free gift with purchase ads.

Conclusions:

1. People are still clicking on ads and looking.  They may not be buying as much as they used to right now, but they are still looking.  Overall visits have not dramatically decreased, which adds to this conclusion.
2. “Save over” is preferred to “save up to”
3. The gift with purchase works for generating revenue.  If you offer free shipping promotions, you may be better off giving a gift with purchase if the gift cost is lower than your shipping costs.  Higher conversions and less overall cost.  I think conversions were higher for targeted terms with the gift because these customers may have been ready to buy.  They searched a targeted term, knew what they wanted, and just needed a little incentive to buy.  The broader terms, the gift may not have been an incentive because they were not planning to buy.  Once they got to the site, they ended up buying – which could have been partly due to the hat promo on the site, but what got them there was the keyword insertion ad or ad that came close to their keyword search rather than the gift.

Targeted keywords = gift ads    Much broad keywords = match search query ads

4. Lastly, I read and write articles on paid search and many other writers focus on higher click thru rates.  Higher CTR does not always mean higher revenue. I have read many articles that state to create multiple ads and then pause the 2 with the lowest CTR.  I have argued this point before, but still get a lot of push back.  This test legitimized my own little challenge test: For ecommerce sites, “Higher CTR does not always mean higher revenue.”  I will take a well written/targeted lower CTR ad with a higher number of conversions over a higher CTR ad with little or no conversions any day of the week.