Maximize Your Paid Search Budget with Better Ads

Posted by: Date: November 18, 2008

by Jennifer Laycock

With the holiday shopping season already in full gear online, paid search prices are going to be going up. After all, more competition equals higher prices. That means you’ll need to make sure every ad you create has the best shot at landing you a conversion. To do that, you really need to understand how to write great ads.

Karen Thackston tackles the topic of writing paid search ads that pre qualify in a great post over at Marketing Words this week.

Since AdWords has recently made some changes to the way they calculate Quality Score, it’s becoming a little easier for companies to use their paid search ads to pre-qualify buyers. In the past, there was a bit of danger to pre qualifying because Google used your click thru rate as part of Quality Score, which meant you would pay more for ads with less clicks.

Since they’ve made some adjustments to take ad relevancy into stronger consideration, that risk appears to be dropping somewhat. That means you’re free to tighten up your ad copy a bit in order to pull better results from the clicks you earn.

Karen explains:

In their AdWords Blog, Google states, “Most importantly, we are replacing our static per-keyword Quality Scores with a system that will evaluate an ad’s quality each time it matches a search query. This way, AdWords will use the most accurate, specific, and up-to-date performance information when determining whether an ad should be displayed. Your ads will be more likely to show when they’re relevant and less likely to show when they’re not. This means that Google users are apt to see better ads while you, as an advertiser, should receive leads which are more highly qualified.”

Karen also points out the benefits of using relevant keywords and even negative copy in order to pull in the absolute most qualified buyers. She gives a great before and after example of a sample ad for a Mexican cruise and does an excellent job of illustrating the copy changes that can make a dramatic impact on an ad’s conversion rate.

If you’re doing any paid search advertising this year, make sure you take the time to read through her full post over at Marketing Words.

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