How To Get Higher Click Through Rates In Adwords

So I’m working in a clients account yesterday and I come across one Campaign that I’ve been working on for around three months now.  I’ve been trying to get higher click through rates on the account for a while but had a hard time doing so.  We’ve got like 20 Campaigns and like 150 AdGroups in this account.  I’ve got half the accounts over 5% CTR, which I think is amazing.  In this post I’ll explain how I got there and how to get higher click through rates in Adwords using very simple tricks.
Here is the account we’re looking at today, as you can see in the pic below…we’re doing alright.  But there are still a couple Campaigns that I want to improve the CTR on.  I find that when I really focus on getting a higher click through rate on the Campaign, the account will improve.  Not only will the account improve, I’ll get lower click costs, higher quality score and more conversions.  So when I’m in an account… it’s one of my top focuses.

Just so you know, we don’t bid for clicks on the weekends for this particular client.  We find that we don’t get conversions on the weekend as well as can’t call on the leads that we’re driving for the client.

Note:  if you have clients that are bringing in leads online, pause their ads on the weekends.  95% of leads (made up number) need to be called within 1 hours of leaving a lead or they will not convert.  I’m sure there is some statistic out there about this but I don’t have time to look it up.  If I personally fill out a lead form online, I expect to be called back in the next 30 min.  If I haven’t gotten a call within 24 hours, I probably won’t even remember what the lead what about.

As you can see also from the pic above, 2 of our top 4 Campaigns are getting a high CTR.  One of them is “Software” and the other is “Branded”.  If you don’t have a branded terms Campaign, you should really set one up.  Branded Campaigns are key to helping out  your account, holding 2 of the top 4 positions on Google as well as driving your competition from bidding on any of your branded terms.  It may cost you a little bit but you should be doing it.  It’s pennies when compared to how much you’ll lose on a sale if the client goes to a competitor.

Working on driving down CTR.  Driving down CTR takes time and patience.  You have to constantly TEST, TEST, TEST.  One of the keys to getting a higher CTR is to always have 2 ads running at the same time.  I like to give an add 100 clicks to , though you can typically see within 20 clicks if an ad is working or not.

Sometimes ads convert better than others on the back end than with CTR.  This can through you off, cause you want sales.  If this happens, I recommend giving it another 100 clicks to see which one converts better.  If you’re getting an amazing CTR and not getting any sales, this is no good either.  You should however after 1000 clicks see that the higher converting ad will almost always get more leads.

Keep testing  your ad copy.  Something I reccomend in the Headline of your ad:

Having {KeyWord:Your Headline Here} in the Headline of your ad.  This will pull in whatever keyword that the searcher is searching for on Google, Bing or Yahoo into the main headline of your ad.  This will significantly help you improve your ads CTR.  When a searcher finds exactly what they are searching for in the top of the results (the one that you cleverly created) it’ll help calm their nerves and establish trust with you and the site you’re directing them too.  This will help your CTR a TON.  I really can’t say enough about this.  It’ll help your click through rate improve dramatically.

The key to getting higher CTR’s is to test.  Whatever you do, don’t stop testing your ads.  Always have two different ads running at the same time.  Keep in mind, you HAVE to change them ever 30 days or Google will automatically pick the top performing ad and give it 100% of the search volume.  So this means you have to change up your ads at least every 30 days or Google will do it automatically for you.  You don’t want this happening cause you always want to be testing your PPC ads.

One last final thought.  Don’t try and deceive people. If you’re getting tons of clicks to your site and 100% of those people are returning to Google within 10 seconds, this won’t reflect well on your account (not to mention it’s a HUGE wast of time).  It will eventually kill your account.  You’ll be wasting your money, and your clicks will go up over time.  Write ads that people who are interested in your product would click on.

Here’s to getting higher click through rates in Adwords to everyone in the world!