MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

“There are no expert marketers; there are only experienced marketers and expert testers.” – Dr. Flint McGlaughlin

Once upon a time, marketers could claim they knew what marketing collateral would generate the highest response from the customer. Now, with the advent of online testing, it has become more challenging to “make definite assertions” about which treatment will perform better.

The best we can do is pose  a hypothesis.

Of course, it never hurts when your hypothesis turns out to be absolutely right.

So to give you a 50/50 chance at gloating (even over a lucky guess), you can hypothesize which call-to-action performed better in the slides below.

Once you’ve studied the slides, go ahead a leave your hypothesis for which call-to-action won (and why) in the comments.

The commenter with the best hypothesis will get the recognition of his or her peers and be featured in the body of this post with a link to their site.

Here is the test we will highlight in today’s 4:00 p.m. (EST) Web clinic: Minor Changes, Major Lifts: How headline and call-to-action optimization increased conversion 45%.

 

Call-to-Action Tested: Test your marketing intuition

View more presentations from MarketingExperiments.

Now that you’ve seen the test, go ahead and try to hypothesize which treatment won by 45% in the comments. You’ll get extra kudos if you tell us why you think it won as well.

After the clinic has aired, we’ll link back to the sites of  one or two of you with the best hypotheses in the body of this post.

Good luck!

 

Related Resources:

Sign up for today’s Web clinic – Minor Changes, Major Lifts: How headline and call-to-action optimization increased conversion 45%

Headline Writing: How a junior marketer beat the CEO’s headline by 92%

Blandvertising: How you can overcome writing headlines and copy that don’t say anything

Website Redesign: Wondering what to test? Just ask your customers

Pay-per-click advertising is a mysterious subject. A lot goes on behind the scenes at Google that they simply won’t let us in on.

Because of that, marketers often struggle to get their PPC questions answered.

In our most recent Web clinic, “Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions,” we had several great questions from our audience. But we didn’t have time to answer them in the clinic. So, to help them (and you), we wrote this post with answers to the most pressing questions.

Hopefully you can find questions similar to the ones you have so you can apply it to your own PPC campaigns …

 

QUESTION #1:

When you’re in an environment where you’re paying for impressions instead of clicks (e.g., banner ads on a network, not PPC), how do you balance the tradeoffs between optimizing for clicks vs. conversions? I.e., if you’re paying for a limited number of impressions, it seems like you need to maximize clicks, but the same techniques that help accomplish that can hurt the conversion rate. So do studies show it is still better to optimize for conversions, or volume? (The reality is probably somewhere in the middle, I know.)

— Jeff Wood

 

Answer: Jeff, this is an excellent question. In general, it is better not to optimize for conversions or volume. Instead, it is always better to optimize for profit.

If you are paying for impressions instead of clicks, it may be more profitable if the volume of clicks is a bit higher than a regular PPC campaign. But this is only incidental. It might just as easily be the other way around.

When profit is your main KPI, the details regarding whether you are paying for impressions or clicks fade into the background and become non-issues.

We recently held a Web clinic on a similar tension between optimizing for search engine rankings (traffic volume) and conversion. There’s an interesting discussion around slide 21 on the issue that you might find enlightening.

 

QUESTION #2:

What drove the formulation of Treatment 1 and 2’s word choice? One a positive pull, and the other avoiding a negative outcome?

— Sarah Hersack

 

Answer: Sarah, quite simply, we wanted to learn which held more sway with the ideal customer. Discovering things like this is what we love about our jobs. And, while we can’t truly say that avoiding a negative outcome will be more motivating than a positive pull in every instance, the implications for any field of study into human behavior are mind boggling.

 

QUESTION #3:

Isn’t the goal of an ad to get CTR and the goal of the landing page to get CVR? Shouldn’t they have optimized the landing page to the Treatment #1?

— Vannessa Goolsby

 

Answer: Vanessa, yes and no. Yes, we should have optimized the landing page for this test. Unfortunately, because of technology restrictions, we couldn’t run a test on the landing page (from feedback we’ve had from our audience, this probably sounds familiar to many of you). Usually, we like to optimize the entire path as quickly as possible.

No, we shouldn’t have optimized the landing page to Treatment #1. We don’t optimize for traffic, we optimize for profit. The leads coming from Treatment #2 were a much higher quality than those coming from Treatment #1. And, the volume of leads from #2 was enough to make it much more profitable. If we were going to optimize the landing page to a PPC ad, we would have optimized it for Treatment #2.

Also, while we usually teach that “the goal of an ad is to get a click” for the sake of clarity and brevity, the truth is, “the goal of any ad is to get the most profitable click.”

 

QUESTION #4:

Any concerns with lower QS due to so much lower CTR and thus increase CPC costs?

— Paul Rakovich

 

Answer: Paul, we did see a slight increase in CPC costs due to Quality Score issues. But (to beat a dead horse further J), we don’t optimize for Quality Score, we optimize for profit. To protect North American Spine, I can’t really share the CPC costs, but the slight increase in CPC was negligible compared to the overall increase in high-quality leads.

 

QUESTION #5:

Is there a resource that examines using questions in headlines?

— Richard Sneed

 

Answer: Richard, we don’t have anything specifically about using questions in headlines, but I can get you started with a few resources on headlines in general from our blog and research library:

• Optimizing Headlines & Subject Lines
• Headline Optimization: How testing 10 headlines revealed a 3-letter word that improved conversion more than major changes
• Headlines on Deadlines (Part 1): How to consistently write effective headlines without working late
• Headlines on Deadlines (Part 2): How to consistently write effective headlines without working late
• Headline Optimization: 2 common headline mistakes and how to make them work
• Headline Optimization: How would you make this title better?

 

QUESTION #6:

Is there ever a good time, place or occasion to use video on a landing page?

— Gavin Head

 

Answer: Gavin, yes, it is highly likely that there is a good time, place or occasion to use video on a landing page. We could certainly do with more experimentation with video, but so far, we’ve never seen video out-perform text when it comes to grabbing a visitor’s attention. It tends to work much better as a supporting element somewhere further into the thought-sequence of the page. On page 91 of the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal Volume I, Issue 4, there is an experiment that one of our audience members ran for his homepage with and without video.

Also, in one of our more recent clinics, we saw an overall increase in conversion when we changed the positioning and surrounding text of a video on a landing page. But it’s hard to say how much that affected the conversion rate on the page, as it was one change among many in what we call a radical redesign. You can view that clinic here:

• Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 58.1% lift with a radical redesign

 

QUESTION #7:

How do they know that the leads were coming from #2 instead of #1?

— Amber Hanneken

 

Answer: Amber, Adwords has a pretty good help section on it here:

• Understanding conversion tracking

 

Related Resources:

Optimizing PPC Ads: How to leverage the full potential of 130 characters by clarifying the value proposition – Web clinic replay

The Ultimate Click: How to get what you pay for with pay-per-click advertising

Online Advertising: How your peers optimize PPC ads

PPC Marketing: A look at analytic and monitoring tools

If you’ve been running PPC campaigns for longer than a month or so, there have probably been at least a few times when you’ve hit a wall.

You know what I mean … those points when it seems that no matter how much effort you put into testing and optimizing your ads with the right keywords or copy, the incremental returns are minimal and you just cannot seem to beat your star performers.

It may be you are hitting one of those walls right now … and unlike Jim Morrison would have you believe, you can’t just break on through to the other side.

So what do you do in that situation?

At MECLABS, we experiment with a lot of PPC campaigns, and we’ve seen our share of walls when it comes to optimizing them. In a recent experiment, with the help of PPC managers at ROI Revolution, we were able to help North American Spine, a minimally invasive spine treatment center, break through a “wall” to achieve 47% more leads from a PPC campaign.

We’re going to share the details of that experiment with you on our Web clinic today at 4:00 p.m. EST – Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions.

But, before we give you the full scoop, we want you to get some practice in so you can start preparing to break through your own walls.

We’re going to let you test your marketing intuition and tell us in the comments of this blog post which PPC ad you think produced the 47% lift … and why.

If you choose the correct PPC ad and give us a good enough reason for why you think it won, you will be featured on our blog as a marketing expert and win the respect of your peers and superiors.

So without further ado, here are the treatments:

  Read more…

A test is a great way to settle arguments. The highest-paid person in the room thinks he has a better headline? No problem. Just test it.

But, to truly optimize, sometimes it helps to start a few arguments as well. Get some key people in the room, question your landing pages, question your value proposition, and let everyone (Sales, Customer Service, Product Development, Consulting Services) come up with test ideas to really push the envelope on your marketing.

The way we do that at MECLABS is with a series of meetings called Peer Review Sessions. It gives everybody – from the most senior to the most junior members of the team – a chance to jump in, question the status quo, and come up with test ideas.

Because, as marketers, optimizing by ourselves is hard work … even for the experienced optimizers at MECLABS. No one can truly optimize in a vacuum. We need other minds to broaden the horizons of our creativity and give us ideas for what to test and how to test.

-

Find your peer group

Sometimes it also helps to find optimization peers who work at other (preferably non-competitor) companies to break away from the groupthink in your organization (“Our product is the bestest ever!”) and throw some tests against the wall for a little brainstorming.

This is why we at MarketingExperiments are trying to build a community of marketers around the field of optimization. Because the more people there are sharing ideas, the better we can all get at optimization. And, the better we can get at optimizing, the better we all become at performing our jobs.

You can find that peer group in a few places:

• Among the 4,610 optimizers on the MarketingExperiments Optimization group on LinkedIn
• Local marketing events
• Optimization Summit 2012 in Denver
• The comments section of this blog post

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Win a $397 MarketingSherpa Benchmark Report

That’s right, I said the comments section of this blog post.

You see, as I said earlier about the MECLABS way of optimizing, we seek to get as many ideas as possible for the tests we run with our Research Partners. For an upcoming test we’d like you to suggest the best PPC ad copy in the comments section of this blog post.

So scroll down. Take a look in the comments. Find some PPC ad copy you like. And reach out to that marketer to see if you can form a peer relationship, helping each other produce better tests.

To make it worth your while, once we have several submissions, we will choose one lucky marketer’s ad treatment to run in our experiment. And, to sweeten the pot, we’ll also give that marketer a free PDF copy of MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – PPC Edition (a $397 value).

So let’s get to the challenge (if you choose to accept it)…

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The challenge

As I said, to make us all become better optimizers, we need your ideas for a real PPC experiment we are going to run for one of our Research Partners: North American Spine. We’re going to have you, dear marketer, write PPC ads to help us discover some things about North American Spine’s ideal customer.

At the end of this post, you can submit your ad treatment in the comments.

So, now that you know what you’re in for, sit back, and get your thinking caps on while you read the background of the experiment.

Please read it carefully as there are some very specific things we are looking for to make this test successful. The closer you read and understand, the more likely you are to win.

-

Experiment Background:

North American Spine (NAS) is the inventor and sole provider of a fascinating (in my opinion) minimally invasive spine surgery called the Accurascope procedure. They essentially provide people who are suffering from serious, chronic back pain with an alternative to open back surgery.

Right now, with ROI Revolution managing their paid search advertising campaigns – NAS is doing an impressive job of getting people who are already shopping for back surgery solutions to buy the Accurascope procedure.

However, as probably all of us know, there are likely potential NAS customers out there who aren’t shopping for back surgery. Instead they are shopping for more information so they can make an informed decision about whether they need surgery or not.

We know this because there are several medium-to-high-traffic keyword terms centered around certain back conditions:

• Lumbar Bulging Disc
• Sciatic Nerve
• Degenerative Disc Disease
• Etc.

It also happens that NAS is looking to implement a content strategy to help position them as an authority in the back pain treatment space.

-

Experiment Goal:

The trouble with a content strategy is that it is very difficult to create content, and very difficult to predict what content will resonate with your customers.

You could spend a lot of time creating high-quality content only to find out later that another approach would have been more profitable.

To help provide clarity to NAS’s content strategy, we are going to run some PPC ads to “take the temperature,” in a sense, of the people who are searching for the following conditions:

• Lumbar bulging disc
• Sciatic nerve
• Degenerative disc disease
• Herniated disc
• Pinched nerve in lower back
• Lumbar back pain

So the goal of this experiment is to learn which types of content resonate with the largest audience of condition-based searchers. This way, NAS can tailor a content strategy around those motivations and start building content they know will be effective.

But the ultimate goal is to have prospects come in for a needed Accurascope procedure, as shown in the chart below:

 

 

Experiment Hypothesis:

It wouldn’t be an experiment without a hypothesis. Here’s what we think these condition-based searchers are really after:

• May be experiencing back pain symptoms and are simply searching online or asking around
• Have come across this condition and now want more information on it
• May have already seen a doctor and been diagnosed with this condition and now want more information on it and possible treatments
• May be a friend or loved one searching on behalf of someone

Therefore ads that cater to these motivations will likely receive a higher clickthrough rate.

-

The Research Question:

It’s hard to ask a research question without also having your treatments in mind, but I’ll go ahead and pitch one here, assuming your treatments will be flooding in soon after:

Which condition-based ad template will receive a higher clickthrough rate?

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The Treatments: What we need from YOU

If you didn’t notice above in the research question, the treatments we are looking for will be templates. Each PPC ad will be a different approach for more information that we can simply drop a back condition keyword into. So, to give you an example, I’ll show you my submission:

-

Have [Condition]?
Learn 3 treatments with the highest
success rates in this free report
NorthAmericanSpine.com/[condition]

 

However, you might take an angle like this:

-

[Condition] Info
5 things you need to know to give
your loved one the care they need.
NorthAmericanSpine.com/[condition]

 

Whatever you decide, be sure to keep the goal of this experiment in mind: to learn which types of content resonate with the largest audience of condition-based searchers.

Also, keep in mind that PPC ads have character limits, if you don’t know them, you can use this tool to help you stay within those limits and not be disqualified from the contest.

Because you’re writing ad templates and not ads, it’s going to be difficult to fit each of the conditions above in a single template. But we know you’re very smart, and if there is a way that you can think of to get around that problem we’re open to suggestions. Just leave them in the comment below your submission.

 

The Call-to-Action:

So with that, I’ll let you get writing. When you’ve written an ad, all you need to do is post it below in the comments. Once we have enough submissions, we’ll sort through them and choose one ad that we think will best help us answer the research question.

The writer of that ad will get:

• A free PDF copy of MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – PPC Edition (a $397 value)
• The opportunity to brag about how they were included in a real MECLABS experiment
• A shot at having their treatment actually win the experiment (more bragging rights)
• A mention (and link) on this blog as a marketing expert (yes, even more bragging rights)

Go ahead and post your ad in the comments and we’ll announce the winner during our next Web clinic: Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions (Educational funding provided by ROI Revolution)

Happy writing!

 

UPDATE: Winner(s) Announced…

The results are in. Unfortunately our team was torn between two submissions from our generous commenters below. We were SO torn, in fact, that we decided to give away TWO 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Reports – PPC Edition to two lucky commenters. Unfortunately, due to validity constraints we are only able to use one ad template in the actual experiment.

So congratulations to both Amy Harold and Carrie Hernandez for their insightful submissions. Both of you should be receiving a Benchmark Report in the next few days. With that said, if you saw yesterday’s Web clinic [Subscribe to be notified when the replay is live], you know that only Amy Harold’s submission will be in the actual test. That is because we needed a template that we could use to test different approaches and hers was the most flexible.

With that said, we found Carrie’s submission incredibly insightful for two reasons:

1. It was short. It wasn’t even close to using all of the characters the ad was limited to. Common sense tells us this is a bad thing. Be we love challenging common sense with experimentation. So we would love to eventually test shorter than required ad copy.
2. The idea of offering a comparative clinical study was a particularly interesting content angle

Again, thank you to all of our commenters. If you need help writing a PPC ad, simply take a look at the comments below for some ideas. And try to get in touch with anyone whose ad you particularly liked to brainstorm. Remember, we can’t optimize in a vacuum.

 

Related Resources:

Blandvertising: How you can overcome writing headlines and copy that don’t say anything

Banner Blindness: Why your marketing messages are hiding in plain sight

The Ultimate Click: How to get what you pay for with pay-per-click advertising

PPC Ads: What is search engine marketing best used for?

 

Sometimes great products can be hard to sell on a website. The market is so saturated with mediocre goods and services that when a truly great one comes along, the same old marketing tactics simply don’t work anymore. Excellent products need excellent websites to communicate their full potential.

And that’s the main problem with this website submitted for live optimization by the makers of the Npower PEG on a past Web clinic.

 

 

The product is essentially a battery you can hook to almost any device. But the fun part is that it charges with the kinetic energy you produce while you go about your daily life.

I personally found it fascinating. And I want one.

Unfortunately, (as the owners of the site probably know) the website doesn’t effectively communicate the prodigiousness of the product.

Perhaps you’re in the same boat as the Npower PEG. Maybe you’ve got a great product but you feel like your website doesn’t live up to it. Don’t tune this post out because it’s about someone else’s company.

To help you, I talked to Adam Lapp, Associate Director of Optimization and Strategy, MECLABS, about Npower’s website. From his years of optimization experience, you can hopefully glean some wisdom for your own site.

There are eight main test ideas that Adam highlighted in our conversation about how to improve this website.

 

Test Idea #1: Make the homepage more like a landing page

One thing Adam noticed was that this entire site is for a single product. Because of that, you could potentially make the homepage a lot more like a landing page with most of the information they need to make a buying decision right there on the first page.

Generally, a homepage like the one they currently have is used to funnel different segments of the audience to the correct sections of a site so they can further engage with the products and services they need.

But it’s not needed here, because you have a single audience looking for a single product.

• Transferrable Principle:

Determine the correct use of your homepage based on the number of audience segments and products/services you have. Many segments and products need a homepage that reflects a high number of offers. But single product homepages can generally be thought of as a landing page.

 

Test Idea #2: Make the entire site more like a micro-site

Another thing Adam mentioned along the lines of idea #1 was that the whole site might benefit from more of a micro-site look and feel.

“Don’t make a complex traditional website for the sake of making a complex traditional website,” Adam said. “You don’t have to have a big elaborate 10-20 page website with dropdown navigation. Keep it simple. Determine what your objective is and make it as simple as possible to accomplish that objective.”

One way to do this might be to create a navigation that is made up of four (or so) key benefits. So for instance, the links might be:

• Compatibility
• Battery Life
• How it works
•  FAQ

No dropdowns needed. Just four key sections, four single clicks.

• Transferrable Principle:

Sometimes you don’t need a website in a traditional sense. What you need is a way to effectively sell a product for the most profit. A website is just a means to an end. With that in mind, think of what your customer needs to know to make a decision and give it to them in the simplest and clearest way possible.

 

Test Idea #3: Communicate your credibility

Because of the novelty of the product, there might be some credibility issues in the visitor’s mind. Someone looking to purchase the product may be thinking about how reliable it is and what kind of track record it has.

To correct this, Adam proposed using the testimonials that are currently on the blog and moving them to a more appropriate place on the homepage to boost credibility. There is also the issue of who is giving you credit. It might also help to have some statements like, “Used by all the members of xyz hiking club in Portland, Oregon.”

Associations or organizations that use your products can be great credibility sources.

• Transferrable Principle:

Consider whether your ideal customer is questioning your credibility (Hint: they almost always are). If so, cite reliable and well known sources who like or use your product.

 

Test Idea #4: Optimize your buying process

Currently, the funnel for the buying process appears a little over-complicated. The site asks visitors to reserve a Powerpeg, then wait for it to be manufactured, and then pay if they’re still interested by the time it’s done. But it seems like it would be a lot simpler to go ahead and get the payment up front.

Once that’s in place, Adam pointed out that he would “make it clear that they are made to order. Tell the visitor how long it will take to build it and have some specific money back guarantees to reduce anxiety.”

If the reason for reserving the product ahead of time instead of a purchase was to get leads, there may be alternate means of achieving that goal. For instance, you may try testing an offer like: “First-time customers sign up for our newsletter and you’ll receive a coupon code for 10% off your first order.”

That way if they don’t order the same day, they have a coupon code to come back and complete the order, and you have an email address.

You might even lead the checkout page with a coupon code link under the code box that says: “Don’t have a coupon code? Get yours here.” And collect the lead that way.

• Transferrable Principle:

Friction in the buying process is one of the easiest things to reduce for large conversion rate lifts. Make your buying process as easy as possible and don’t ask for a lead when you should be asking for a sale.

 

Test Idea #5: Consider an up-sell

As Adam astutely observed in our conversation, an up-sell for this kind of consumer electronic product might also be a great idea. This is the kind of product that people might want two or three of for each member of the family. So depending on how many items people are currently buying per order, you may want to offer something like, “Buy two, get 10% off the second,” or “Buy 20, get one free.”

• Transferrable Principle:

If your product is something people may want multiples of or you have auxiliary offers, test having an up-sell or cross-sell in your purchase process. You may be leaving money on the table because someone wanted to buy more, but you didn’t offer it at the right time.

 

Test Idea #6: Lead with a clear headline

One of the main problems with this page that Adam pointed out was the lack of overall clarity about what the product is and what it can do.

As Adam said, “I see this image of people hiking. Although there is a description of what this image means, and since its small text, I’ll probably overlook this headline. So you’re wasting about 200px of space here with an image that doesn’t really communicate where I’m at or the value of the product.”

To fix this, lead with a clear headline at the top of the page, rather than the middle, that clearly states the name of the product and the primary benefit. Your sub-headline could then state the different uses or some secondary benefit of the product.

• Transferrable Principle:

The purpose of a headline is to drive the reader into the sub-headline or first paragraph. In doing that, it should help the viewer understand immediately that they are in the right place and they should stay on the page.

 

Test Idea #7: Use relevant imagery

Another problem Adam mentioned was the actual image used on the homepage.

“Instead of a picture of hikers, I’d use an image that more clearly communicates what the product is and how it works. The current image doesn’t connect the dots for me yet.”

One idea for a better image might be a diagram of how the product works. A video may also be a great idea here.

• Transferrable Principle:

Images should be as relevant as possible to the offer on the page and should communicate the value of the product in a way that copy cannot.

 

Test Idea #8: Move the call-to-action into the eye-path

The right side of the page looks like ads … which wouldn’t be so bad if the primary call-to-action (CTA) wasn’t there. The last thing you want your website visitors to think is that your CTA is an ad.

To fix this, simply drag your call-to-action to the bottom of the page after the viewer has been guided through the value of the product.

• Transferrable Principle:

As Flint McGlaughlin says in almost every Web clinic we’ve ever aired, keeping the CTA above the fold is like asking for a kiss before you’ve even had a conversation. What’s worse is putting the CTA among things that look like ads. Generally, a CTA should always be directly in the eye-path and after the visitor has been convinced of the value of the product.

 

Related Resources:

Website Optimization: Landing page test leads to 548% increase in conversion

How to Increase Conversion in 2012 — Web clinic replay

Website Optimization: How your peers increase their conversion rate…quickly

@veronica Thanks for the response!

Editor’s Note: You’ll never find the right answers if you don’t ask the right questions. So my hat’s off to Veronica Cisneros, lead Web designer and developer at websonlized.com, for continuing to push us to dive deeper into the best use of search engine marketing.

After answering her initial question in “PPC Ads: What is search engine marketing best used for?” Paul Cheney takes our exploration of the most effective use of pay-per-click advertising one level deeper today …

 

In the post, Daniel points out that search engine marketing (PPC Ads) are best utilized in communicating “the value of a click to your landing page, not to get a sale.”

That is his main point. And he’s absolutely right.

What he didn’t mention (probably for the sake of brevity) was the idea that “the value of a click to your landing page” should be a derivative of the “value of the ultimate sale.”

That is what I mean by “the ultimate click.” The ultimate click is the sale. And in many cases, the sale comes after a series of micro-yeses.

So in other words, it makes more business sense to run an ad for toothbrushes when you are selling toothbrushes, than to run an ad for a free car when you are selling toothbrushes.

This is because in the toothbrush ad, the value of the click to the landing page is to get more information about the toothbrushes your company offers.

The toothbrush ad is a derivative of the ultimate value of buying a toothbrush. The free car ad is not.

That is what I mean when I say it’s important to get “the correct clicks” rather than simply as many clicks as possible. If the goal was to get as many clicks as I could, I would obviously want to run an ad for a free car.

But because the goal is sales, not clicks, I need to run an ad for a toothbrush.

Now, while I’d be open to testing it (especially if I’m selling toothbrushes), the copy of that ad probably wouldn’t be:

Buy Our Toothbrushes

They’re really great

Only $45 each!

 

I’d most likely run an ad along the lines of:

Designer Toothbrushes

Explore our catalogue of

50 brands used by celebs

 

In the first ad, I tried to sell in the ad. I made it seem like the reader should click on the ad and buy a toothbrush for $45.

In the second ad, I made the value of the click about being able to browse high-quality designer toothbrushes. And hopefully, that’s exactly what they’ll be able to do when they click the ad.

 

Daniel, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the point you were trying to get across:

Selling in the ad is usually bad. The goal of an ad should be to get a click.

I’m simply adding that the click should also be as relevant as possible to the ultimate offer.

I hope that clears things up.

 

Editor’s Note: Spot on, Paul. And might I add that, this is not simply an academic discussion. Remember, these are pay-per-click ads. Why pay for traffic that will not convert?

So while Paul’s examples are purposefully extreme to make a point (although, I’ll admit, he’s got me seriously Jonesing to find out which toothbrush Brangelina uses), it would help you to take a second look at your AdWords account to determine whether your aim is to get a click, or get a click that will convert.

 

Related Resources:

Banner Ad Design: The 3 key banner objectives that drove a 285% lift

Banner Design Tested: How a 35% decrease in clicks caused an 88% increase in conversion

Converting PPC Traffic: How clarifying value generated 99.4% more conversions on a PPC landing page