Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Tighten - Continual Revision to Maximum ROI

Here's the next step in maximizing your ROI with Google Adsense ads and Overture PPC ads. For those of you that missed the first installment, you can find it Target. Tightening an ad is a continual process by whcih you make measured changes to ad copy in order to improve ROI. The keys to doing these are found in controlled steps with each offer measured for performance. This requires planning a schedule for ad revision. The goal here is to improve performance. So after making a revision, check the performance (ie the visitor to order conversion rate), if it drops, change it back to the previous version. For people running thousands of ads, this can be a time consuming process. So i don't recomend changing ads more frequently than once a week, bi-monthly if you have too many of them.

You may find that after several iterations, you cannot improve the response rate. If the rate is satisfactory, keep the ad. If not DROP the ad. This is an important yet often forgotten step in online marketing. Since you will have fulfillment information in real time (that's all part of Tracking), you can quickly find ads that draw and those that don't. Many people feel invested in their ad, hope that conversion will improve. Google Adwords requires that your ad achieve click-through rate of 1%. This in a way forces, you to make some change to make sure the ad continues to run. Most people stop once they acheive the necessary conversion rate, without paying attention to how that conversion rate actually converts into orders. Remember, its not enough to have people click on your site, you need to track those conversions to their final orders. Tracking is a essential component. Google actually has some great information on refining your ad. The optimization tips of the Google Adwords Program is a good place to read. Tantalize is next and I promise I will do it quickly!