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Posts Tagged ‘Good Reason’

Schemas Can Make or Break Your PPC Ad

Friday, August 17th, 2012

 

As usual for this column, we’re asking you to pick the winner, so go ahead and figure out which one of these ads boosted Click-Through Rate:




Got your answer? Good.


The actual winner was Ad B, which increased CTR by 97% — almost doubling the rate of click-through.


But the real question is why? What’s so much better about Ad B? And to understand that, it’ll help to go through the following thought experiment.


Understanding Schemas


Below you’ll find two different ways of explaining what a Pomelo is, both quoted from Chip and Dan Heath’s magnificent book, Made to Stick. Take a look at both and pick out the one that delivers mental picture of what a Pomelo is:


  • Explaination A: A pomelo is the largest citrus fruit. The rind is very thick but soft and easy to peel away. The resulting fruit has a light yellow to coral pink flesh and can vary from juicy to slightly dry and from seductively spicy sweet to tangy and tart.
  • Explaination B: A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.


Most people pick explaination B, and for good reason. Here’s how the Heath Bros explain it in Made to Stick:


“”Explaination 2 sticks a flag on a concept that you already know: a grapefruit. When we tell you that a pomelo is like a grapefruit, you call up a mental image of a grapefruit. Then we tell you what to change about it: It’s ‘supersized.’ Your visual grapefruit grows accordingly…


…By calling up your grapefruit schema we were able to teach you the concept of Pomelo much faster than if we had mechanically listed all the attributes of a pomelo.”




So what does this have to do with PPC Ads?


Well, sometimes a PPC Ad has to sell people on a new concept — a product or service offering that most people haven’t heard of, one that’s an alternative to what the prospect is already searching for through Google and the like.


In todays Win of the Week example, the two ads are picking a service that’s an alternative to standard moving choices. In standard moving choices you either:


  1. Pay someone to come, pack all your stuff into their trucks, drive your stuff to where you want it, and then unpack the trucks into your new home, OR
  2. Rent a truck, pack the truck yourself, drive the truck yourself, and then unpack the stuff into your new home, again, by yourself.


The service on offer is kind of a hybrid of the two wherein you rent a pod and pack it full of your stuff, and then they come and move the pod to your new home, where you can unpack it. The advantage is you don’t have to physically drive the rental truck, which can be quite an advantage if you’re moving from one state to another and not just moving across town.


So what’s the best way to sell that service? Do you mechanically list all the attributes of this service, like the headline from Ad A: “Discount Self-Load Moving”


Or do you invoke the shcema of Rental Trucks and then explain how this service is different and better, like Ad B: Rent U-Pack Budget Trucks


Well, if you want twice the Click-Through Rate, you go with the schema.


 

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If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It – But Which “Flaunt” Made the Difference?

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

 

OK, before we discuss anything else take your pick for the winning ad.



2 kinds of PPC Ad Writing situations


OK. So before I reveal the winning ad, let’s talk about the two fundamental PPC Ad Writing Scenarios:

  1. Where you’ve got more “good stuff” to cram into the ad then you have space
  2. Where you’ve got more character-space than “good stuff”


And by “good stuff” I mean, “reason why” style claims and selling propositions and guarantees and deal sweeteners. The kind of stuff most copywriters naturally want to feature when I client or offering has it.


In fact, in the first situation, a copywriter’s usual tendency is to try to cram too much of that stuff into a single ad. And, at least to some degree, for good reason, as those elements have been proven to boost ad performance.


So knowing that, which ad do you think won?


Yup, Ad B, the ad with the added info-bits of “Huge Selection,” and “Many Custom Options,” along with a final guarantee stated as, “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” This ad improved CTR by 171%


Of course, it won, right? How could it not with all those added claims and guarantee. But there’s the rub — because when an ad like that wins, you’re left wondering exactly which element (or elements) actually contributed to the win, and which really aren’t that important to the prospective customer.


The Challenge of Constant, Ongoing Optimization

Taking it line by line:

  • Was it the word “Browse” rather than “Shop” in the title?
  • Was it the claim of “Huge Selection”?
  • Was it the offer of (and searcher interest in) customer orders?
  • Was it the expansion of Free Shipping to all orders instead of just for custom orders?
  • Was it the Satisfaction Guarantee.
  • Or was it some combination or all of the above?

    • Now some clients don’t care, adopting the attitude of “Who cares as long as it won and I’m not getting more clicks.” But if your goal is long rang optimization, this is the wrong attitude to take. Because the next step is to figure out which elements are most important, and then testing better ways of expressing and sequencing them.


    That’s how you get win piled on top of win. That’s how you optimize when you are a professional.


    Of course, you’ll still want to occasionally swing for the fences with another challenger ad that changes everything or takes a new approach. And that’s why it’s so important to have multiple writers and multiple perspectives in your writers.


    That, in fact, is why BoostCTR believes in and harnesses the power of crowd-sourced PPC Ad writing — to get the best of both optimization approaches: incremental improvement and “Hail Marry” efforts.


     

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Posted in Ad Text Tips, Ad Writing Techniques, Paid Search, Win of the Week | No Comments »